No spontaneous performances, no flyers being handed out, not as many shows: Organizers hope the in-person Festival is also missing the Delta variant. - BBC
The survey of 75 leaders also found a need to safely discuss big ideas. "Right now we do not have an ability to have a healthy conversation. … There's fear and apprehension in the field, and we have to figure out how to talk to each other." - Variety
“A week ago, there was great optimism that by Sept. 14 we would be raring to go. Now, I would say there’s cautious optimism, what with the delta variant and the many forms of communication coming out that there’ve been breakthrough cases.” - Bloomberg
Elisabeth Vincentelli visits Creede, Colorado (population 350), isolated high in the San Juan Mountains, to check out the Creede Repertory Theater, which came up when she Googled "most remote theater in the United States" and which has attracted serious stage professionals for 56 years. - The New York Times
It’s a resumption of business — and, for many arts workers, employment — that’s been eagerly awaited and long in coming. But it’s also a balancing act of safety and economics. - Variety
Though its theater season each summer is a must-see in the industry, even that is more inward facing than outward, with only a few performances of each show and no reviews allowed. - The New York Times
In 2020, the worst of a series of bad years for the company, UCB withdrew entirely from New York. Now the Squirrel Comedy Theater wants to operate using UCB's artistic principles while avoiding the business practices that alienated so many members and students. - The New York Times
Because of the constant need to fundraise, says the outgoing director of the Wilma in Philadelphia, "the people who are actually creating the work are the only people who are freelancers. How do you run theaters when you are surrounded by administrative staff only?" - The New York Times
While it is laudable that these theatres no longer run programs that contribute to the industry’s holding pattern of inequity, complete cancellation is ultimately a failure of imagination. - Howlround
I do think that there is a new energy, there’s a new kind of way of engaging with live performance that is very exciting. You see all these non-traditional spaces opening up because of what happened in 2020, because of the economy, because there are more spaces available to artists to take over." - Howlround
The Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater "champions Puerto Rican and Latino artists and produces original bilingual plays and musicals," and is about to build a new center in the South Bronx. - The New York Times
Will a larger, more activist union make things fairer? Or will business remain more or less as usual? "We asked several industry sources and union folks to give us their best guesses and hopes about how this momentous change will play out." - American Theatre
Actors' Equity is requiring vaccinations. COVID safety officers are being added to production teams, and a leading epidemiologist has been hired to train them. Peter Marks looks into how the new measures are being put into practice. - The Washington Post
"His fall from grace in the mid-1950s was sudden and unexpected. From the mid-1930s he'd been the darling of the West End." Then along came the British theatre's Angry Young Men, followed by critic Kenneth Tynan, whose savaging torpedoed Rattigan's plays for a generation. - The Stage
