"Many are skeptical, including fans who badly miss being surrounded by echoing laughter and stand-ups who are exhausted by performing for screens and who widely prefer telling jokes in the same room as crowds. While conceding that nothing replaces the traditional comedy format, said the doubts will look as shortsighted as early mockery of Twitter, podcasting and so...
Lyn Gardner: "Often an interval is only there to give audiences the opportunity to go to the lavatory and spend more money. It destroys the world of the play. Dispensing with the interval would remove another of those theatre conventions that are so much part of the experience that we've stopped questioning why they are there. The interval didn't...
George R.R. Martin, who wrote the Song of Ice and Fire novels on which the megahit HBO series was based, is working with playwright Duncan MacMillan and director Dominic Cooke on a big, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child-type play that producers plan to open in New York, London, and Sydney and/or Melbourne. The draw is that the play...
"A project, called Play On! Shakespeare, launched in 2015 by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, … commissioned 36 playwrights from diverse backgrounds … all 39 of the Bard's plays from their original Elizabethan English into a more modern diction." The first three titles in the print series (now re-punctuated as Play on Shakespeare) will be Migdalia Cruz's Macbeth (May),...
Many burlesque entertainers pull together a living in New York through a variety of performance gigs, while others use it as a release from more conventional day jobs. The city had been a hub for burlesque for more than a decade; before the pandemic, you could find a show on almost any given night in both Manhattan and Brooklyn....
What has to change: "Disabled people may be artists, musicians, singers, or actors, our experiences and stories rarely find their way to the stage. When we do appear in scripts or on stages, almost invariably those stories focus on the non-disabled people around us and cast us as villains, punchlines, or charity projects for the protagonists. Ableism runs...
While the interior is idle (or getting a revamp, in some cases), the windows to the street have a thing or two to say about art, poetry, and the power of words - and, in some cases, even dance. The Brooklyn Ballet performed 20-minute "jewel-box dances" from The Nutcracker in its street-level windows in December, using barriers to prevent...
Arrival times will be staggered, drinks and snacks must be pre-ordered, and the audience can go to the bathroom when it needs to - but there will be absolutely no stopping a play once it begins. Shakespeare might feel a bit too real. Consider Romeo and Juliet. There will be no need "to deny the hell of that play,...
Despite the fact that they can sometimes feel like (as one literary manager put it) "the Hunger Games of playwriting," prizes do help bring new voices into an industry that can be very much a closed shop. Lyn Gardner talks to people who run competitions, and people who've entered them, about the difference prizes make and the issues involved...
At a news conference, Mr. de Blasio said that in addition to the Broadway vaccination site, there would be a mobile vaccination unit to serve theater workers beyond Broadway. The sites will be staffed by theater workers, many of whom have been relying on unemployment insurance since Broadway shut down over a year ago. - The New York Times
Ambassador Theatre Group is purchasing from the Nederlander Co. the Orpheum and Golden Gate Theatres in San Francisco and the Fisher Theatre in Detroit, as well as taking over the presentation of Broadway tours at the Detroit Opera House and Music Hall. - Deadline
Old platforms have pivoted, new ones have emerged. And now any fan, with just a few smartphone taps, can arrange a video message, a live chat or even a private coaching session with a favorite star. - The New York Times
"Quietly simmering frustrations erupted publicly last week, when more than 2,500 union members signed a letter, circulated by a Broadway performer and signed by Tony winners and Tony nominees, plaintively asking, 'When are we going to talk about the details of getting back to work?'" - The New York Times
Laura Collins-Hughes: Alexis, when you saw the invitation, what went through your mind?Alexis Soloski: Panic, basically. … I won't be vaccinated for months and I don't feel ready to make this moral/professional/hygienic calculus. You?" - The New York Times
And they're not shy about asking the union to move up the timeline - please. "We feel unheard, we feel left out, and we feel way farther behind than any other industry when it comes to putting in place practical protocols that would get us back to work." - The New York Times
