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THEATRE

On Zoom, Using Ancient Greek Theater To Process Modern Traumas

"Ancient stories, and texts that have stood the test of time, can be portals to honest and dignified grappling with present wounds and longings and callings that we aren't able to muster in our official places now. It's an embodiment of the good Greek word catharsis — releasing both insight and emotions that have had no place to go,...

Where Second City’s New Chief Means To Lead The Improv Institution

Says Jon Carr, who came to the company's Chicago headquarters from Dad's Garage in Atlanta four months ago, "It's a little strange, because there’s nothing routine happening at any of right now, so it's a lot of rebuilding of things from scratch." - American Theatre

Steven Leigh Morris On What Did In LA Stage Alliance

"When members of the community say about LASA that they didn’t feel included or respected, my heart goes out to them. I ran the organization, and I often felt the same way." - Stage Raw

Performers In South Africa Protest For More Government Help During The Pandemic

For the performing arts community, the closure of Cape Town's Fugard Theatre was something of a last straw. "In just a decade of existence the theatre, named after world-renowned playwright Athol Fugard, had become a much-loved venue that put on work by local writers as well as internationally known plays and musicals." Artists are asking their government to do...

Where The World Of Comedy Throws Obstacles, These Women Have Forged Their Own Paths

It's not easy for a woman in comedy, and that's doubly true for a Black woman. Ask Ziwe (who now has a series on Netflix). "You really have to create for yourself and create in that vacuum because you’re not going to get the instant gratification and validation." - Variety

Back In The Theatre: “Necessity Is The Mother Of Devotion”

I can report that once the rest of us were inside — 25 or so socially distanced in a black box theater that normally seats up to 99 — the evening unfolded exuberantly. It was the first of three live theatrical events I attended over the weekend, the first time in a year my schedule resembled something like the...

How American Theatre Marginalizes Asians

"Just as Asian shows are seen as exotic oddities rather than universal, Asian American theatres aren’t considered national theatres by funders, even though it is companies like Ma-Yi, Theater Mu, and East West Players that have historically nurtured Asian American artists when white theatres would not work with them, and told Asian American stories before there was a financial...

What Killed L.A. Stage Alliance? It Wasn’t That One Dumb Mistake

Los Angeles sound designer and playwright Howard Ho — the boyfriend of actress Jully Lee, who was the subject of the dumb mistake at LASA's Ovation Awards — writes that the last thing he and Lee expected was for the organization to shut itself down (they initially laughed off the mistake, which wasn't even the only error that night,...

Live Theatre Returns To Live Theatre In NY — And It’s… Different

The line of people he came to greet waiting to see the first performance of Blindness at the Daryl Roth Theatre off Union Square was collectively, properly masked, but still a line, still packed closely together, reminding this critic that whatever measures being taken inside theaters, the line outside a theater right now remains just as it always was—an...

‘What If Shakespeare Wrote Shakespeare, But Someone Else Wrote Him First?’

That's how one scholar summarizes the theory that the plays of William Shakespeare were written, yes, by the glover's son from Stratford-upon-Avon — but adapted from scripts and prose works by the courtier and Latin translator Sir Thomas North. Here's a look at the evidence. - Smithsonian Magazine

Want A Subscription With Top Seats To Broadway Shows At Philly’s Kimmel Center? Give Them $1,000

"The Kimmel Center is instituting a mandatory $1,000 donation for access to the best seats in its Broadway series. That's $1,000 up front, before the cost of the tickets themselves. The new policy goes into effect now for new subscribers and in the 2022-23 season for existing ones." - The Philadelphia Inquirer

How The Values Of Theatre Move Forward

"The American theatre is a very slow-moving ship, especially when I think about how quickly culture moves, and particularly now that we are in what’s called the digital age. It’s not just in the way we consume work, but also what the work is. And I think that’s a major, major issue. It’s part of the reason why we...

46-Year-Old LA Stage Alliance Disbands After Awards Mistake

Last week, more than 25 Los Angeles area theater companies, including the Geffen Playhouse, the Pasadena Playhouse and the Deaf West Theatre, revoked their memberships in the Alliance after the nonprofit organization misidentified and mispronounced the name of Asian actress Jully Lee at an awards show earlier this week. - Deadline

Game Of Thrones: The Musical?

OK, we'll be honest, not a musical. A play. Or two? Seven? Hm. However, why Game of Thrones? "It was an epic, at times beautiful, show and all these attempts to reanimate its corpse can feel like a cheapening of the original experience. But there’s something else: Why not host a stage production from literally any other author or...

The Subway Can Be Hilarious

Just ask these stand-up comedians, who have been doing sets on trains for months. There are tickets, but then there are also random subway riders. And is it official? Hm. "The show had the chaotic air of something that could get shut down at any moment by a strict police officer who was not in the mood for a...

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