The Freedom Theatre, founded in the Jenin camp in 2006, has as dual missions "to build back Palestinian identity destroyed by years of brutal occupation and tour the often unheard, first-hand experiences of Palestinians to the international community." Ten years ago, the company's co-founder and leader, Juliano Mer-Khamis, was murdered just outside the camp. Director Zoe Lafferty, who has...
"When political theatre preaches to the choir, it removes its potential to disrupt. Indeed, by having such a laser focus on bringing “awareness” to issues, much political art forgets to have a point of view. Art in the current landscape tells us that we live in a racist society or that violence against women exists, but it doesn’t tell...
"Over the past year, as many theaters worldwide have remained closed, online play reading groups have arisen to fill that dramatic gap, with more or less prowess — on Zoom, on Skype, on the audio-only app Clubhouse. Some participants merely read their lines, scripts in hand, others act them out. Many clubs stick to Shakespeare and affiliated classics, but...
"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,...
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
"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
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...
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
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...
"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...
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,...
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...
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
"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
"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...
