In 2021, New Rep paused its operations due to financial losses incurred during the pandemic. It reopened nine months later on a smaller scale with a renewed focus on new work and diverse voices. - WBUR
For the second year running, Lynn Nottage tops the list, which includes nine women out of 20. (Lauren Gunderson, once the perennial leader, is now in eighth place.) Contemporary writers dominate; with Shakespeare omitted, the only canonical playwright, at no. 4, is August Wilson. - American Theatre
For those who keep count, works by female creators make up almost half the list (definitely half if you count Carole King), and three of the top seven are by BIPOC playwrights. (The two extra places on the list are because of ties.) - American Theatre
"The way we work together is as crucial as what we make, and that means acknowledging how badly we need each other’s ideas and artistry and experience—especially when it’s different from our own." - Howlround
Shaina Taub's show Suffs, which had a sold-out but critically-mixed premiere run Off-Broadway last year, will open on Broadway next April with a largely new creative team — and with Nobel Prize-winning girls' education advocate Malala Yousafzai and former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton among the co-producers. - TheaterMania
New York Times editor and culture writer Sarah Bahr tags along with the paper's chief critic to a preview of Gutenberg! The Musical and talks to him about how (and why) he works as he does. - The New York Times
The January festival of new and experimental theater has been reassembled by founder/director Mark Russell, indie production company ArkType, and over a dozen theater companies ranging from La MaMa and Mabou Mines to St. Ann's Warehouse and Soho Rep to the Japan Society and Lincoln Center. - Playbill
Watching his A Summer Day, "I succumbed to a strangely paradoxical feeling of calm, continuous dread. … I could understand why Fosse’s work had never caught on with English-speaking audiences — it lacked the release of humor that Beckett provided — but there was no denying its stealthy power." - The New York Times
Lance Gardner, who'd given "rock-star performances" in a huge variety of roles, gave up acting in 2019 to become live events producer for public radio/tv outlet KQED. Now he's the new artistic director at the Marin Theatre Company. - MSN (San Francisco Chronicle)
Drama school leaders are at the sharp end: the issues experienced by the wider theatre sector often land first in drama schools, in raw, unfiltered and unrehearsed and powerful form. - The Stage
"(Stereophonic) unfolds in a recording studio, where a rock band’s protracted work on an album straddles a year from 1976-77. 'It really is like the process and the play are blurring because these people are in a studio forever (and so have we)." - The New York Times
“An average audience-goer saw 40 or 50 shows or other cultural arts experiences over the course of a year, prior to 2020, going weekly to a play or museum or dance production each week. We sensed that change fundamentally." - Chicago Sun-Times
"On the one hand, there’s never been more of it — more specials, podcasts, comedy-generated discussions and debate and cultural flare-ups. … On the other hand, comedy, like everything else, is in bits. Online, it has shattered into memes and trolls and culture warlords and goats singing Bon Jovi." - MSN (The Atlantic)
