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THEATRE

How A Shakespearen Actor Prepares For His Roles

Patrick Page - the voice of Hades in Hadestown - loves being a villain, or, currently, all of Shakespeare's bad guys. - Slate

What The Kilroys Did With Their List

They destroyed it - or rather, transformed it, turned it into a web. Will that work in a world obsessed with rankings? - American Theatre

New York’s Under The Radar Festival, Canceled By The Public Theater, Is Revived By New Partners

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

“Unlike Anything Else I Was Seeing In The Theater”: Ben Brantley On Nobel Prizewinner Jon Fosse’s Plays

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

This Actor Quit Theater Because It Simply Didn’t Pay Enough. Now He’s Artistic Director At A Major Bay Area Company.

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)

How Theatre Schools Are Adapting To The Future

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

Playwright David Adjmi’s Having His First New York Production In A Decade, And It’s All In A Recording Studio

"(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

Chicago Theatre Is In Dire Straits: Reacting To An Alarming Report

“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

Standup Comedy Is In A Weird, Fragmented State. How Did It, And We, Get There?

"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)

When Storefront Theatres Run Out Of Storefronts

It's not pretty. Just ask Chicago. - American Theatre

Can The Oregon Shakespeare Festival Recover From The Past Few Years?

A financial review shows that the festival gets up to 80 percent of its budget from ticket sales - a high number that puts the 88-year-old repertory company at risk. - Oregon Business

U.S. Theater Is In Crisis? Not In Branson, Missouri. Maybe There’s A Lesson To Be Learned There.

"Approximately eight times a week, 40 weeks a year, Broadway-sized crowds watch (the musical) Queen Esther in a town of 12,000 people in the Ozark Mountains." Theater/dance historian Joanna Dee Das writes that this success isn't about dumbing down — there are key factors here that big-city theaters are neglecting. - The Conversation

One Seattle Theatre Adopts Another’s Scene Shop As It Goes Out Of Business

“We’re all trying to figure out what it is that makes people get off their couch, come through the rain and show up at an event together, right? It feels like there needs to be some real magnetic attraction, something that they will truly miss if they don’t see it. - Seattle Times

When Theatre Is Ailing, What Should Be The Role Of The Critic?

"I ask myself whether, as so many theater companies grapple with ongoing pandemic-related challenges, I should reconceive my role. What ought arts criticism look like when the art can feel like it’s barely hanging on?" - San Francisco Chronicle

Dallas Theater Center’s “Rocky Horror Show” Is Now Part Of The Resistance

Intentionally or not, the stage version of the polymorphously perverse cult classic, produced by North Texas's flagship theater company, has become a standard-bearer of opposition to the state law S.B. 12, which regulates any performance that "appeals to the prurient interest in sex." - MSN (The Washington Post)

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