"Here's what to know about Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, the People Power Revolution of 1986 and the controversies the show" — Here Lies Love, now on Broadway after runs Off-Broadway and elsewhere — "has faced." - The New York Times
As of Sept. 1, Tim Bond, who was the festival's associate artistic director from 1996-2007 and is currently AD at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, succeeds Nataki Garrett, who departed in May after an extremely challenging four-year tenure which included COVID closures, wildfires, and financial crises. - Ashland.news
"When I watch the shows each year, I feel like I'm at a church pageant for a religion I don't belong to. It's as if it's not supposed to be good theater; it's supposed to be moral instruction that even a child could understand." - MSN (San Francisco Chronicle)
"The crisis is a perfect storm of bad economic and demographic trends, exacerbated by a change in cultural habits during the pandemic. … The confluence has theater business professionals issuing dire warnings. 'By this time next year, I think the industry will shrink by half,'" said one consultant. - MSN (The Washington Post)
“How does expect writers to continue to find the will to write when there is not only little chance of production but also little chance of engaging a theatre in any meaningful discussion about work in which has already expressed an interest? - The Guardian
"Around the country, in blue states as well as red, theater teachers say it has become increasingly difficult to find plays and musicals that will escape the kind of criticism that, they fear, could cost them their jobs or result in a cutback in funding." - The New York Times
"On April 21 of the cursed year of 2020, the Upright Citizens Brigade — New York’s premier improv-comedy venue — announced it was closing its Hell’s Kitchen theater and training center permanently." But now, UCB has announced a new theatre will open in Manhattan this fall. - Vulture
"The desire to tell beautiful stories is still there, but the funding to support fair and livable compensation is not. Operating out of rental venues and struggling to regain audiences post-pandemic, Chicago storefronts find themselves at a crossroads." - American Theatre
"Theaters must think more expansively of themselves as communal spaces, not merely entertainment venues for stage presentations to ticket buyers; what does it mean to be a civic space, a public space, a 'third place'? No, really." - Culturebot
Can anything - musicals, serious plays, popular actors, dramatic cuts to staff, or great bundles of tickets - fix this issue? Who knows? "Audiences haven’t fundamentally changed since they started gathering at dramatic festivals in ancient Greece." - Los Angeles Times
The ensemble-driven theater, founded by a close-knit group of Northwestern University classmates and friends in 1988, famously has produced original work for the last 35 years, typically with a strong visual sensibility. - Chicago Tribune
Kay Dick's 1977 novel They depicts a world in which any painter who creates beyond an official limit is blinded, any musician deafened, etc. Peake, an audience favorite in Britain, is co-founder of Maat (Music, Art, Activism and Theatre), which is translating the novel into live performance. - The Guardian
59 countries and regions were represented. It is unsurprising that at a festival that asks how design can respond to the most pressing issues of our world, the climate emergency dominated. Almost as persistent were ideas of cultural heritage and of social inequality. - The Stage
The playwright talks about producing Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, the awkward conversation with a straight guy that inspired Slave Play, the easy way to become an in-demand actor (write a hit play), and why he turned down the chance to be a rich man's boytoy. - NPR
"A few months after she took the job, the booth was shut down because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and in the time since it has been closed by a blackout, a hurricane, a strike and a pandemic. It's been an eventful 22 years for Bailey." - The New York Times
