"Stevie Walker-Webb, a theater director and rising star who at the age of 36 has already been nominated for a Tony Award, was appointed Thursday as Baltimore Center Stage's artistic director. … He succeeds Stephanie Ybarra, who stepped down March 17 to accept a position with the Mellon Foundation." - The Baltimore Sun
Experimental work was the soul of the New Ohio, a producer and presenter that closed for good on Aug. 31. The publicity line has been that the shutdown is the end of 30 years, but that’s a give-or-take number. - The New York Times
Two-thirds of this year's programming is at five hubs; one-half — 150 productions — is at Cannonball, which offers a stage, lighting and sound equipment, and people to run it. "Lots of independent artists are hungry for platforms where they don't have to do every single step of producing themselves." - WHYY (Philadelphia)
"Musicals can be shotgun weddings, their authors joined by necessity, not love. But in most cases, they're at least both breathing. Not so this fall. On Broadway, Off Broadway, in special events and out of town, living authors are collaborating with dead ones." - The New York Times
"Santa Cruz Shakespeare … hit 114% of its box-office goal for the year before its summer season even finished. And its 2024 lineup expands to five plays from the customary three, extending its summer calendar into September and then mounting a winter holiday show." - MSN (San Francisco Chronicle)
We think we’re gonna end up with about 15,000 more tickets sold than in 2022. And student groups are coming back. That was a big, big blow for many theaters and OSF as well because when COVID happened, schools shut down field trips and all that. But we’re getting student groups back. - Oregon Public Broadcasting
"Steppenwolf Theatre Company, one of Chicago's most storied arts institutions and long a crucial part of the city's identity, said Thursday that it was laying off 12% of its staff, effective immediately." - MSN (Chicago Tribune)
Zachary Noah Piser, a Chinese-American actor, was to play the lead in Tiananmen: A New Musical when it debuts in Phoenix in October. The cast announcement was made last Thursday, when Piser happened to be performing in Shanghai; on Friday he made a brief statement announcing his withdrawal. - CNN
"Her scripts call for comfortable pauses, uncomfortable pauses, weird pauses, confused pauses, horrible pauses. … It's worth contemplating what's going on between the lines in her low and slow theater. For starters, why do some audience members find silence so off-putting?" - The New York Times
As the downsides to our increasingly mediated world become more apparent, working with AI no longer seems quite as defensible as it once did. And I’ve become more and more concerned about the role artists are playing in popularizing these technologies. - American Theatre
"Subscribers were long the lifeblood of many performing arts organizations — a reliable income stream, and a guarantee that many seats would be filled. The pandemic hastened their disappearance for a number of reasons." - The New York Times
As entertainment centres like Toronto become increasingly diverse, theatres that continue to program works with only their ever-shrinking base of traditional patrons in mind may fade into irrelevancy among the pool of potential audiences they need to attract, she added. - Toronto Star
It was a big surprise when word came down that not only had Sondheim finished his long-rumored adaptation of two LuÃs Buñuel films, he had authorized a production. Here's an extended conversation between Rich, playwright Davd Ives, and director Joe Mantello about how Here We Are came together. - New York Magazine
"Footage posted online shows eight police officers and staff from the Dominion Theatre lining the stairway in the balcony as audience members chant 'out, out, out!'." - The Guardian
