Theater involves “active learning” — getting up on your feet to take in information, rather than merely sitting at a desk. “When you put something in your body, it’s more durable, it lasts longer, and you remember it longer.” - Washington Post
OSF has recently been trying to offset deficits from the pandemic’s impact, including reducing its number of shows each season, shortening its calendar for performances and diversifying the shows it offers. “OSF realizes it must invest in a strategy that will impact the long-term success of the organization.” - Oregon Public Broadcasting
Stephanie Ybarra is resigning, effective March 31, to become a program officer at the Mellon Foundation. Taking over as interim artistic director is Ken-Matt Martin, whose firing by the Victory Gardens board last June, and the ensuing turmoil, was 2022's biggest story in US regional theater. - MSN (The Baltimore Sun)
He started with the then-fledgling Off-Off-Broadway company as managing director in 1975. Since then, with artistic director Lynne Meadow, Groves has led MTC to operate two theaters, on and off Broadway, producing works that have won a total of 28 Tonys and seven Pulitzers. - The New York Times
A parade of well-known actors participated in the readings on Riverside Drive along the West 80s, including John Leguizamo, Ellen Burstyn and Chris Rock, whose Broadway debut was in a Guirgis play. - The New York Times
"The ebullient rector of St Paul's Church, Covent Garden, fondly known as the Actors' Church, carries himself as much like an impresario as a priest. … Theatricality is baked into the building's fabric, a 1631 masterpiece by Inigo Jones, architect and pioneering theatre designer." - The Guardian
"Jacksonville's Douglas Anderson School of the Arts has canceled performances of a play involving censorship and the first lesbian kiss in American theater, triggering a storm of social media debate." The county school administration described Indecent as "inappropriate for student cast members and student audiences." - The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville)
For the nation’s viewers, I think, this juvenile practice communicates something unserious: Which beaming retinue can clap harder for its standard-bearer? - Washington Post
With a country in flames across Poland’s eastern border, I traveled to Krakow last month to erase some of that distance. I wanted to see how art is conducted on the outskirts of a combat zone — what a war in progress and the miseries it ignites do to an artistic discipline that must exist vitally in the moment....
The co-producer says foreign tourist ticket money hasn't returned to New York in the COVID era. But the "group of street performers banging stuff" goes on internationally and on tour across the U.S. - NPR
As theatres reckon with racial diversity onstage, some of them are also hiring interpreters who speak Black American Sign Language, or hiring other interpreters who align culturally and racially with productions' speaking actors. - The New York Times
What was the point of all that applause in the House? And what's often the point at plays, for that matter? "Which beaming retinue can clap harder for its standard-bearer? It’s an endeavor as empty as that of coercing people into cheering for a dull comedy." - Washington Post
Half a dozen of the main works are deliberately in dialogue with literary classics and ephemera, from sources as diverse as Mark Twain’s satirical monologues, James Joyce’s erotic letters, the Epic of Gilgamesh and “Antigone.” - The New York Times
Lily Janiak looks at the situation in the Bay Area, where small companies in particular have had trouble hiring or retaining ADs — the long hours, heavy demands, low pay, and hesitant post-pandemic audiences are just too much — and are trying joint-leadership models instead. - San Francisco Chronicle
