Calling the company "the world leader in improv-based education and entertainment," Ed Wells, formerly a senior executive at Sesame Street, said "I want to continue scaling the business and see how we can honor the brand," meaning expanding to more cities and establishing "strategic partnerships in the media marketplace." - MSN (Chicago Tribune)
"During his brief six-week rehearsal periods, van Hove introduces sets, costumes, music and lighting as early in the process as possible. ... He wanted a set that felt cramped, dingy and claustrophobic, a house where multiple televisions play over each other and privacy is impossible." - T — The New York Times Style Magazine
After a turbulent summer that saw the artistic director fired, most of the rest of management resign, and the remaining staffers in open rebellion, the theater's board of directors voted to change the company's operating model and lay off remaining employees due to "operational realities." - MSN (Chicago Tribune)
No one (associated with the play) knows. "In early 2021, a few months into the production’s run, Instagram started cutting off these live streams, citing 'nudity or sexual acts.' Then the account tied to the play disappeared from the platform’s search results." (There was no nudity.) - The New York Times
"As the climate becomes more unpredictable, and extreme heat, violent storms and bushfire smoke more common, Australian producers are being forced to grapple with their effects on their casts, crews, audiences and financial bottom line." - ArtsHub (Australia)
"It is a feeling of being in a minefield where some things are permitted and some not, but you don’t know which, or that certain lines are ‘meant to be funny’, but you don’t find them so – that Shakespeare’s intentions are in some mysterious sense to be honoured, even though no one truly knows what they were." -...
"After a decades-long, controversy-filled history of desperately wanting to play Fanny Brice, Lea Michele was finally in the role on Broadway. At the first performance, the audience was there to cheer on the greatest star, though you could put any part of that fervent sentiment in air quotes." - Vulture
Co-director Diane Paulus: "I want the audience to hold that dual reality, of what the founders were, but also a company of actors in 2022 who never would have been allowed inside Independence Hall. ... (It's) to hold history as a predicament, rather than an affirming myth." - The New York Times
The port city is as famous for its particular sense of humor as New Orleans is for jazz. Says one local comic, "The war has caused many Ukrainians to rediscover the importance of humor, but it has also given stand-up comics a new purpose." - The Christian Science Monitor
One of the reasons that Rudin's extreme mistreatment of his employees went unreported for so long was his insistence on having everyone he worked with, including Equity members in his productions, sign NDAs. So the actors' union is now reviewing how and when they're used more generally. - Dance Magazine
"Shakespeare and Shakespeare's Globe will always be viewed by some as fundamentally conservative because, on one level, they exist as symbols of England's past glory. The fact (that) it is a forward-looking modern theatre therefore inevitably comes into conflict with its existence as a patriotic symbol." - The Stage
"On Wednesday ... Matt Shakman announced he will step down from his role in February (and) will program the company's 2023-24 season before he departs. He ... said it was getting trickier to balance his work in theater with his film and TV endeavors." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)
Jesse Green: "Efforts to improve diversity onstage and backstage have too often come without the support necessary to help new hires succeed. Culturally specific theaters may face an existential crisis if their function gets co-opted by change. And ... traditional audiences, feeling disoriented, sometimes resist." - The New York Times
Yes – there's nothing else like it. "But to defend it, we need to reform it. ... The fringe is unregulated, wonderfully so, you might say, when it's working. But – spoiler alert – laissez-faire only takes you so far. The lack of anyone to take responsibility is a problem right now." - The Guardian
As one of the UK’s most commercially successful theatre-makers, Ayckbourn might seem an odd figure to focus on. He is not cutting-edge; he is never going to convert an alienated inner-city youth to the joys of theatregoing. But he is also a local hero, who has earned the loyalty of his public by staying loyal to them. - The...
