“Othello sales are next-level, seeming to reflect the appeal of the combination of two well-known actors with a well-known title, and also a 'Taylor Swift effect,' meaning that consumers are getting used to paying top dollar for live entertainment.” - The New York Times
”Undergraduate theatre training programs have a moral imperative to prepare students for the profession, not simply teach them to be good at what they do.” - American Theatre
In the 1990s, Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus replaced hundreds of corrupt traffic cops with a few dozen mimes. Armed with nothing but signs that read correcto and incorrecto, the silent troupe theatrically mocked lawbreakers and applauded polite motorists. And it worked. - Atlas Obscura
“The show” — Song of the North, adapted from the medieval Persian epic poem Shahnameh — “is mind-dizzyingly complex, involving 483 puppets, 208 animated backgrounds, 16 character masks and costumes and nine performers who follow more than 2,300 separate cues.” - The New York Times
And that doesn’t mean only Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh, though their shadows are the longest. Ben Brantley revisits some of the other prominent interpreters of the lead roles in A Streetcar Named Desire, from Faye Dunaway and Jon Voight to Gillian Anderson and Ben Foster. - The New York Times
“For the first time in five years, Minnesota’s largest theater will produce a work in its Dowling Studio, activating its ninth-floor third stage that has been dark for professional shows since the coronavirus shutdown.” - The Minnesota Star Tribune
The agreement will be closely scrutinized by New York’s other Off Broadway theaters because the union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has undertaken a major drive to organize those stage crews. - The New York Times
“(The) much-honored Atlantic Theater Company and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees have reached a tentative agreement that could see the Atlantic become the first-ever not-for-profit theater company producing solely Off-Broadway shows to have such a union agreement.” - Deadline
“People are much more selective now. In general, they see fewer productions each year and are more picky about what they’re seeing. And that’s true across the country. It’s been a wake-up call for us (about) what people really want to see.” - CultureOC
“As Peña and Dring committed to having the actors wrestle, and doing so smoothly and within budget, they hired two fighting directors — one as an intimacy director and another as a sumo consultant — to ensure safety, accuracy and precision.” - The New York Times
Because so many men are fighting against the Russian invasion, "We only had the female part of the troupe left. So we thought, ‘Well, if men played women in Shakespeare’s times, why not give it a try?’” - Seattle Times (AP)
“‘We’re sort of really trying to ride a fine line of when we talk about the play and how we talk about the play,’ said Karla Hartley, the producing artistic director. ... 'So we don’t sort of draw the ire of certain people in the state government.’” - The New York Times
“The news is mixed, however. While artists may now apply for funding without attesting to the new ‘gender ideology’ requirement, the NEA has not agreed to remove its new eligibility criteria” - but the ACLU lawsuit continues. - American Theatre
The stage version of the now-cult classic movie had very successful runs in London and Los Angeles before it came to Broadway — and somehow nosedived, just a year before midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show made the film the phenomenon it has been for fifty years now. - The New York Times
Dreaming Emmett, about the murder of Emmett Till, ran in Albany for four weeks in 1986 and then vanished; rumors had it that Morrison herself collected every script and other record of the play and destroyed them. It turns out that’s not what happened at all. - New York Magazine
