Theatre

“The folks behind Encore Monthly, a brand new magazine about theatre that just published its first issue …, think the time is ripe to provide theatregoers, deprived as we are of theatre we can witness in person, to read about it, and they say they’re equipped to hang on until it comes raging back.” In a Q&A, founding editor-in-chief Robert Viagas talks about what Encore Monthly will focus on and why he thinks it can work. – American Theatre

“While there have been times during the past year when theatre and all who work in it have felt helpless, unloved and ignored, there is also plenty of evidence that it does matter and can make itself matter – not just to its own community but beyond. When theatre doesn’t just think of itself, when it thinks beyond the next show and the box office, it can and does make a difference – over and over again.” – The Stage

“Jared Mezzocchi has been systematically exploring what Zoom and the editing program Isadora can offer theatre practitioners during the pandemic. He has been working in the field for over a decade and has explored it from multiple points of view — designer, director, playwright, artistic director. … We Zoomed in November to talk about the production, how to reverse-engineer Zoom, Isadora as the way forward, and more.” – HowlRound

“Time will tell if theater grantmakers adopt the coalition’s demands en masse, and some of the demands have yet to make it into grantmakers’ toolboxes in a meaningful way. But at the very least, We See You has done a huge service for funders by creating a checklist of familiar, provocative, and disruptive action items.” – Inside Philanthropy

At a running time of 51 minutes, and with perhaps only half the numbers required for a full adaptation of the 2007 animated Oscar-winner, this “Ratatouille” is a mere appetizer. But with a winning Tituss Burgess as the human embodiment of Remy, the Parisian rodent who can stir up a mean beef bourguignon, it is a promising first course. And the harbinger of a future property on the school circuit or maybe even in some professional incarnation. (Another leading indicator: The Actors Fund announced that the production surpassed $1 million in ticket sales on its premiere night.) – Washington Post

The teen actors couldn’t perform outside because it was too cold, and they couldn’t film because their school went virtual partway through the term. So voice recording and mixing, original music writing, sound creation, and general learning about radio drama it was. One senior actress: “You really have to concentrate on how you use different pitches and tones to convey to the audience what the scene is about. And that takes a lot of focus.” – Colorado Public Radio

Hurray for the Save Our Stages money, but theatres need a lot more: “a new Federal Theatre Project (FTP), like the Depression-era government agency that directly employed artists to produce new work.” Save not just the stages, but all of the workers of the stage as well. – The Undefeated

If Hollywood is going to continue reaping the creative benefits of the theater — the actors’ training, the ambitious storytelling, the characters fleshed out over countless rewrites — it bears an obligation, artistic and moral, to assist the theater in its time of need. – Los Angeles Times

“When the curtain went up at the Palace Theater on Jan. 4, 1981, the expectations — and the stakes — were high. Frankenstein, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel, had cost a reported $2 million, at the time a record for a Broadway play. The screen legend John Carradine and a young Dianne Wiest were in the cast, and the unprecedented stage effects came courtesy of Bran Ferren, the wunderkind behind the mind-bending hallucinations in the film Altered States, released two weeks earlier.’ But the reviews were so awful that the producers closed the show the next morning, putting Frankenstein in an exclusive club: Broadway one-night wonders. – The New York Times

Over the course of this year and next, Brave Spirits Theater in Alexandria, Va. was going to be “first professional American theater company to mount full productions of Shakespeare’s two history play tetralogies” — that’s Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V, then Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3 and Richard III — “and perform them in repertory.” Maya Phillips was going to report on it all; as she begins her account, “I’ve written several versions of this story. …” – The New York Times

“Vulture spoke with [11] comedians about how pivoting to virtual and outdoor shows in 2020 were (and weren’t) helpful for preparing material, lessons they learned about performing during the pandemic, and how they see themselves evolving as performers in response to the radical shift we’ve all faced this year.” – Vulture

This isn’t exactly a normal year for any playwright, and indeed, Jeremy O. Harris of the multiple-Tony-nominated Slave Play has earned little from his plays. But fashion collaborations and HBO came through – and Harris is coming through for others in return, including numerous “microgrants” to 152 U.S.-based playwrights. “In dire times, he believes, everyone should be committed to ‘protecting, uplifting and sharing,’ adding: ‘Some might call it philanthropy, but I call it upkeep or maintenance.'” – The New York Times

Well … yes, it’s mostly he/him types. But also, 2020 was a real career killer. “Most designers, just like most artists in the field, have no work right now. They are hanging on by their fingertips. They have been forgotten or ignored by most of the theatres that called themselves ‘artistic homes’ for the artists. Many theatre designers I know are considering leaving the theatre—not just until it comes back, but forever—or have already left for good.” – HowlRound

Just three months after she posted it, TikTokers had conjured up an entire “Ratatouille” musical universe. A composer spiced up her song with Disney-fied orchestrations. Songwriters whipped up tunes for Remy, his brother, his dad, his fellow chef, the food critic Anton Ego. A director explained how he’d stage the show. Dancers demonstrated how they’d dance it. A puppeteer showed how he’d puppet it. A designer created a breathtaking Playbill, in a video that’s been seen nearly 5 million times. Stagehands, ushers, photos of the Broadway marquee — all of it materialized. – Washington Post

“Almost exactly eight months after the closure of their [last remaining] New York venue and improv training center, the Upright Citizens Brigade has announced the end of their Sunset Theater in Los Angeles.” The company’s four founders (Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, Matt Besser, and Matt Walsh) said in their Twitter announcement, “We have been unable to make mortgage payments during this extended shutdown.” – Vulture

William Church, director of theatre at Interlochen Center for the Arts, writes about the perhaps-unexpected opportunities and opportunities that online-only pedagogy offered in this year of quarantine and social distancing. – American Theatre

“The departure of McKeen, one of the city’s most prominent arts leaders, comes as something of a shock. He’d been OCT’s managing director since 2008. Before that he spent several years as a grant writer and fundraising consultant for several Portland arts organizations, served a year as the first manager of the Oregon Cultural Trust, and spent three years as general manager of Portland Center Stage.” – Oregon Arts Watch

Charles McNulty: “Even before the pandemic, the theater’s economic model was broken. Our resident theaters, the nonprofit companies that constitute the art form’s national foundation, arose in a cultural landscape drastically different from today’s.” – Los Angeles Times

Well, not in the theatre world, obviously – but in the wider world, Netflix carries some pretty solid cultural cachet. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is the first of Wilson’s plays to be adapted for the streaming behemoth. Its director says Wilson’s play is all too relevant in 2020. “It would be lovely one day if it was a lovely piece of nostalgia about the difficult complicated racial equation of 1927. But that’s not going to happen for a while.” – NPR

Sure, the U.S. is Christmas Carol‘d out – but the longtime American theatre Christmas standby is also serving its home country. In Bury St. Edmunds, the play is outside, in the center of town. Says the director, who is no doubt right about the ghosts of Christmas, “Certain effects really suit a winter evening.” – BBC

Theatre leaders met in May to hash out a response to the Black Lives Matter protests and the extrajudicial killings of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people. “They were beginning a process to overhaul the entire ecology of their field, at every level — casting, staffing, fundraising, boards, tech crews, audiences, everything — and inject anti-racism into its DNA. … If this broad coalition of theater makers effectively transforms one part of the arts world in one city, it might just set a standard that can be exported — not simply to other arts disciplines, but to other sectors in America that are struggling with the deep, pervasive and seemingly intractable problem of institutional racism.” – Seattle Times

The good: “Musicals — and, in a way, plays too — are now being filmed because of their music, not in spite of it.”
The less good: “They put us onstage with the story and give us no say.” – The New York Times