Category: theatre

“During quarantine, when I couldn’t feed that [reviewing] addiction, I found myself chafing at the place-holding journalism that was required. Then in a Zoom meeting with critics, The Times‘s executive editor, Dean Baquet, lingered over the question of whether arts reviewers should stay in their jobs indefinitely. And I thought, ‘That sounds like an exit cue to me.’ After that, it was a surprisingly painless decision.” – The New York Times

“‘Don’t you ever want to just sit back and enjoy it?’ That’s a question I’ve often been asked during my 27 years as a daily theater reviewer for The New York Times. And … the short answer to that question is an undiluted ‘no.’ One of the main reasons I never stopped loving this job is that I can’t sit back and go limp, like a passive slab on a massage table.” – The New York Times

“When all is said and done, “The Present” will have grossed more than $700,000, an astronomical figure for regional theaters scrambling, often blindly, to devise entertainment for a virtual audience.Cates compared that number to what a typical show in the Geffen’s 500-seat mainstage auditorium might gross during a nonpandemic five-week run — if heavily promoted and highly successful.” – Los Angeles Times

The play means something different now than it did a year ago. “The light of Covid-19 turns out to be especially harsh and revealing, turning the play, so concerned with prophecy, into a prophet itself. How, it now seems to ask, can we have squandered in just a few months the decades’ worth of suffering and organizing and scientific advances invested in the struggle against AIDS?” – The New York Times

A League statement suggested that producers imagine a staggered reopening, rather than all theaters opening at once. “Dates for each returning and new Broadway show will be announced as individual productions determine the performance schedules for their respective shows,” the statement explained. – The New York Times

Chris Jones: “The pandemic that has closed its theaters — with no clear path to reopening — is a primary cause of trouble. But Second City is also suffering from the great American schism, the internal fury and polarization that has festered over the last four years, with direct encouragement from the top. Satire is on the ropes. A new owner can fix the internal problems, but the American people will have to decide if they ever can laugh together again.” – Yahoo! (Chicago Tribune)

Most of the holiday-season pantomimes planned for this year were cancelled due to the pandemic: even with lockdowns lifted, the need for socially distanced seating meant too few tickets could be sold to make productions viable. Now comes Britain’s National Lottery to the rescue: “Operation Sleeping Beauty” will see the Lottery buy up tickets for theatres’ empty seats. – BBC

“Actors’ Equity Association [theater] is accusing SAG-AFTRA [film, television and radio] of raiding its turf and undercutting its contracts by negotiating lower-paying deals with theaters for streaming productions. SAG-AFTRA, in turn, says that work made for broadcast has always been its domain, and that it has offered to work with Equity through the pandemic but that the stage union has refused all efforts at compromise.” – The New York Times

“While the RSC’s smaller stages, the Swan and the Other Place, will remain shut, the organisation is to reopen its Royal Shakespeare theatre for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic closed venues in March. … The RSC has [slao] said that 158 people are currently in [jobs] at risk. Through voluntary redundancies and redeployment, the organisation hopes to keep the number of compulsory redundancies below 90.” – The Guardian

“After 30 seasons, Anne Bogart and Tadashi Suzuki’s famed experimental New York theater company, … the Saratoga International Theater Institute, better known as SITI, announced today that it will stop touring and performing shows after its 30th and final season, which it anticipates will run through Fall 2022.” – The New York Times