Category: theatre

“Traditionally, eligibility rules required in-person productions. This year, plays that were scheduled to be produced in theaters during 2020 but postponed or canceled due to the pandemic, as well as plays produced and performed in places other than theaters, including online, outside or in site-specific venues, will be considered.” – Deadline

“‘This pandemic pause … seemed to me like a good moment to slip out the door,’ Brantley said in a statement. … [He] joined the Times as its second-string theater critic in 1993, taking the chief critic job three years later. His last day on the job will be Oct. 15. The paper’s newish co-chief critic title currently is shared by Brantley and Jesse Green, who will remain on board.” – Deadline

“We simply have to get our arts sector back open and running … We are at the point of no return, really,” he told Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee by video. “There comes a point when we really can’t go on anymore. Theatre is an incredibly labour-intensive business.” – HuffPost

The task has proved far more daunting than anyone could have imagined, amounting to a struggle of wrenchingly complex proportions with no reliable end in sight. And at this point, though, Broadway — the ultimate land of make-believe — is holding on to a hope that early 2021 is still feasible. – Washington Post

As one design-and-production professor puts it, “One thing we’ve learned is there’s a lot of technology that we haven’t utilized because we’ve had the luxury of being together in a room.” Says another, “It’s given us the headspace to shift our daily routine, which in turn I think is going to really benefit and shift the student experience quite a bit.” – American Theatre

That amount is almost five times what the complex paid producers to put on the next most expensive show, the Broadway tour of The Book of Mormon in 2015. The price is also more than theaters in other American cities paid, even on a per-performance basis, though higher ticket prices in D.C. made up that difference. Yet the Kennedy Center made back almost all of the money on ticket sales alone, and that’s before the extra revenue from ticket-processing fees, snack and gift shop sales, and new subscriptions. – The Washington Post

— Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World, which will get matinee and evening performances (socially distanced, of course) on Sunday, October 11 at the London Palladium, the theatre where Andrew Lloyd Webber presented a trial show in July. – WhatsOnStage (London)

The decisions suggest that the theater world will likely continue to feel the effects of the pandemic long after artists and audiences are again allowed to gather. Eliminating a position, as opposed to merely furloughing or laying off, adds another obstacle to theaters reopening and rebounding. Either a hiring committee must decide to re-create a leadership position and rehire, or a theater must rebuild after the pandemic while deprived of a leader. – San Francisco Chronicle

“An art form and industry built on ‘Yes, and …’ face a world of ‘no,’ ‘maybe,’ and ‘who knows.’ … Whether it’s reshaping content to fit a new medium, staring down the possibility of permanent closures, or facing their own reckoning with a legacy of racial and cultural exclusion, improv and comedy theatres are learning just how important it is to be able to listen and adjust.” – American Theatre