This is the year when you could start now, watch a different Christmas Carol every day (streaming, obviously), and keep right on through to 2021. – American Theatre
Category: theatre
BBC To Broadcast Series Of Plays Recorded In Theatres
“Lights Up, the latest phase of the broadcaster’s Culture In Quarantine initiative, will feature a combination of premieres and older plays recorded for the first time. … The initiative begins in February 2021 and seeks to ‘light up’ stages and studios across the UK as productions are recorded in spaces that have remained largely empty during the pandemic.” – Yahoo! (Press Association UK)
A COVID-Safe Drive-In Theatre For Stage Plays Will Open Next Spring
The DriveINSIDE theatre, which is approved for operating even under Britain’s Tier 3 pandemic restrictions, will have a four-week run in Manchester in March before touring the rest of the UK. Cars will be directed to a designated parking spot, the equivalent of an assigned seat, and passenger-viewers will be able to sit outside on the driver’s side. – Manchester Evening News
How UK Theatres Are Changing During COVID
Theatres that normally function as places of gathering, storytelling and entertainment have found themselves playing a very different role in the age of coronavirus. – The Stage
How COVID Turned One Of The Year’s Hottest Plays Into A Site-Specific Work
After the pandemic blew up the plans of every American stage company for this year, Blanka Zizka, director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, got the idea to create a COVID bubble for cast and crew at a house in the Poconos, where they’d do a site-specific production for later viewing online. And one of the year’s most awarded scripts, Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning, seemed like the perfect choice. Writer Jane M. Von Bergen reports on how Zizka and her colleagues made it happen, complete with actual screaming foxes. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
London’s National Theatre Launches New Theatre Streaming Service
There will be two strands to the service: productions from National Theatre Live that were broadcast to cinemas; and a selection of plays from the NT’s archive being released online for the first time. – The Guardian
Cirque du Soleil Sells Itself To Creditors
As part of the transaction, former MGM Resorts International chief executive Jim Murren and Catalyst Capital managing director Gabriel de Alba were named as co-chairmen of the company’s board of directors. – CBC
At A Crossroads, Second City Names New Creative Boss
Almost six months after co-owner Andrew Alexander left the company after accusations of embedded institutional racism there, Jon Carr has been named to succeed him as executive producer. A longtime playwright and performer in Atlanta, Carr currently heads Dad’s Garage Theater in that city. He will oversee all creative matters at Second City’s theaters in Chicago, Toronto, and Los Angeles — but, with the company up for sale, he may or may not be there long. – Chicago Tribune
As United Citizens Brigade Falters, Alums Found New Improv Theater
“Per the theater’s mission statement on its website, the Squirrel’s goal is to become ‘New York’s premier destination for sketch and improv comedy, …” The guiding principles of the theater will be ‘community, representation, transparency, and equality,’ and the website notes that equality will begin with the theater ‘financially compensating its artists'” — a years-long matter of controversy at UCB. – Vulture
Broadway’s Spiderman Disaster, Ten Years Later
“You had Spider-Man dangling seven feet above the first two rows. It was the worst possible position because no one could reach him. One of the crew members fetched a stick to prod him with, but that didn’t help. It was like a live Spider-Man piñata. But we knew by the end of the night, well, that’s the worst it’s ever going to be. We’ll keep improving it and improving it, and it’s going to be duck soup by the time we open in January.” – BBC