“You are seated, waiting for the show to begin. Through your special glasses, you can see … four actors (entering). They come close to your chair and look directly at you. ‘Don’t panic,’ Ian McKellen tells you. But Ian McKellen isn’t really there. Neither are the other three actors.” - The New York Times
“I want it to be a theatre where theatre people can come and see a show and that generates a kind of warmth,” he says. “You’ll often find actors in the bar afterwards.” - The Times (UK)
“'The shared laughter in a crowded theater, the eager debrief after a musical, the heavy silence that hangs over all of us in a drama — these are moments that every New Yorker deserves,’ Mamdani said.” - The New York Times
“There was what I would not call lying to my family but obfuscating about where I was and what I was doing, as if I were having an affair. (An affair would have been easier to explain.)” - The New York Times
In the movie Kokuho, a epic covering five decades in the life of a fictional kabuki actor, we see the traditional theater slowly fade from Japanese popular culture. In real life, interest in kabuki has fallen, especially since COVID. Now there’s hope that the film’s success could attract new fans to the genre. - CNN
Mind you, this script wasn’t just spit out by a bot after one prompt. The French AI collective Obvious spent two years developing the script with the Théâtre Molière Sorbonne: training the software on the playwright’s structure and themes, then producing new drafts after feedback from scholars and actors. - The New York Times
“In the re-envisioned Fantasticks, the central romantic pair – traditionally Matt and Luisa – are now Matt and Lewis, reinterpreting the story’s ‘allegory of love, longing, and reconciliation through a gay lens,’ according to producers. The show’s original pair of fathers, who secretly orchestrate the clandestine love affair between their children, are now mothers.” - Deadline
“If I step back and think about what unites the shows, it’s probably they’re all trying to be joy-forward experiences and shows where the audience is acknowledged,” says Alex Timbers, now 47. - AP News
Sandy Shinner, 75, will step down in May from the widely-admired Off-Loop company, which she has run for 13 years. She will remain a member of the group’s ensemble. - Chicago Tribune (Yahoo!)
“Shepard would astonishingly make his mark as an avant-garde playwright on the downtown scene with only a few months of networking and no production to his name. … ‘New York was like that in the Sixties,’ he said later. ‘You could write a one-act play and start doing it the next day.’” - Literary Hub
Julie Halston, who’s playing Parker in mid-January: "Theater is my church and in its noblest form, theater is a service. It is a place to learn, to connect with others, and to experience joy as a performer and an audience member.” - The New York Times
“Midtown marquees were packed with famous names from prestige cable (including more than one Succession sibling) and popular franchises. ... As theater continues to recover from the pandemic, luring audiences off the couch with faces they recognize from the screen has proved a lucrative strategy.” - Washington Post (Yahoo)
“Everyone was afraid of the telephone, everyone was afraid of television,” Harrison said. “It’s just going to march on. And we’ll acclimate.” - The New York Times
Each year, theater producers and publicists work to make opening night more and more meaningless. Given that this is the night that reviews come out, the result is the continuing, deliberate devaluing of professional theater criticism. - New York Theatre
“Moscow-installed authorities marked the rebuilding of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater (in Mariupol) with a gala concert on the building’s new main stage Sunday night. … The original theater was destroyed when it was targeted by a Russian airstrike on March 16, 2022,” killing around 600 people sheltering inside. - AP
