The Broadway League and the American Theater Wing: "One, the much-delayed awards will be scheduled 'in coordination with the reopening of Broadway.' And two, the voting will take place from March 1 to March 15." OK. Why not be flexible at this point? - The New York Times
With the country splintered, its institutions shaken, a book documenting a classic American play affirming shared life experiences and bedrock values seems especially timely. Published Jan. 28, “Another Day’s Begun: Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ in the 21st Century” is an oral history of a dozen or so recent productions of this famously stoical and spare play. It’s a drama so scrubbed of artifice that the first stage directions in the script are: “No curtain. No scenery.” - Washington Post
"I've done about 18 of these virtual shows, and I've learned things from them that I thought I had long understood after 20 years of being a professional comedian. People need comedy. At very least, they need to laugh — particularly when life is most burdensome and unwieldy. People need to laugh to be reminded what laughter feels like and why anyone would have laughed in the first place. It's the defibrillator that sends a shock to the heart to restore a normal rhythm." - Vulture
The Vertical Theatre, as it's called, will be modular, with a capacity of 1,200 to 2,400, seated in small groups separated (if necessary) by clear screens. The structure has a roof, but the sides are open to allow airflow. The UK-based creators hope to have at least one Vertical Theatre hosting shows later this year. - WhatsOnStage (London)
"Look around Rona, socially distanced float houses have become a thing. A really big thing. Apparently, if you to take the parades off our streets, our streets become the parade. From Gretna to Metairie to Bywater: Lavishly, lovingly, laughingly decorated houses are becoming as ubiquitous as potholes." - NOLA.com
"Despite a state ban on live comedy performances, the pandemic hasn't destroyed the New York comedy scene — it just pushed it underground. … Venue owners are finding ways to stay in business by exploiting exemptions set aside for religious services, indoor dining, and trivia nights (yes, really) as a means to get comics back onstage, even if that stage is in a church or on the subway." - Vulture
Here are reports from Taiwan ("Shows go on – with precautions in place"), Italy ("A sharply divided theatre world"), the U.S. ("Struggling on despite lack of leadership"), Sweden and Denmark ("Back to lockdown"), and Greenland ("Cut off from the outside world"). - The Stage
The announcement means the departure of one of Washington’s longest-serving theater chiefs and an opening in a company with a prestigious literary pedigree: It is an arm of one of the world’s great classical collections, the Folger Shakespeare Library. - Washington Post
On New Year's Day, Munawar Faruqui, a rising talent in India's relatively new comedy circuit, was starting off a two-week tour with a gig in Indore when the leader of a Hindu extremist group accused Faruqui, who is Muslim, of "insulting religious sentiments" (a crime in India) and had him arrested. He had not yet even started his routine. Two courts have denied him bail, and the police say releasing him would cause "a law-and-order situation." - BBC
"Digital performance has only exacerbated the definitional crises during this year of hard and soft quarantine. At a recent UCLA roundtable on the subject of the future of theater, I came to the conclusion that, even in this pioneering moment in which artists from different time zones can collaborate without ever coming into direct contact, place still matters." - Los Angeles Times
"Telling a lie over and over can make it seem true. It can also remove agency from the viewer, ceding the individual's judgement over to the expectations of the story being told. Brecht refused to let his audience lose themselves in the funhouse mirror of such representations. 'Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it,' he wrote." - Zócalo Public Square
"As I was at the beginning of my education as a young director, as well as a nervous, nerdy intellectual, I asked Helene Weigel about the Verfremdungseffekt, Brecht's famous 'alienation effect' theory. … Weigel laughed and said something like, 'Don't pay any attention to Bert's bullshit and theoretical nonsense. Just look at the work. Look at the work, and see what you see.'" - American Theatre
A survey of frequent theatregoers says that widespread vaccines are the only way most people will feel comfortable in the theatre - and, even with that, 94 percent of those surveyed said they still want mask requirement in place. - American Theatre
To an extent, yes, it has. Reporter Natasha Tripney talks with theatremakers around Britain about the positive developments — the success of streaming, increased engagement with communities, more egalitarian casting, long-distance collaboration — that started to arise during this public health disaster. - The Stage
"Set in fin de siècle Paris but supercharged by 75 pop songs, it opened to a rave from The New York Times ('This one's for the hedonists,' exulted Ben Brantley), and it was regularly selling out all 1,302 seats, even during a holiday season when it cost $799 to watch from a cafe table encircled by cancan dancers." Then came COVID, of course: not only did the show have to close, 25 (!) members of the company, including all three leads, got sick. - The New York Times
