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THEATRE

The Instagramization Of The Broadway Stage

These unmissable logos seem designed to engage audiences with the stage quite actively, creating an Instagrammable moment in a space where cameras are mostly frowned upon. - The Stage

The Bay Area Children’s Theater Has Been Selling Out Shows. It Still Needed An Emergency Fundraising Campaign.

"The campaign, Save Our Stage, … seeks to raise $750,000 by July 1. The cause for the emergency campaign isn't declining demand but increased costs, as artistic director Khalia Davis Davis acknowledges that the company's budget projections 'miscalculated.'" - San Francisco Chronicle

Post-Pandemic, Theaters In Boston Find Their Way Toward The New Normal

"Audiences have been slow to return. National conversations about race put the internal practices of local theaters under a microscope. Many theater artists moved away or left the industry entirely. The government money's gone." Here's a look at how some Massachusetts theaters are handling it all. - WBUR (Boston)

Translating “Blue”, Derek Jarman’s Final Film, To The Stage

Released a year before Jarman's 1994 death from AIDS, Blue is a collage of texts, narrated over an empty blue screen, on illness and loss of vision (Jarman could only see in shades of blue). Now Neil Bartlett is directing a stage adaptation starring Russell Tovey and Travis Alabanza. - The Guardian

This Year’s Tony Nominations: Boldness And Backsliding

The spirit of boldness that marked Broadway’s reopening in the wake of a once-in-a-century pandemic and widespread societal reckonings on equity, diversity and inclusion was still apparent, though bottom-line realities aggressively reasserted themselves. - Los Angeles Times

Culture Wars Come To The High School Musical

“You see politicians and officials enacting rules and laws which are incredibly onerous and designed to enforce a very narrow view of what students can see, read, learn or act on stage.” - Washington Post

School Field Trip To See “James and the Giant Peach” Canceled After Parents Complain

The cancellation came after a parent told school board members that she was worried about her 5-year-old daughter’s upcoming field trip to see the play, in which male actors play female characters. - Washington Post

2023 Tony Nominations Led By “Some Like It Hot,” “& Juliet,” “Shucked,” “A Doll’s House,” “Leopoldstadt”

Some Like It Hot garnered 10 nominations, while musicals & Juliet, Shucked, and New York, New York each landed nine. Leading the plays were A Doll's House, Leopoldstadt, and Ain't No Mo' with six nominations each. - Variety

The Glorious, Challenging Quest To Star In A Sondheim Revival

"I learned from my theater community that Sondheim was the goal, and that if you get the opportunity to do Sondheim, you take it, no matter what time and space and place it is." - Los Angeles Times

Why Epistolary Drama Can Work So Well On Stage

"It's an inherently dramatic device — because a letter is both a vessel for self-expression and a catalyst for a response. Suspense swirls around what that response might be, and often whether one will arrive at all." - The New York Times

Touring A Show In A Time Of Climate Change: Theatre That Recreates Rather Than Moves

"It's a delicate experiment in what happens when we really try and tune in to local audiences rather than just deliver the same product around the country, which is what we normally do." - BBC

More Theaters Experiment With Collective Leadership And Term Limits

Several companies in the Bay Area have been finding real advantages in these models: without a single, well-paid executive, the remaining staffers can be paid better; limited tenures for programming and casting directors keep companies from falling back on the same playwrights and actors; and so on. - San Francisco Chronicle

This Theatre Will Have The UK’s First-Ever In-House Department Dedicated To New Musicals

The Birmingham Hippodrome's Patrick Studio "will be led by a Head of New Musical Theatre, who will commission, develop and produce new musicals in collaboration with creatives and partners." - WhatsOnStage (London)

Shakespeare’s First Folio Was Published 400 Years Ago. Here’s What Would Have Been Lost Without It

Without the weight – cultural as well as literal – of the collected edition, it’s possible few would care about these surviving plays. Something similar happened to other playwrights of the period, whose work was not given the authority of a collection. - The Conversation

DC’s Arena Stage Appoints Its New Artistic Director

"Hana S. Sharif, artistic director of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and a former staffer with organizations in Hartford, Boston and Baltimore, takes over from Molly Smith, who is retiring after a quarter-century in the top job at one of the nation's cornerstone regional theaters." - MSN (The Washington Post)

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