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THEATRE

Humana Festival Says It Won’t Do Festival

The Humana Festival of New American Plays, as envisioned prior to the Global Pandemic, has inspired a new approach to develop and produce new work on multiple platforms year-round,” Fleming’s emailed statement read, in part. - WFPL

Audible Goes All In On Its Push Into Live Theater

"The company, which created its theater division just five years ago, has already released 93 audio theater works, ... commissioning new work from 55 playwrights, presenting 25 shows in person ... and becoming one of the most active commercial producers in the city." - The New York Times

Belarus Free Theatre Does Its First Show Together Since Fleeing The Country Last Fall

In the wake of the stolen presidential election and Lukashenko's vicious crackdown on the subsequent demonstrations, the underground troupe decided to go into exile. Now they're in London to stage a production that premiered two years ago in Minsk and is now more timely than ever. - The Independent (UK)

Olivier Award Nominations Led By “Cabaret”, “Anything Goes”, “Life Of Pi”

"A new production of the musical Cabaret starring Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley leads the Olivier Award nominations with 11. It's followed by a adaptation of best-selling novel Life of Pi and a revival of Anything Goes, with nine each." - BBC

Could Technology Help Preserve Musical Theatre Voices?

“Similar to how your iPhone nowadays tells you, ‘Oh, you listened to music a little too loudly this week; watch out, because we don’t want you to get a hearing impairment due to overuse’ — it would be the same idea for the voice.” - Variety

After An Artists’ Rebellion And Board Troubles, New York’s Flea Theater Is Trying Something Completely Different

"Now, the Off Off Broadway nonprofit theater is fighting to come back — this time with a new hybrid structure built to give complete artistic autonomy to a group of writers, directors and actors that has spoken out against the old Flea." - The New York Times

The Brownstone In Brooklyn Where Sitting Bull’s Grandson Advised Rodgers And Hammerstein On Annie Get Your Gun

A real NY story: "The theater director Muriel Miguel grew up there, and lives there still. When she was a child, in the 1930s and ’40s, Native dancers and actors from all around the country would stop by the house while working in New York." - The New York Times

European Theatre Pioneers A Kind Of Tour That’s Climate-Friendly

It is an unusual production model in European theater, where directors tend to have the final word on every iteration of their work. The goal, Mitchell explained in a video interview, was to figure out new avenues for theater-making in the face of an environmental threat. - The New York Times

Does Every Broadway Show These Days Have To Grapple With The World’s Pressing Issues?  Can’t Some Shows Just Be Fun?  (A Debate)

"Critic Hayley Levitt ... now finds herself in a state of bafflement when a comedy is just for laughs. Critic Zachary Stewart loves a good political play, but lately thinks a lot of creatives have gone too far in putting fashionable politics onstage — often in a cynical way." - TheaterMania

This May Be The World’s Largest Puppet

"Percy the Porcupine, the two-story creation, is covered in 2,000 foam quills and has an articulated nose the size of a 2-ton Volkswagen. And that's just the animal's head. The five fabricators (at Jim Henson's Creature Shop) ... decided to leave the body out of the equation." - Yahoo! (Los Angeles Times)

Last Year, Protesters Demanded Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theater Address Racial Inequities There. And What Did Management Do?

Well, you can't say they did nothing whatsoever … - Broad Street Review (Philadelphia)

Broadway Theater To Be Renamed After James Earl Jones

"The Shubert Organization, which is Broadway's biggest landlord, … said Wednesday that it would name the Cort Theater, a landmark 110-year-old house located on West 48th Street," after the 91-year-old actor. - The New York Times

London: The Theatre’s Great. The Going To Theatre Not So Much

I’d been able to stop thinking about the ventilation, wondering what I was breathing and whether it was worth it. I decided it wasn’t and fled at intermission, back onto the street, back into the open air. - The New York Times

Another Major Chicago Theater Is Losing Its Longtime Director

"Barbara Gaines will exit her position as artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the company she founded some 36 years ago, … likely at the end of 2022, (by which point) almost all of the major Chicago-area theaters will have new artistic leadership from the pre-pandemic era." - MSN (Chicago Tribune)

Often, The Show Did Not Ever Go On After Pandemic Restrictions Eased

For instance, among the dozens of hard stories, "at the shutdown’s outset, Signature Theatre in Arlington had to scratch the world premiere of Camille Claudel, a decades-in-the-making musical by Frank Wildhorn and Nan Knighton that has not been rescheduled." - Washington Post

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