The highly contagious omicron variant has given productions a reason to shut down for what happen to be the slowest two months of the year (when many shows die even in ordinary times), reopening in March as tourists start coming back. Could that practice work out long-term? - TheaterMania
At a time of a public health emergency, more people appear to have prioritised football than theatregoing. We should ask why. The answer is likely to be less about price and more about perceived value. - The Stage
"(Kathy) Hochul on Tuesday proposed budgeting $200 million for the New York City Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit, which provides up to $3 million per show to help defray production costs. … Nearly three dozen productions have told the state they expect to apply." - The New York Times
So how did a quaint, 175-seat theatre at the end of a quiet, dead-end street in the Rockland area find itself at the centre of such a storm? - The Times-Colonist (Victoria, BC)
Actor-director Francis Huster has campaigned for years for the "father of the French language" to be admitted to the ranks of les immortels. Yet even in his quadracentennial year, the great playwright is denied. Why? Robert Zaretsky argues that the reason given by the government is, quite frankly, merde. - Slate
Income at the National Theatre dropped by £50 million and the organisation lost just under a quarter of its staff in the first year of the pandemic. - The Stage
Michael Billington: "In France the 400th anniversary of Molière's birth is being celebrated in a big way. In Britain it has been greeted with a deafening silence. But then we have always been slightly wary of Molière." In translation, that is. Adaptations, on the other hand … - The Guardian
The set of digital collectibles offered by the producers of Ross Golan's The Wrong Man "will be a mix of music, graphics, and film, including the full animated musical, vinyl, posters featuring artwork from the musical, and a previously unreleased track from Golan." - Playbill
"The Baltimore Shakespeare Factory prides itself (in non-pandemic times) on mounting plays where its actors speak in original pronunciation," and a cabinet-maker who recreated an entire Renaissance England theatre space there mastered it, only to see everything shuttered for the pandemic. - Baltimore Sun
Playwright Nottage: "I will tell you, in all honesty, I haven't been getting a lot of sleep," but that's OK. "The dream is to really be busy doing the thing that you love, deeply immersed in making art." - NPR
Too familiar, and too grim. On the upside: "Until the pandemic, the industry had been enjoying a sustained boom, fueled by a rebound in the popularity of musicals and by New York’s gargantuan growth as a tourist destination. And this downturn might not last long." - The New York Times
Take the Olney Theatre Center, for instance: "On December 22, we were almost $100,000 above our goal for Beauty and the Beast. ... On December 23 we had to cancel the rest of the run," the managing director says. "Within a week we had lost $300,000." - DC Metro Theater Arts
To do what they wanted to do, to be what they wanted to see, Black theatre-makers in New York took inspiration from the then-recent past, and founded their own spaces. - American Theatre
The performances cancelled and ticket prices refunded when performers caught COVID and had to isolate, along with, when the show did go on, the audience capacity restrictions reintroduced as omicron spread, turned the shows theatres count on as cash cows into money pits. - The Guardian
