"Everything about the experience of using a computer is still flat, everything uses these windows, but then we also have high-speed processes that allow for these windows to actually be functional." - Howlround
Puppetry had never been part of the Yiddish theater tradition, but in 1920s America, they were all the rage. So in 1925-26, a pair of writers created a Purim shpiel (the Jewish equivalent of a Christmas panto) with puppets. It was such a smash success that the two men ended up creating a puppet company that put on Yiddish shows nine times a week year-round in New York City and toured the Eastern Seaboard and Midwest, Cuba, Britain, France, Poland, and, ultimately, the Soviet Union. Yet the whole odyssey lasted less than a decade. - Smithsonian Center For Folklife & Cultural Heritage
Shows were running in the French capital for a few months last year, before a big new wave of COVID infections led to a new lockdown and a crop of new productions were going to waste. But not anymore: leave it to Parisians to find an inventive way to break the rules while officially obeying them. - The New York Times
The NEC's roots lay in a drama workshop for Harlem youth that founder Robert Hooks ran in a makeshift theater in his apartment until the landlord found out. The professional company was born in 1967 with a Ford Fourndation grant, and it went on to become perhaps the most successful Black theatre group in the world, with a Pulitzer, two Tony Awards, more than a dozen Obies — and more than 4,000 alumni (including quite a few famous names) who learned acting, directing, and theater tech there. - American Theatre
On January 17, 1921, in a north London theatre, "an English magician called Percy Thomas Tibbles literally and laboriously sawed through a sealed wooden box that contained a woman. It was a sensation and has since become one of the best known magic tricks, performed with all manner of tools and varying degrees of blood – always involving someone cut in half and nearly always with them miraculously put back together." - The Guardian
"Has it really happened that way, though? To go back to my paragon, Pauline Kael, she was perceived as shaping the course of Hollywood, and I'm not sure she did when you look back at it. Culture — like history, and we know how perverse and also cyclical history can be — follows its own inevitable patterns. … I don't think critics are shapers. I think we're mirrors." - American Theatre
The situation under the third lockdown is, if anything, worse than in March because the freelancers don't have anything to fall back on. "In telephone interviews this week, four theater freelancers said they had set up their own businesses to get through the pandemic; another said he was working as a delivery driver; and another said she was relying on a combination of unemployment checks and parental support." - The New York Times
Swinging the Dream, a 1939 musical that flopped after 13 performances despite (or because of?) having a cast of 150 and three bands. It's being revived, rewritten, and live-streamed during the pandemic. - The Guardian (UK)
He said that "the timeline hinged on the country reaching an effective level of herd immunity, which he defined as vaccinating from 70 percent to 85 percent of the population." In addition, audiences will likely be required to wear masks for some time, for the safety of performers and staff. - The New York Times
"It's like what 'Michelangelo' said, right? He's working with the marble and taking away everything that's not the sculpture. And let's put Michelangelo in quotes, 'cause was he really the one who actually said that? But, anyway, the idea still holds. I feel that whatever I'm writing exists already. … Like I'm following something through the woods. Eyes open. Ears open. Heart open. And I'm following a path that is sometimes behind me." A Q&A with fellow playwright and MacArthur Fellow Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. - The Paris Review
"Since pay equity leads to higher quality work, any company interested in having the best product to share with their community will center pay equity within their company because the benefits to the business are undeniable." - Howlround
"Arts workers in the NHS, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, actor Michael Balogun and theatre company 20 Stories High are among those recognised in this year's The Stage 100 list, which has been reimagined to celebrate the industry's response to the pandemic." - The Stage
"The folks behind Encore Monthly, a brand new magazine about theatre that just published its first issue …, think the time is ripe to provide theatregoers, deprived as we are of theatre we can witness in person, to read about it, and they say they're equipped to hang on until it comes raging back." In a Q&A, founding editor-in-chief Robert Viagas talks about what Encore Monthly will focus on and why he thinks it can work. - American Theatre
Disney bought the rights to the specially shot and edited footage of the Broadway production and planned to release it in movie theaters — until the pandemic changed everything and the show was put on Disney+ instead. That's similar enough to other movies from 2020 that the Globes consider Hamilton eligible; SAG, oddly, puts it in the TV movie category. The Motion Picture Academy, on the other hand, made a deliberate decision to exclude the project from the Oscars. Reporter Scott Feinberg provides an explainer. - The Hollywood Reporter
"While there have been times during the past year when theatre and all who work in it have felt helpless, unloved and ignored, there is also plenty of evidence that it does matter and can make itself matter – not just to its own community but beyond. When theatre doesn’t just think of itself, when it thinks beyond the next show and the box office, it can and does make a difference – over and over again." - The Stage
