Theatre

“Skylight Theatre, a Los Angeles theater company that prioritizes social issues, … [has] kicked off weekly plays from its writers lab set amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the [online] series will continue until Skylight can open its doors again.” The project has started with Christine Hamilton-Schmidt’s Our First Honest Conversation, about an estranged couple, separately sheltering in place, trying “to reignite a sexual spark using only words.” – Los Angeles Times

Said Chay Yew, “We’ve always complained about how the American theatre doesn’t work. I for one find the blank slate exciting. We either repeat what we did before or we don’t. The structure will have to come down.” Joe Haj conceded that if the crisis “ends in six weeks, we may be much like we were before. But if not, or there’s another spike in the virus, we may need to rethink our model entirely. There’s a huge role for leadership. We need to be able to dream ourselves forward.” – American Theatre

“The [project], which is being called ‘Play at Home,’ is a website (playathome.org) featuring new plays, intended to take no more than 10 minutes to read, that are free so that anyone can read or perform them at home or by video conferencing. The commissioning theaters are providing a $500 stipend to the playwrights they select to write the works.” – The New York Times

Alexis Soloski: “You could fill a shelf with plays of the past several decades that have dreamed bleak outcomes for humanity. And then, in a pinch, you could burn that shelf and those plays for warmth. Recently, I spoke with several playwrights — via telephone and email — about what it is like to first imagine a cataclysm and then live through one.” (And then there’s this playwright, who picked the wrong time to premiere her play about the Spanish flu.) – The New York Times

“Ars Nova did not seek an article about the course it has chosen. On the contrary, [its directors] worried that discussing it publicly could look like they were shaming colleagues amid an industry-rattling pandemic.” That Ars Nova can pay everyone it had engaged for its canceled shows “has nothing to do with an angel donor — there isn’t one, [the managing director] said — but rather serendipity.” – The New York Times

The city’s largest theatre nonprofit, which operates the Mark Taper Forum, Ahmanson Theatre, and Kirk Douglas Theatre, will maintain health insurance for its workers but send half of them home until at least August 9; the rest will face pay cuts. – Los Angeles Times

Sure, everything’s online now, but some comedians have been doing the work for a much longer time than the last two weeks. They didn’t need to adjust “because they were already there, particularly those in the growing genre of ‘front-facing camera comedy’: short character sketches played directly to the camera. Owing a debt to the hectic editing of Tim and Eric and the influence of the defunct six-second-or-less platform Vine, these videos have gone viral for years, but with comedians and audiences stuck at home, they have replaced the special as the dominant comedy form of the Covid-19 crisis.” – The New York Times

AD Eric Ting: “This may seem like an extraordinary decision, but taking into account the incredible uncertainty of this moment, the cost of producing a season at the Bruns, of which ticket sales only account for a third, the current and long-term disruption in fundraising, … we feel this is our best course of action.” No word on whether the four plays will be rescheduled in future seasons. – American Theatre

Why now? “As an adult, I’ve try to keep my performing past under wraps. Being a theater nerd was never cool to begin with, but … polite society seems to find something sad about being nostalgic for the activities you loved in adolescence. But now that we’re in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, shame is no longer a concern of mine.” – Slate

Could some of this be the future of online theatre? “In response to this crisis, Actors Equity Association created a new, temporary streaming agreement available for select producers to record these performances, sell tickets through the theatre’s website, then stream the production online for one-time viewing by ticket buyers. In essence, the idea is to make the patron experience as close to a true theatrical experience as possible.” – American Theatre

Ben Brantley: “Remember that plays — even those lofty classics that show up on college reading lists — are meant to be spoken and heard. And saying their lines aloud, no matter how clumsily, helps you hear the music and cadences in them. This is true not only of Shakespeare, but also of linguistically rich latter-day writers like August Wilson, Caryl Churchill, Edward Albee, [and] Suzan-Lori Parks.” – The New York Times

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, one of the oldest and largest American nonprofit theaters and a popular travel destination, said on Friday that it would lay off 80 percent of its 500 employees, cancel half of this year’s productions and postpone any live performances until after Labor Day. – The New York Times

“The new two-month National Theatre at Home programme will begin with One Man, Two Guvnors, the Richard Bean comedy starring James Corden. The films will be shown at 7pm every Thursday to try to recreate, where possible, the communal viewing experience. They will then be available on demand for seven days.” – The Guardian

In the coming weeks, virtual walks may become a thing. Meanwhile, the architect David Rockwell is first onstage, having elected to look at Broadway’s hibernating theaters. – The New York Times

Insulted and incensed, Oedipus responds as intemperately as Trump when crossed by a politician or held to account by a member of the press. To salve his injured pride, Oedipus harks back to the equivalent of his electoral coup. It was through the sharpness of his wit that he, an outsider not in the royal line of succession, solved the riddle of the Sphinx and won the throne. – Los Angeles Times

“Earlier this month, the theater industry announced that Broadway venues would go dark through April 12, and as the pandemic shows no sign of slowing down, that date is expected to be pushed back to May or June.” This year’s awards had been scheduled for June 7. – The New York Times

To find out, you have to go back 102 years to the 1918 influenza epidemic. “Even when people knew in advance the closures were imminent and that deaths were surging, they didn’t relinquish theatregoing easily.” – American Theatre

Helen Shaw: “To try to understand the complexity of a situation that was changing minute by minute — last Thursday, we still had a full theater calendar for April, for instance — I talked to members of one downtown company: Elevator Repair Service,” best known for Gatz, its eight-hour, word-for-word re-enactment of The Great Gatsby. – Vulture

“With its shows canceled until further notice and its revenue stream obliterated, Chicago’s most illustrious comedy theater … is trying to improvise its way out of a major crisis. … [Job losses] includ[e] all casts, front-of-house workers and food and beverage workers.” – Chicago Tribune

“Last week’s layoffs were just the latest addition to a list of controversial upheavals for the company in recent years, including climbing ticket prices in early 2017, the move from Chelsea to the bigger, less convenient Hell’s Kitchen theater in late 2017, mass layoffs in 2018, shuttering the East Village theater in 2019, and constant debate surrounding its choice to not pay performers. … There’s growing sentiment among many people in the UCB community that even if the theaters return post-coronavirus, they may not.” – Vulture

“The Montreal-based circus giant said temporarily cutting 4,679 jobs was necessary after 44 shows worldwide were shuttered amid the virus outbreak.” – The Hollywood Reporter

The sudden loss of community is especially marked in theatre. “As companies cancel productions that were months to years in the making for the sake of social distancing and self-quarantining, people whose work depends on bringing people together remain in a particularly precarious position. The whiplash of the moment is striking.” – American Theatre

Yew, who was ending his run as artistic director of Victory Gardens in Chicago: “We will emerge with new stories to tell. We will revisit old tales that give our lives new meaning and sustenance. We will find innovative ways to see and think. We will found new spaces for our stories; they may again be in shuttered storefronts, church basements, or around the fire, as when we first told stories. New homes will be built by a new generation of American artists, and they will be more equitable and inclusive than our current ones.” – American Theatre

The “emergency relief agreement” negotiated by the Broadway League and 14 different unions created an agreement “to pay hundreds of actors, musicians, stagehands and others for the first few weeks of the industry shutdown, and to cover their health insurance for at least a month.” – The New York Times

Young Jean Lee, Lauren Gunderson, and Jaclyn Backhaus are among those who have begun leading playwriting lessons and seminars on the web since coronavirus sent almost everyone home. Gunderson’s first session had 900 people watching live; by the next night, 23,000 had watched. – Los Angeles Times

“In a sign that American theaters are desperately worried about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, playwrights are reporting that they have been asked to return payments for productions that have been canceled or postponed.” – The New York Times

The replica Elizabethan theatre in the Shenandoah Valley normally thrives, in the usual hand-to-mouth way, with a mix of school groups and out-of-town visitors. Now both are gone indefinitely. Peter Marks traveled to Staunton, Va. to see how the ASC is coping. – The Washington Post

Alexis Soloski, who wrote a dissertation on the subject, reminds us that playwrights from Sophocles through Shaw to Kushner and Kramer have grappled with the subject. “It’s only a matter of time before the first COVID-19 plays emerge, and we can … be nudged toward compassion for the afflicted, be constituted as a community of support. Because that’s what theater can do: It can ask us to think and feel beyond the confines of our own experience and find fellow-feeling, immediately and intimately, with those around us.” – The New York Times