Theatre

Truly, if you’ve seen the movie trailer, there’s no missing the multitude of jokes just sort of … oh, let’s say it … hanging there to be batted around. However, Angels in America won the competition long ago with Roy Cohn making a joke about the musical: “It’s the rare Cats joke that successfully makes fun of Cats and also punches back at people who think they’re interesting for making fun of Cats. It’s appropriately as chaotic as Cats itself.” – Vulture

“For the revival of his first professionally produced play, A Bright Room Called Day, open now at New York’s Public Theater, Kushner has in classic Kushnerian style wildly rewritten the script … In so doing, he’s created an impossible play that circles two impossible problems — how the left could have responded to the rise of Hitler, and how art can respond to our present moment — and offers no easy solutions.” – Slate

For English-speaking creative teams, there are obvious benefits to opening in Paris. The market is far less crowded than in New York or London, and star casting isn’t much of a factor, since most musical theater performers are unknown to the French audience. – The New York Times

“British theatre is incredibly resilient, yet radically different from when I took up my post at the Guardian in 1971. Even the job of being a critic has altered in all sorts of ways. … But if the process – and the people who get to write the reviews – has changed, the role of the critic remains much the same.” – The Guardian

In some years, narratives emerge, about innovation or stagnation, retrenchment or inclusion, celebrity, politics, source material. But 2019 seemed especially all over the map. Shows were big and small, hopeful and cynical, wired and tired. If you believe in theater as relational to real life, then life in America right now is fractured, disordered, with occasional dance remixes. – The Guardian

Like its more famous athletic counterpart, this international gathering, founded in Greece in 1994, happens (roughly) every four years in a different city. This year, for the first time, it’s in two locations, St. Petersburg, Russia and Toga, Japan, and it’s the longest and largest Theater Olympics yet, with 104 productions from 22 countries. – The New York Times

“On Tuesday, the co-founders of Halcyon Theatre, Tony and Jenn Adams, said that they have stepped down [after 14 years] and have moved to Maine. Effective immediately, Arlicia McClain will become the company’s new artistic director. … Halcyon Theatre was founded in 2006 in [the] Albany Park [neighborhood] and describes itself as committed to connecting people, transforming borders and ascending toward a more just union.” – Chicago Tribune

The collapse of the organization came quickly, just a few weeks after a group of former students accused longtime artistic director Burgess Clark of inappropriate behavior. The explosive allegations, including accusations by some students of touching and kissing during private lessons or while they were at his second home in Vermont, rocked the theater group and has triggered an investigation by police. No charges have been filed. – Boston Globe

The puppeteers, volunteers, board and donors all got together to save the Marionette Theater after Baker died in 2014 – and after the theater was evicted from its space in 2018. Now, explains one of the puppeteers, when the show goes up in the revamped theatre, she’ll be “worried about the manipulations of the puppet in hand, but my fear goes away when I see the audience’s reaction. Everything becomes muscle memory. All you hear is your own breathing and comments from the audience, and you feel the warmth of the lights.” – LAist

Sure, it’s an almost guaranteed moneymaker, but it’s also “a community builder, a gateway drug, and a holiday tradition.” – American Theatre

Playwright Aleshea Harris, who won the Obie Award in 2018 for Is God Is, “is part of a vanguard of young, African American playwrights boring into questions of race and history through humor, drama, absurdity and tragedy. Their works reveal how the legacy of slavery continues to twist through the American consciousness.” – Los Angeles Times

“The late blooming of Molière’s talent, his purported lack of education and culture, his busy agenda, and the lack of manuscripts are among the arguments that triggered a century-long debate. Systematic objections to these assertions have been provided. Yet, the sparsity of available archives has so far prevented the debate from ending,” the pair write in their paper Why Molière Most Likely Did Write His Plays, published on Wednesday in the open-access journal Science Advances. – The Guardian

“Star Wars Kabuki-Rennosuke and The Three Light Sabers, which are being staged in Tokyo, will combine plots from each of the franchise’s latest trilogy, substituting plots drawn from the days of feudal clan rivalry with drama from a galaxy far, far away. Ichikawa Ebizo XI, Japan’s pre-eminent kabuki actor, will take to the stage as Kylo Ren … in front of 50 winners of an online lottery.” (The performance will be live-streamed for the rest of us.) – The Guardian

Andrew Scott was awarded for his role in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter at the Old Vic, while Maggie Smith took the trophy for one-woman play A German Life at the Bridge. Lynn Nottage’s Sweat was named Best Play, following a successful run at the Donmar and in the West End. – London Evening Standard

“Performer Harrison Knights is behind the venture, called Trans Voices Company, which aims to help address a lack of casting opportunities for non-cisgender actors.” – The Stage

Lauren E. Turner, founder of the New Orleans theatre company No Dream Deferred, says that she was deeply lucky as a kid. “I was taught creating space was my duty. The idea of what was out there and available for performers of color was accessible, and I knew there was power in being able to tell a different story in different ways. Had I not had that experience, I would have just assumed theatre was strictly for white people.” – HowlRound

And that’s true in weapons and swordfighting theatre classes as well. Ask one student-turned-devotee: “In theatrical swordfighting, you’re following choreography and working with your partner and trying to avoid contact unless it’s part of the routine. It’s just like dance. Except there are more pointy objects.” – San Diego Union-Tribune

Nottage: “Yes, I have to go sometimes to where my audience is, rather than being confined by the proscenium—which forces us to have a certain level of engagement, which means I have to sit very quietly in the dark while these people speak at me. There isn’t always a conversation.” – Vogue

Chilean playwright and director Guillermo Calderón: “After the curfew was over, a few theatres came back to do shows and a lot of people went to see them. … People were yearning for a sense of community and space to talk and vent and try to find some sort of solidarity … [Even so,] there has been an overwhelming sense here among theatre artists that it’s impossible to do theatre right now. … How can we say anything that’s going to really mean something at this moment? I mean, we’re in the context of a quasi civil war, right?” – HowlRound

A new study, commissioned by the mayor’s office and released on Wednesday, finds that the city is home to 748 Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway theater organizations responsible for 3,000 jobs. But there is also quite a bit of churn: The study reveals that more than 280 theater organizations were established in the city since 2011, while more than 100 closed. – The New York Times

Kwame Kwei-Armah, artistic director of the Young Vic in London (and former artistic director of Center Stage in Baltimore): “People are listening in a way they didn’t 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and history has taught us that they certainly didn’t listen any time before that.” – Backstage

The Times Square area was never the exclusive preserve of theatergoers, but Broadway culture elevated the neighborhood’s rough and raffish character. Today, not even all Broadway theaters have Broadway theater happening inside them. – Los Angeles Times

The production presented this week at Suffolk University in Boston, is, according to Wilder’s estate, the first time all seven one-acts will be performed together in a single program.” – American Theatre