"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)
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
Science says it's a good idea. "Audience members, whether they know each other or not, will synchronize their heartbeats while watching a live theater performance" - and that works in a natural history museum as well as a proscenium theatre. - American Alliance of Museums
What might an awards show that more accurately reflects the world around us actually look like? Specifically, what might an awards show that rewards actors without dividing them along the gender binary look like? - American Theatre
This forces me and so many others whose lives have included hours spent in the building to examine how we connect with a theatre conceptually, when there is no longer a fixed location. Is a theatre the building or the work? - The Stage
The Chicago company Collaboraction has edited the proceedings of the 1955 case — in which an all-white Mississippi jury acquitted two white men who later admitted killing the 14-year-old victim — into an immersive theater piece titled Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till. - MSN (Chicago Tribune)
In 1976, Sam Woodhouse and D.W. Jacobs launched a theater company "for a San Diego that didn't exist at the time" — cosmopolitan, with a vibrant downtown. After more than 330 productions, including 50+ world premieres, that helped create the city he envisioned, Woodhouse is stepping down. - The San Diego Union-Tribune
The Queen of Pop had insisted that everyone attending deposit their phones into small pouches, which were then sealed, given back to us to hold on to, and only unlocked at the end of the show. - The Stage
"Cutting the race-baiting from Harold's signature song feels like an easy enough fix, but … the elision leaves a vacuum at the show's center. Are the people of River City really that worked up about modernity? If Harold Hill isn't selling lightly coded racial anxiety, what exactly is he selling?" - Slate
As the company remade itself, it faced a real estate quandary: whether to renew its expiring lease at the New Haven Food Terminal, just off Interstate 95, where it has been performing for 57 years. - The New York Times
Northern Ireland Opera's performance of Sondheim's Into the Woods in Belfast last Saturday was cut short at the intermission after spectators moved around and talked so much that the cast complained to house management and ushers were abused as they tried to maintain order. - Belfast Telegraph
Hilton Als: "Harris's aim as a playwright is to remove the kitchen sink and slather the stage with blood and celebration. … Just as Tennessee Williams made 'deliberate cruelty' a major concern of his work, Harris aims to show how love can make you a target." - The New Yorker
Political humor had changed. It was less lighthearted, more snarky and sarcastic. Washington had changed, no longer a place where Democrats and Republicans would rib one another without too many hurt feelings. Moreover, America had changed, probably forever. - Washington Post
In order to survive at all during this period, theatre did need to adapt, and notable examples of genius materialised, reimagining the genre entirely. The survival of theatre has depended on the creation of these new formats, and its future depends on further innovation. - The Conversation
"The communal understanding that this is our space, our work, our shared awareness is an incomparable feeling. ... Every joke hit. Every cultural reference resonated. I remember thinking, why don’t we do this more often? Seriously. Why don’t we?" - Los Angeles Times
