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
Even before Covid, the government’s (and Arts Council England’s) approach to the complex private/public ecology of the sector felt confused and outdated. Now, it feels positively antediluvian. - The Stage
The London-based company Corali does, in fact, do programs in those places, but they've also worked with Sadler's Wells theatre and the Tate galleries and created a piece about filmmaker Derek Jarman. Their latest project will see them all impersonating the singular poet Edith Sitwell. - The Guardian
The RSC has signed a three-year contract with Cunard that will see a group of actors from the company performing two programs and offering workshops on board the Queen Mary 2 beginning this summer. - Daily Mail
The work, titled Thaw and conceived by physical theatre company Legs on the Wall and Alaskan composer Matthew Burtner, "features an acrobatic performer balancing, grasping and watching her frozen home melt away." (Yes, it's about climate change.) - The Sydney Morning Herald
The world's oldest operating theatre company has pieced together what it says is the original version of Tartuffe, premiered in 1664 and promptly suppressed by the enraged Catholic Church; it was the playwright's overhauled version of 1669 which became the classic we know today. - The Guardian
Brandon Carter, a resident actor with ASC since 2018, assumes the directorship in a new management structure that the company describes as “a coequal group of individuals” running other departments such as operations, production and engagement. - Washington Post
We're not all in this together, clearly. The Broadway League "proposed to the unions representing Broadway workers that those workers take a 50 percent pay cut during so-called 'COVID pauses.'" That's not going well. - The Daily Beast
Hey, there's money, and then there's art. Rylance: "Theatre is so flexible and it’s so different from being an actor in a film. It’s a thousand times more enjoyable." - The Guardian (UK)
Erin Cronican says, "It’s a very complicated acting challenge. In rehearsals when I open up, I just start crying. We don’t want to create that situation where I’m so fragile all the time." And omicron has made it all so much more fraught. - American Theatre
