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THEATRE

Immersive Wall Street Play By “Sleep No More” Creators Shuts Down Without Warning

“Life and Trust, an immersive follow up to Sleep No More from the producing team Emursive, closed abruptly on April 19 after beginning performances in the summer of 2024. … No official reasoning was provided for the show’s sudden closure … after tickets were mysteriously refunded over the weekend.” - TheaterMania

Samuel Beckett Versus The Archbishop’s Censorship

“After the archbishop’s interference, Beckett withdrew all rights in protest, for all of his works in Ireland, indefinitely.” - Irish Times (Internet Archive)

An Evening In The Life Of A “Drunk Shakespeare” Star

“Marissa Chaffee starts her shift by housing a Five Guys burger with pickles, mustard and ketchup. … Later tonight, she’ll chug (a "Witches' Brew") potion while half-dressed in Spider-Man underwear and knee-high boots in front of 85 theatergoers. The test is … whether she can remember her iambic pentameter.” - The Washington Post (Yahoo!)

How Theatre Should Help Save Democracy

Culture is the sphere in which people debate and determine who they are, what they value and the kinds of lives they wish to lead. Properly understood, culture is not a passive backdrop to “real life” but an active domain where communities articulate their shared meanings. - Salon

George Clooney “Good Night, And Good Luck” Sets New Record As Highest-Ever-Grossing Broadway Play

“The new play by George Clooney and Grant Heslov and directed by David Cromer has broken its own all-time record for highest grossing play in Broadway history. ... The production broke the record for eight performances with a gross of $3,784,027.88 for the week ending April 13.” - TheaterMania

“Phantom” Is Coming Back To New York, Says Andrew Lloyd Webber, But Not To Broadway

“In a new Instagram video – watch it below – Lloyd Webber, pretending to speak for the Phantom character, says that the musical is returning but at ‘a better address in New York, in a better area.’” The show ended its 35-year Broadway run in 2023. - Deadline

Broadway Is Selling A Lot Of Tickets To Young Adults

The 18-to-25 demographic isn’t usually considered a target audience for a circuit where tickets are so expensive, but the last couple of seasons have seen productions of shows deliberately aimed at that age group. It seems to be working. - The Guardian

Maybe “Glengarry Glen Ross” Isn’t A Critique Of Cutthroat Capitalism

“What if … Glengarry is instead celebrating the deceit, in fact presenting it as the epitome of manliness? What if Glengarry Glen Ross, quite possibly in ways a younger Mamet himself did not entirely fathom, offers us a joyful ethnography of Donald Trump’s America?” - The New Republic

Study: Number Of Theatre Productions In UK Has Declined By A Third In The Past Decade

In 2024, the 40 best-funded theatre companies that make their own productions - ranging from the National Theatre to the Colchester Mercury - opened 229 original productions, compared with 332 in 2014, a drop of 31%. - BBC

SoulPepper Theatre Launches A Community “Public Domain” Project

 With a full slate of free programming that ranges from workshops and classes to performance, the company is hoping to become a neighbourhood hub. - Ludwig Van

Number Of Productions Staged By British Theatres Has Plummeted Over Last Decade

“The number of plays and musicals staged by the UK's main subsidised theatres last year was down by almost a third compared with 10 years earlier, BBC research suggests. In 2024, the 40 best-funded theatre companies that make their own productions opened 229 original productions, compared with 332 in 2014.” - BBC

Producer Jeffrey Seller Recounts The Gestation And Birth Of “Rent”

“In this excerpt, adapted from Seller’s memoir, Theater Kid (out on May 6 from Simon & Schuster), the producer lays out the musical’s long road from dispiriting workshop to its simultaneously triumphant and tragic first preview performance.” - Vulture

How “Six” Challenges Conventional Broadway Musical Conventions

“Six,” which runs a sleek 85 minutes as an unruly concert where performers are explicitly competing for the audience’s sympathy, might ultimately be less interesting for its girl-power reframing of history than for its reconsideration of some of musical theater’s basic structural assumptions. - San Francisco Chronicle

A French Canadian Comedian Says English-Speaking Audiences Want Different Things

“After years of performing worldwide in French, Quebec comedian Rachid Badouri is touring a new solo show in English, and says there’s a subtle difference in what his new audiences want from him.” - CBC

Bernadette Peters, Back On Broadway, Longs To Ride The Central Park Carousel

Then there’s the time Sondheim took her to the Met for a Seurat exhibition. - The New York Times

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