“For our annual ‘Yesteryear’ issue, we asked 29 Broadway legends to pose before Mark Seliger’s camera and revisit their most memorable roles. Their careers span an enormous length of time” — 65 years, in fact, from Dick Van Dyke in Bye Bye Birdie to Audra McDonald in Gypsy. - New York Magazine
Opening night is not a Broadway show’s first performance in front of a paying audience, as it used to be many decades ago. That first show is now called the first preview. - New York Theatre
But this surprise is of the good, even great sort: The theatre “has paid $9.5 million to buy back the campus it lost in bankruptcy in 1970 — a remarkable feat for a theater organization, and a building, brought back from the brink.” - Los Angeles Times (MSN)
"Weimar cabaret has a kind of punk, dirty, gritty, raw, social commentary energy about it. … It flares up in times when there’s a lot of scary shit happening in the world.” - The Guardian (UK)
John Lithgow, who won best actor, “thanked the audience for ‘welcoming me to England’ and said ‘it’s not always easy when you welcome an American into your midst,’ highlighting that this moment was ‘more complicated than usual’ for” US-UK relations. - The Guardian (UK)
“Repertory theatres are not funded properly any more. ... I’d love to see regional theatres given more funding. When I was starting out, it was amazing. You could go anywhere. It was a real training ground.” - The Guardian (UK)
“Betty, who arrived just a decade after American women won the right to vote, was always working, and she often had jobs that were adventurous.” - The New York Times
“For decades, the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, in which gender nonconforming patrons of a late-night Tenderloin eatery stood up to chronic police harassment — smashing the diner’s windows, destroying a patrol car, setting a newsstand aflame — went untold.” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
SOLT’s update on attendances for 2024 shows that 17.1 million attended performances – the same as in 2023. When compared with 2019 – the year before theatres shut due to the pandemic lockdowns – attendances are up 11% (from 15.3 million). - The Stage
The festival, located where the Niagara River meets Lake Ontario on the US-Canada border, had planned to close the century-old Royal George Theatre permanently. Now the provincial government has pledged C$35 million to reconstruct the venue — with more physical stability, updated facilities and expanded seating. - Toronto Star
“The city (government) has pulled $500,000 of Dream Keeper Initiative funding previously awarded to African-American Shakespeare Company with ‘no explanation,’ according to its founder. Executive Director Sherri Young … started the theater company in 1994 to provide actors of color more opportunities to perform in the classics.” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
Audible Theater is teaming up with Together, a new accessible-theater initiative led by megastar Hugh Jackman and superproducer Sonia Friedman, for an eight-week series of programming at Off Broadway's Minetta Lane Theatre this spring. - TimeOut
“Othello is Shakespeare’s only major work in which the hero and antihero are given equal weight. … As the Shakespeare scholar Harold Bloom summed up the dichotomy: It is Othello’s tragedy, but it is Iago’s play.” Ben Brantley considers 13 Othello-Iago pairs, going back nearly a century. - The New York Times
Basically, lie (unless you’re a critic, in which case say nothing until the review). One actor: “It takes incredible amounts of bravery to be vulnerable enough to offer yourself to an audience, whether screen or stage. I’m proud of anyone who dares.” - The New York Times
“Members of SU’s theater community argue that the Lee, a relatively new building that opened in 2006, is an irreplaceable part of the school’s creative ecosystem that shouldn’t be razed to accommodate a glitzy, donor-driven project.” - Seattle Times
