Thanks to streaming, two American critics got to binge a bunch of the holiday extravaganzas. So how does this silly British tradition translate?
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:32PM“Stars in the House,” a variety show and fund-raiser, started just after the Broadway shutdown. Some 250 episodes later, its creators won’t quit.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:24AMStream productions of reimagined fairy tales and Christmas standards like ‘A Christmas Carol’ being staged at theaters around the world.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:24AMTheatermakers are devising new, immersive ways to engage children, with a few sending boxes of props and set pieces to your home.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:24PMIt wasn’t the year for celebration. But watching innovation flourish inspired our chief critic, while other writers found the joys of the stage in other media.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:06AMWilliamstown Theater Festival’s summer season is now a winter experiment, all on audio. That includes “A Streetcar Named Desire,” recorded in actor’s closets.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:18AMWith its latest show, the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles has cornered the American market on long-running, agreeable online theater.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:54PMAn all-star cast came together, remotely and in socially distanced shoots, to turn Ta-Nehisi Coates’s memoir into a vivid amalgam of art, music and performance for HBO.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:54AMConnection or isolation? Intensity or escape? This spate of shows that put the watcher to work are rewarding, but often in contrasting ways.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:06PMA musical satire reframes the origins of the invasion of Iraq as a story of bureaucratic bungles and spy games gone catastrophically wrong.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:48PMThe immersive games are reinventing for online, at-home play — which is no surprise, an industry expert said: “These folks are deeply creative, and they’re scrappy.”
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:12AMSarah Kane’s 1999 play, performed live at the Chichester Festival Theater and available to stream this week, meditates on power and powerlessness, and makes specific devastation feel unive…
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:36PMTheaters may be closed, but streamers and studios are flocking to the stage to meet the insatiable demand for content.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:42AMThree British companies reimagine a murder mystery for the virtual stage. Except there’s no stage, and no part of it is live.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:18PMThe goal: a comedy about mistaken racial identity inspired by protests over “Miss Saigon.” The result: a backstage farce that never got to opening night.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 11:03AMIn New York, trick-or-treating has been curtailed, and parades called off. But there are plenty of ways to please and spook the little ones.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:42AMAn immersive work at the Wild Project asks the sole audience member to consider the value of life while role playing as an office worker involved in calculating risk of death.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:36PMThe playwright whips up a virtual ensemble of eccentrics, but his vision feels out of step with the moment.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:24PMA strange year for Broadway, with fewer shows than usual eligible for major awards, has brought up an equally strange, if intriguing, set of nominees “What?” James Monroe Iglehart said. …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 04:03PMTwo immersive audio pieces, in the form of an automated phone system and a play told as recordings from a grim future, talk about trying and failing to connect with others.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:24PMRadha Blank spent years trying to impress the theater world. Now, her Sundance hit, “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” is proof that dreams don’t expire.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:54AMIn a few minutes or a full show, these performers capture heartbreak, fury and laughs. For the words of Samuel Beckett, a disembodied mouth did the trick.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:24AMCoronavirus travel restrictions don’t prevent the mentalist from visiting your head in this hourlong online show.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:03PMIf you participate in a sound walk and no one is there to applaud, does it count as theater? Our critic argues that it does. Or at least that it can.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:02PMSix months dark. Thousands of artists out of work. Could this disaster have a surprise ending? Five critics on what must change, onstage and off.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:18AMAnnouncing stage productions, and timing, has become a matter of wishful thinking, guesswork and experimentation. Case in point: the no-show plan.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:54PMAmong the performances you can catch online are a one-woman show about sexual assault and riffs on “Heart of Darkness” and “Rocky.”
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:06PMImmersive productions — from a wizardly treasure hunt to tall tales by phone or email — keep a young audience both entertained and active.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:12PMSifting evidence and debating whodunit with strangers turns out to be an especially successful way for theater to be enjoyed from a laptop.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:18PMWhen actor training migrated online, our reporter gave herself two weeks to learn as many theater skills — and knife skills — as she could.
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:18AMShakespeare in the Park and other outdoor venues are shut. But for performers and directors, open-air memories are as sharp as the bite of a mosquito.
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