All articles by Artsjournal
"In 1960 Peter Hall created a theatrical revolution. He turned a summer Shakespeare festival in Stratford-on-Avon into a year-round enterprise based on a permanent ensemble, a second home in…
If so, it's got nothing to do with illness or quarantine as subject matter; it's that the lockdown pushed everyone " audiences, colleagues, and (crucially) gatekeepers such as casting agents…
Three years after Chris Dercon ended his brief, dissension-plagued tenure at the theatre, his successor as artistic director, Klaus Dörr, quit after it became public that 10 women at the Vo…
Ivo van Hove at the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, Stéphane Braunschweig at the Odéon in Paris, Thomas Ostermeier at the Schaubühne in Berlin, Kajsa Giertz at the Helsingborg (Sweden) …
Theatres have collectively reported losses of nearly £200 million following a year of closure, according to a survey which also reveals that a quarter of freelancers have gone out of busi…
Helen Shaw: "The pandemic has been a period of getting a lot of 'little did I know' stuff out into the open, including (but hardly limited to) the troubling ethics of the industry and the in…
We mourn together for our lost months and years. "Every day the theatre is dark, an opportunity for transformation is lost"yes, for the performers, remaking themselves so completely that, on…
With Chita Rivera, André De Shields, and an array of singers and dancers, the pop-up on the anniversary of Broadway's shutdown gave paying work to performers who haven't seen much of it in …
The guidelines are stringent " each county must cycle completely out of "colors" of COVID-19 infections before indoor theatre can open, and they have to cycle way lower rates before outdoor …
Rob Weinert-Kendt: "So what happened " what changed " in this past 12 months, and how will this lost, frantic year be remembered? I asked dozens of theatre workers from all over the U.S. to …
Ridiculous as it might seem now, eight to 10 weeks was initially discussed as a likely closure period. The more pessimistic were talking about the summer of 2020. " The Stage
"The annual theatre festival organised by the Indian People's Theatre Association in the small town of Chhatarpur became the object of abuse and violent threats by Bajrang Dal, a hardline Hi…
"Subscription packages for some of Broadway's biggest hits are being sold at a handful of the nation's performing arts centers, while a host of others have booked dates and plan to [start se…
The UK's theatrical culture is obsessed with the idea of theatre as storytelling, both as a discourse and as a conditioning of what the work is and should be like. This is extremely rigid: t…
"In one of the more surprising revelations of the shutdown, it turns out that the American theater has no towering figure even attempting to lead it through this crisis, the way Andrew Lloyd…
"We are incentivizing each one of our employees with a payment of $200 to get vaccinated," Chad Bauman said. "We believe it's incredibly important not only in terms of protecting our staff i…
"Though private-equity firms are notorious for ruthlessly wringing efficiencies out of the properties they pick up, the investors who just bought one of Chicago's most treasured cultural ins…
"What it has taken me a year to realize is how much I also miss the community of the audience " the strangers surrounding me, obscured by the dark, who have tacitly agreed to escape and exal…
The queen had the little playhouse built as part of her pretend village at Le Petit Trianon; she and her friends attended plays and operas there and even performed themselves. (Her Majesty o…
Level Forward, a company whose founders include Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, said on Monday that it has won the rights to adapt Walter Tevis's 1983 novel, which has become ne…
Over the last year, American Shakespeare Center"a $4.3 million theatre company in Staunton, Va., known for producing the Bard's work in repertory with a stripped-down style and a resident co…
Basically, the pandemic has changed the performing arts audience. "Fans have had access to virtual theater from all over the world. Some venues have expanded their audiences far beyond what'…
The director of a play in tech rehearsal says of the theatre building, abandoned a year ago as the pandemic swept the world, "I walked in, it was very quiet and I found myself touching every…
"The shift [to streamed performances during the lockdowns] has raised questions about whether audiences will return to theaters in the same numbers as before, and whether a blend of online a…
Presented as a "walking tour with theatrical displays," and running Feb. 19-21, the performance was not a traditional narrative play, but rather a collection of six short individual vignette…
"They're our holy fools, who " even when no one is watching " keep the art's sacred fires burning. Rehearsal isn't so much a preparation-to-show as it is a kind of religious practice " as en…
Weirder than ever before, no doubt. As the voters fill out their ballots this week and next, none of the shows they're considering have been onstage for a year, and they can't vote in a give…
"There are so many benefits to all this stuff, It's going to make theatre more accessible. It's going to help tackle the issue of diversity. It's going to enable us to tell stories in comple…
"This notion that we have to do something, that we have to find other ways to work. I was like, 'Hello, this is an opportunity to just stop. Everybody just stop. Can we really not do that?' …
Says the artistic director of a Twin Cities company, "I believe that theatre is storytelling and we are creating a new hybrid art form. It's not quite theatre in that it's video and not onst…
With the disclaimer that this wave of the research reflects current expectations about the pandemic, based on anxieties about vaccine distribution and the spread of COVID variants, and that …
"The biggest revelation, though, is that while a computer's imagination touches, somewhat randomly, on themes of love, loneliness, clowning and performance, it is most often obsessing about …
The protocols these countries have developed the past year to permit some live performances depend greatly on the magnitude of the pandemic and the efforts by government to contain it. South…
In a regular year, it's North America's largest summer theatre festival, but with the pandemic only barely starting to subside, Stratford is planning to present just a dozen or so performanc…
Actors get temperature-taking robots; there's Hamiltizer for your hands if you're rehearsing Hamilton; and then there are the actors who can't hug " so Olaf and Elsa flash each other peace s…
"'I am calling you for a poetic consultation,' said a warm voice on the telephone. 'It all starts with a very simple question: How are you?' Since March, almost 15,000 people around the worl…
"Across the country, and beyond its borders, many theaters say new audiences for their streaming offerings has been an unexpected silver lining " one that could have ramifications for the in…
"In a country where Turkish is the only official language, speaking Kurdish is sometimes seen as an act of rebellion." (It is the mother tongue of nearly 20 million people in the Turkish Rep…
"I've debated different scenarios in my life about "What is Native?" And that is like the million-dollar question, at least within Indigenous communities at this moment. There doesn't seem t…
Uyghur, a Turkic language that uses the Arabic alphabet, has about 10 million native speakers, most of them in the Xinjiang province of northwestern China. With the Chinese Communist Party e…
"True seems to be that which is in accordance with the facts or reality, the way things simply are. But it is not as simple as that. For there are not only 'brute facts' (eg whether Germany …
The President of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra speaks about the importance of live, in-person concerts and the day-to-day leadership of a major symphony orchestra. " Aaron Dworkin
Someone's calling, maybe me. C. C sharp? D? My scalp tightens, which makes me wonder where I am, and who, too. But this voice today is a shell's, of a conch from a Pyrenees cave, assigned as…
The [agreement is that] the government may not apply the code to Facebook if the company can demonstrate it has signed enough deals with media outlets to pay them for content. The government…
"A nearly-life-size depiction of a kangaroo " realistic genitalia included " is the oldest known rock painting in Australia. Scientists recently pinpointed its age to 17,300 years ago with a…
"The French government is appealing for corporate help to acquire the manuscript of the Marquis de Sade's notorious The 120 Days of Sodom, valued at €4.5m (£3.9m), for the National …
A writer and director as well as an actor, he wrote a 1966 New York Times Op-Ed titled "American Theater: For Whites Only?" that inspired the Ford Foundation to fund the creation of the Negr…
In a feature interview for The New York Times Magazine, the co-founder of the famed, and now troubled, improv company and school said, "It's been brutal for us. We're basically using the fir…
Staging a full-length performance digitally "would break the bank," says artistic director Ashley Wheater, who doesn't really like streamed dance much. "I'm embracing it because there's noth…
Several places in Italy and Great Britain are considering the question, and a few memorials have already gone up. "[They] are not intended as sweeping monuments to the historical moment, but…
