Theater

She may have been snubbed by all of the major theater awards, but Bette Midler is certainly not crying. In fact, she's laughing all the way to the bank judging by the latest figures released by The B

Britain's Ambassador Theater Group, one of the U.K.'s largest theater operating companies, is likely to buy Broadway's Foxwoods Theater, according to multiple reports. Foxwoods is currently home to t

Donmar Warehouse Artistic Director Josie Rourke announced the five productions that will make up the company's 2013 autumn season. "This year, the Donmar is a champion of British and Irish theatre,"

There’s been a lot of talk online recently about the need for women playwrights to be better represented, have more opportunities, and be, if you’ll excuse the vagary, more equal. That’s lovely. As a woman playwright, I am all for that kind of talk, and the more there is of it, in any context, the better. What worries me though, is that despite being a woman playwright, despite having made it my business for several years to try and push the cause of women playwrights, I find it hard to take part in these conversations. Because when it comes right down to it, a lot of these conversations are predominantly about how women playwrights in the US can have more opportunities, and be better represented. I suppose I wouldn’t be in the slightest bit concerned about this, if it were clearly stated that this was a conversation about the professional industry in the US. But if we are claiming to have a conversation about why there are not more successful women playwrights worldwide, and what can be done to change that, then I feel we are having the wrong conversations. There are many women, around the world, who are working with these issues every day, who are tackling things head on. Who have, for years, been working with issues women face in the theatre – and in the world, because often it’s hard to untangle the two. A lack of women being represented in the theatre is both a manifestation of and a further propagator of a basically sexist society, worldwide. I don’t know where we start. Do we start with all the women denied education? The women denied a right to write? The women who are culturally or politically deemed inferior, and forbidden to have a voice? How do we support those who dare to speak in these circumstances? Those who risk arrest, who write not for royalties, but for that slim chance that what they write might change the world, even if it’s just one corner of it, in the mind of one audience member? What of those women playwrights who are free to write, but lack resources? Many of my colleagues write with pen and paper, or falling-apart equipment. Those who write by sunlight, because electricity is so expensive. Those who write on the backs of scrap paper. It doesn’t affect the quality of their writing, but it affects how their writing is perceived. It affects their ability to be taken seriously, to access opportunities, to get their work out there, to get their work known. How do we make sure that scripts which are remarkable and amazing see the light of day, are not stuck in a drawer, are not doomed to live and die on a hard drive? Speaking of access, when do we talk about this world wide web business – this internet that only the elite few (and yes, I am one) can use, this tool which is at once miraculous and wonderful, and terrifying in the way it further widens the schisms already present? What can we do to broaden the reach, and to bring voices into this conversation – and to take the conversation out – so that we don’t continue to foster the illusion that because we are discussing something online, we are inclusive. Do we talk about those other issues that make women playwrights’ lives even harder – race, religion, nationality, age, language, sexual orientation? If we want to be inclusive – and I hope we do – how do we acknowledge that these are further barriers faced by so many women playwrights? And then there’s the question of what women playwrights want. I can’t answer that, because I am only one. I know why I write – because I have to, because I want to make people laugh, to challenge them, to make them question their assumptions, to make them feel. I want my plays to be seen, because as long as they remain on paper, or on my computer, they are not finished products. Where they are seen, how, by who, these are all big questions, to which everyone will have different answers. We must stop assuming that big formal theatre productions in New York are everyone’s dream, without in any way denigrating those whose

As often happens with me at the end of the semester, I've got a bit of a blogging backlog to make my way through. Although some of these shows are still running, there have been some productions for which my reviews will appear after the the show's closing date. I include the reviews here as part of my admittedly imperfect chronicle of the Broadway and Off-Broadway seasons, and in anticipation of any future productions of these shows. One show for which I was unable to post my review before the show's closing was The Memory Show, which recently ended its run at the Duke on 42nd Street under the auspices of The Transport Group. Despite the dull, generic title, The Memory Show is an ambitious attempt at musicalizing the relationship between a mother and daughter as the younger woman moves in with mom to care for her as her early-onset Alzheimer's disease progresses. The reviews for this show were decidedly mixed, but I found myself deeply moved by both the characterizations and the performers who embodied those characters. What The Memory Show lacks in narrative complexity it makes up for in providing two stellar actresses -- Catherine Cox as the difficult mother and Leslie Kritzer as the beleaguered daughter -- a chance to shine. Cox makes extremely brave choices, and isn't afraid to let the mother character come off as abrasive, contradictory, and often downright impossible. Leslie Kritzer is just about the most versatile actress we have working in musical theater. Kritzer  brings tremendous depth and nuance to, well, just about any role she takes on, but to the prickly daughter character in particular. (The characters are only identified as "mother" and "daughter.") As for the piece itself, I think the best way to approach this piece is as giving us a chance to get to know two very promising creators: lyricist/librettist Sara Cooper and composer Zach Redler. Cooper demonstrates a deft understanding of Alzheimer's, from the memory loss, to the deterioration of movement, to the paranoid delusions that often befall the afflicted. More important, Cooper finds effective ways to dramatize these impairments, crafting moments that neatly and movingly capture the heartbreaking reality of the mother's condition. In one scene, the mother laments to the daughter that the leaves are falling off the trees. "It's not like it's permanent," the daughter says. "It's fall...the leaves will come back." The mother replies, "Not this year. I don't think they're gonna come back this year." The show builds with a quiet intensity, although at times it seems as though it's merely meandering from incident to incident, from scene to scene. One recurring element comes from the mother character, who keeps promising/threatening to reveal a deep dark secret that will supposedly make the daughter sorry for the they way she has supposedly treated her mother. Well, when you build up something like this over the course of a show, the reveal had better be good. And it is. What seems to be hiding in plain sight is actually far more complicated and dramatically satisfying than certainly I could have predicted. There's been a lot of online chatter about the "toilet" song, in which the daughter bemoans the more scatalogical aspects of her caretaker role. I can certainly see why people are put off by this segment, although I found it to be artistically valid, if distasteful. But Cooper and Redler acquit themselves many times over with a song for the daughter that shortly follows, entitled "Apple and Tree": I know her so well, but we’ve yet to meet. I’m made out of her but she’s not made of me; I’m her apple and she is my tree. The apple/tree notion is admittedly cliche, but overall the music and lyric here combine to create a moment that's actually quite stunning. Leslie Kritzer's heartfelt rendition of the song certainly adds to the power of the song. The moment that reall

The Piccolo Spoleto Festival and Banner New York are to present the premiere of the new musical Derma at the Woolfe Street Playhouse in Charleston, SC from June 3-8, during the Piccolo Spoleto Festiv

Zachary Levi, best known for playing the title role in TV's Chuck, is set to make his Broadway debut in the new romantic musical comedy First Date, which will begin performances July 9 and open Augus

Almost two decades ago, the Broadway League began tracking the demographics of the touring audience for Broadway shows, understanding that the audience on the road is a feeder audience for Broadway. It is/was true for you, right? If you don’t live in or close to NYC, and you’re a Broadway fan, odds are you see shows at your local Civic Center or PAC, am I right?  That’s what I used to do (shout out to the Colonial Theater and the Wang Center in Beantown!). Touring shows are gateway drugs to the bright lights of Broadway.  Additionally, since touring shows can be more profitable than Broadway shows, it’s important for us Producers to understand just who out there is buying the tickets, how they buy them . . . and why. Enter The League and their biennial report on the Touring Audience Demographics!  And the latest report, for the 2011-2012 season (which featured almost 13 million admissions in almost 300 theaters across our great theatrical nation) was just released last week. You can get the full report here directly from The League, but I’m going to summarize their summary for you. Here are the key points from the 2011-12 Touring Broadway Demographic Study: 12.7 million total attendees is the lowest reported attendance since 2004-05.  (NOTE FROM KEN:  GULP!) 70% of touring show attendees were female. The average age of the Touring Broadway theatregoer was 50.5 years.  (NOTE FROM KEN:  This is older than the NYC audience) 89% of the Touring Broadway theatregoers were Caucasian.  (NOTE FROM KEN:  This is whiter than the NYC audience.) 78% of the audience held a college degree and 30% held a graduate degree. 46% of national theatregoers reported an annual household income of more than $100k, compared to only 21% of Americans overall. 31% of respondents were subscribers to the “Broadway Series” at their local venue. On average, Touring Broadway attendees saw 4 shows per year. When looking for information about the show, the majority of audiences looked to the theatre’s website. The most commonly cited source for show selection were:  the music, personal recommendation, articles about the show, having previously seen the show, and its inclusion in the season subscription Respondents reported the Tony Awards to be more influential this season than in previous seasons.  21% of respondents said that Tony Awards or nominations were a reason they attended the show, compared to 8% in the 2005-06 season. Only 17% of respondents said that an advertisement influenced them to see a show and 14% said they were influenced by a newspaper critic’s review. 65% of the audience said that some kind of incentive (discounts for restaurants, parking and transportation, free merchandise, backstage tours or complete packages) would encourage them to attend theatre more frequently. Facebook was the most widely used social networking site. 40% of respondents said different performance times would encourage them to attend Touring Broadway more frequently. 47% of Touring Broadway theatregoers used the Internet to purchase their tickets, the highest percentage yet. Advance sales to single-ticket buyers has increased in comparison to the early 2000′s. 34% of respondents said they made a visit to NYC in the past year.  Of those 82% attended a Broadway show while in town. (NOTE FROM KEN:  This number should be 90% or more IMHO, so we’ve got work to do.) 75% of respondents said they would prefer to receive theatre information electronically, rather than postal mail. Well, what do you think?  Is the Touring Audience what you expected it to be?  Do you fit in the above group? If you’re interested, click here to see a summary of the latest report on the Broadway demographic audience and you can see how the two stack up side by side. Lots of interesting stuff in the report, as always.  Of course, the most concerning stat is the drop in attendance since almost ten years ago.  And, significantly,

For America magazine I've done a combined review of two entertaining and popular shows about iconic women leaders at either end of New York's nonprofit stage spectrum: The Public Theater's Here Lies Love, the dance-party musical about Imelda Marcos (which I already posted briefly about here), and Lincoln Center Theater's Ann, the old-school solo show about Texas guv Ann Richards. The links between the these two women, it turns out, go beyond shoulder pads and immovable hair: Neither show is entirely successful, even on its own terms; but both are worthy efforts with their share of entertainment value and food for thought, in varying proportions. Both depict women who at first reluctantly, then wholeheartedly, seize the reins of power with all its gratifications and complications and discover their mission (or their self-justifying rationale, as the case may be) only in the doing of it. This is not just a matter of biographical coincidence; in this shared motion from second fiddle to first-chair violin, the lives of both women dramatize a huge generational shift. Born just four years apart, they were both transitional figures, straddling the pre- and post-feminist generations. They began life assuming, as Ann puts it, that “taking care of my husband and my children was my profession,” but soon enough realized not only that they could do anything men could do but that they were needed at the wheel after feckless male leadership had driven their governments into a ditch. As Imelda (Ruthie Ann Miles) defiantly sings, her decrepit, philandering husband Ferdinand (Jose Llana) cedes her more and more power, “It takes a woman to do a man’s job. Read the whole thing here. Oh, and there's also a review of Here Lies Love in an unexpected place: HowlRound, which officially dips its toes into review-style, show-specific criticism with W.M. Akers' very fine inaugural effort. W.M. raises some of the same issues I had with the show (basically, that it's too much fun for a show about a brutal dictatorship), but I especially loved this bit about David Byrne: In the last decade, Byrne has dabbled in conceptual art, producing work like 2008’s Playing the Building, a pleasant-enough art installation in southern Manhattan that probably did not deserve the attention drawn by its creator’s name. In his eagerness to cross genres, Byrne is like a much more talented, much less irritating James Franco. Conceptual art is best left to the professionals, but rock is Byrne's beat, and Here Lies Love is a sparkling reminder of why he became a downtown icon in the first place. His name may get them in the door, but the music will make them stay. I rather liked Playing the Building, but the overall point sticks. Read that whole thing here.

My foray into the industry has recently seen me encounter the most dreaded of all events: the audition. Now, there are two common types of auditions – the ‘individual monologues’ one and the ‘workshop’ one. Having gone straight to university from school, I had previously avoided the stress and powerlessness that comes with the drama school audition process. As a result I had mixed emotions of excitement and trepidation at the prospect. So I went to my first ever (and only, for this year) drama school audition. I had stress dreams beforehand, a particularly disturbing one being about a house where everyone was killing each other (serves me right for preparing a Philip Ridley monologue), but woke up feeling good. I got to the audition venue about half an hour early, well worth doing as it allows you to settle in to your surroundings and focus. I then spent the next half an hour talking to current students and auditionees about their lives. It is bizarre when you step into the audition room. The two members of my panel were very nice but undeniably detached, saying “Hi Liam, nice to meet you, what are you going to do for us today? Great, if you can stand behind the line, there are chairs and tables behind you if you need them. Start when you’re ready” – and that is it. It is all a bit impersonal, but the amount of auditionees means that their militant efficiency is understandable. Surprisingly though, I really enjoyed it. All that build-up and I still left the room smiling. A brief interview with some standard questions followed, and was equally painless. One audition down, one to go… I was then (un)lucky enough to have the auditions for my theatre group’s Edinburgh rep season the day after. This was taken in the form of a workshop audition and was an incredibly different experience. I love workshop auditions because you have a sufficient amount of time to really showcase your abilities. Preliminary one-on-one auditions are fine, but it always feels like you are trying to stick a label on your forehead and brand yourself. In this workshop audition I knew that one of the directors was familiar with how I worked, so it really gave me some scope to, as he would say, “throw down”. I learned a great lesson from this. I just got a letter saying that they were unable to offer me a place at the drama school I had applied to. I was, of course, somewhat disappointed; but as an actor, every rejection tells you so much more than an acceptance. I also got cast in a lead part for Edinburgh. The difference between the two was that with the drama school audition I just wanted to get through it, to play it safe and not mess up. In the workshop audition I was perfectly willing to mess up and make a fool of myself, because taking risks is so important in this industry. I will probably reapply for the same single drama school course next year; but there are other ways to make tracks too. As it is, I am really excited for next year – I think it will be good to spend a year seeing what progress I can make in the industry. Image: Today at Conway Hall The post Acting the Part: audition highs and lows appeared first on A Younger Theatre.