The Playgoer: Thursday Roundup

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Thursday, December 17, 2009

Thursday Roundup

-Envy alert, you US playwrights: "What's Britain's biggest growth industry? Playwriting, apparently. According to a recent report by Arts Council England, the amount of new writing produced by mainstream, subsidised theatre has more than doubled in the last six years." The Guardian takes you behind the scenes of the literary offices at the National and other UK producers, where there are still unread slush piles and economic challenges. But maybe they're doing something right.

-More Tony-Nom haggling. Playbill reports: "Burn the Floor Is a Musical, Wishful Drinking a Play"--a quite head-scratching headline for many reasons. (Both decisions are consequences of the elimination of the "Special Theatrical Event" category.)

-More B'way: Bloomberg's Jeremy Gerard has a good rundown on the bleak economic landscape. The current CW on the rialto? "If people don’t leave the theater thinking that they absolutely must make their best friends buy tickets right now, the show will fail." Gerard also reports that Oleanna only recouped 10%.

-How come Steppenwolf gets to import its original Chicago casts to Broadway, but Steady Rain didn't? Answer may be obvious, but still here's food for thought.

-I know some of you out there need another Colorado Smoking Ban fix, so check out how the state supreme court just reinforced the ban. Kudos to Denver Center Theatre's Kent Thompson for representin'. "There's a whole canon of drama in which smoking plays an integral part." As for those powdery things they're now forced to use instead: "The smaller the theater, the less credible the substitutes are."

1 comment:

Unknown said...

To relate two of the roundup offerings, one of the reasons Steppenwolf is so successful is that they put the art first, which means creating shows that you leave saying "my friends have to see this." It was something I felt living in Chicago. They do great work, and in the end, if we're talking long term, that is what people want to see. Yes, it's fun to see a celebrity in person, on stage, but that grows thin quickly. Deep down, people want to be blown away by the work they see. Steppenwolf does this show after show.