(Nobuko Tanaka’s article appeared in the Japan Times, 10/6.)
Press conferences are usually upbeat affairs, but at the one held to herald Festival/Tokyo — a two-month theater festival that kicks off Oct. 15 — Artistic Director Sachio Ichimura appears looking worried and begins proceedings by bemoaning the event’s financial situation and wondering aloud about its future.
It was quite a shock considering F/T is one of the country’s top theater happenings, and an annual must-see for many.
So, to discover what was going on, I sought out several people involved with the event. Gradually it became clear to me that the capital’s entire arts landscape is in the throes of unannounced seismic shifts.
A key sign of the change came when Yuriko Koike, Tokyo’s new governor, appeared in Minami Ikebukuro Park one recent sunny afternoon at the official opening ceremony for something called Tokyo Metropolitan Festival 2016.
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .
(Mark Fisher’s article appeared in the Guardian, 10/6.)
When David Greig announced his inaugural season as artistic director of the Royal Lyceum, he said he wanted the theatre to be a “democratic space” where Edinburgh’s population could “gather and encounter each other”. It’s hard to imagine him achieving that aim more consummately than in this first in-house show of the season. And he does it with a 2,500-year-old play.
'This play is primal': David Greig on an ancient drama more relevant than ever
The new artistic director of Edinburgh’s Lyceum theatre explains how The Suppliant Women, Aeschylus’s 2,500-year-old play about a refugee crisis, offers a ‘profound statement on the purpose of theatre’
Read more
Directed by Ramin Gray, in a co-production with the Actors Touring Company, The Suppliant Women begins with the house lights up and a phalanx of young women filling the stage. As per ancient custom, the performance can’t go ahead until respect has been paid to those who have made it possible. Step forward a civic dignitary – on my night, Deirdre Brock, MP for Edinburgh North and Leith – as libation giver, pouring a bottle of Dionysian wine across the front of Lizzie Clachan’s open breezeblock stage to let the show begin.
The message is clear: we’re all in this together. When 50 women land in Argos seeking refuge from forced marriage with their Egyptian cousins, we need no prompt to think of today’s exiles. “If war-battered refugees deserve protection, don’t we women?” they ask in unison, Gemma May’s radiant chorus leader the focus of a tightly drilled volunteer ensemble.
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .
(Richard Schoch’s article appeared in Folger Shakespeare Library, 9/28; via Pam Green.)
Part of what makes the Folger Shakespeare Library special is that while scholars are busy creating new knowledge in the reading rooms, actors and musicians in the adjacent theater are busy creating world-class performances. Amazing things result when scholars and artists break down the wall that traditionally separates them and start collaborating.
That’s what happened in November 2014, when Folger Institute, Folger Theatre, and Folger Consort joined forces to explore Restoration Shakespeare: the adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays that were popular with audiences from 1660 to about 1710. As spectators like Samuel Pepys noted, what made these performances so appealing was their winning combination of acting, music, and dance.
The performance of Restoration Shakespeare—how it lived on the stage—was the focus of the workshop that I jointly directed with the musicologist Amanda Winkler from Syracuse University. Over three days, we brought together theatre and music scholars, actors, singers, and musicians—including Folger Consort’s Bob Eisenstein—to explore Charles Gildon’s adaptation of Measure for Measure (1700), which includes Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas (c. 1689) presented as three separate musical interludes—that is, entertainment for both the audience and the characters within the play.
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .
Matthew Sweet presents a sequence of radio plays by Samuel Beckett, with Stephen Rea and Ian McKellen. Newly recorded in binaural sound as part of Radio 3's 70th season which celebrates seven decades of pioneering music and culture since the founding of the Third Programme.
Like no other dramatist, Beckett's works capture the pathos and irony of modern life.
In the decade following the success of Waiting for Godot (1952), Samuel Beckett wrote some of his most absorbing work for radio, including the BBC's Third Programme. These plays are suffused with a musicality which, though evident in his novels, poetry and plays, is particularly remarkable in this medium. They are concerned with human isolation and the frailty of memory and communication.
With the exception of the monologue FROM AN ABANDONED WORK, the plays can be heard in binaural surround sound. Just wear your headphones.
The plays will give a great insight into the development of Beckett's style and into his approach to sound. Increasingly different in tone and conception from his stage work, the radio plays become more abstract as characters become less individualised and more representative.
FROM AN ABANDONED WORK performed by Stephen Rea
ROUGH FOR RADIO 1 He ..... Ron Cook She ..... Monica Dolan
ROUGH FOR RADIO 2 Animator ..... Stephen Dillane Stenographer ..... Louise Brealey Fox ..... Brian Protheroe Dick ..... Nick Underwood
WORDS AND MUSIC Croak ..... Ian McKellen Words ..... Carl Prekopp
CASCANDO Voice ..... Stanley Townsend Opener ..... David Seddon
Music composed and directed by Roger Goula Composer's assistant: Jessica Jones
Music performed by Piano: Kit Downes Violin: Georgia Hannant Viola: Oli Langford Bass Clarinet: Nicola Baigent Flute: Michael Liu Cellist: Raphael Lang Synth: Jessica Jones
Directed by Gaynor Macfarlane.
Photo: LA Times.
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .
The Paris Opéra has this year extended its programme offering heavily discounted seats to young people, enabling many of them to attend a performance of opera or dance for the first time.
The opera is most commonly associated with greying audiences in fur stoles and business suits, but the crowd filling the seats at the Opéra Bastille’s staging of Samson and Dalila on Saturday night had a much more youthful vibe.
The event was one of 13 preview performances of ballet and opera that are being opened this season exclusively to audiences under the age of 28 for just 10 euros a seat. Tickets go on sale about a month before each performance (the calendar is on their website), but would-be culture consumers must act quickly, as the house sells out in under 20 minutes.
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .
(Dominic Cavendish’s article appeared in the Telegraph, 10/4.)
The good fortunes of the Menier Chocolate Factory’s revival of this golden oldie from the Tom Stoppard back-catalogue – sold out before its opening night – owe not a little to the twinkly-eyed presence in the cast of Tom Hollander.
This year, the much-loved actor has attracted new fans and neatly overturned many people’s assumptions about his cosy gentility (an inevitable by-product of his unmissable self-penned sitcom Rev) by playing Hugh Laurie’s distinctly unholy side-kick “Corky” in The Night Manager.
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .
Alexei Sayle explores the cultural impact of the Dada movement, 100 years since it was founded.
On 5th of February 1916 a small group of poets, artists and musicians gathered in Zurich at the Cabaret Voltaire nightclub. The gathering would become recognised as the birth of Dada, a nihilistic movement that emerged in response to the trauma of The Great War.
Dada was anti-art, anti-bourgeois, anti-establishment. anti-Dada. From the performance of nonsense poems with a backdrop of gigantic cucumbers, to vitriolic manifestos decrying bourgeois culture, the Dadaists forged a set of anarchic strategies, attitudes and philosophies that would sweep across Europe and America - 'the chaos from which a thousand orders rise', forever changing not only perceptions, but the very definitions of art.
Comedian, writer and one-time art student Alexei Sayle explores the absurdist sounds of a movement that may have been fleeting, but has had a profound impact on the art, music and comedy of the 20th and 21st centuries - from the Goons to Lady Gaga via hay-eating pianos and conceptually rich tunafish sandwiches.
With thanks to: filmmaker Helmut Herbst for excerpts from his Dada documentary, Trio EXVOCO for their recording of Karawane by Hugo Ball, KRAB FM for their interview recording with George Maciunas.
Presenter: Alexei Sayle Producer: Chris Elcombe A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Photo of Alexei Sayle: Beyond the Joke.
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .
(William Grimes’s article appeared in The New York Times, 10/3; via Pam Green.)
Gordon Davidson, who as artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum for nearly 40 years helped establish Los Angeles as a West Coast capital of regional theater and challenged audiences with socially conscious plays, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 83.
His wife, Judi Davidson, said he had collapsed at a family dinner. She said the cause of death had not been determined.
Mr. Davidson, who was often regarded as the West Coast counterpart of Joseph Papp, the longtime director of the New York Shakespeare Festival, was a transplanted New Yorker who in 1967 was handed mission impossible when the civic leader Dorothy Chandler invited him to run the newly founded Mark Taper Forum, a 745-seat theater.
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .
(Rupert Christiansen’s article appeared in the Telegraph, 10/4.)
Tom Stoppard’s Travesties changed Patrick Marber’s life. “I saw it in a school production when I was 14,” he recalls. “It was my first encounter with Stoppard’s writing, and it radiated a glamour and intelligence that staggered and entranced me. It left me thinking that I wanted to write like that and be with people who said such clever things. That feeling has stayed with me ever since.”
Four decades on, and 52-year-old Marber (best known as the author of Closer and Dealer’s Choice) is directing a rare revival of the play at the Menier Chocolate Factory, with Stoppard at his side during rehearsals. Stoppard may be approaching 80 and garlanded with an Order of Merit for his services to the theatre, but he is devoid of Grand Old Man affectations, and he and Marber are working here as equals, with a relaxed professional rapport.
“Returning to it now, I’m surprised that when it was being written, I didn’t realise how strange it was,” says Stoppard. “All I can remember is that I wanted to create a play which passed through different idioms.”
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .
The Roundabout presents a new adaptation of the Chekhov play by Stephen Karam (“The Humans”), directed by Simon Godwin and starring Diane Lane, Tavi Gevinson, Joel Grey, Chuck Cooper, and John Glover. In previews. Opens Oct. 16.
The comedian’s solo show, directed by Kimberly Senior, looks for humor in such weighty subjects as mental illness, suicide, and alcoholism. In previews. Opens Oct. 13.
SoHo Rep presents a new piece—part vaudeville, part gospel show—created by the performance artist Daniel Alexander Jones and featuring his soul-singing alter ego, Jomama Jones. In previews.
The Classical Theatre of Harlem stages a new play by Betty Shamieh (“The Black Eyed”), inspired by the life of Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled as pharaoh in ancient Egypt. In previews. Opens Oct. 7.
Nathan Lane, John Slattery, John Goodman, Jefferson Mays, Sherie Rene Scott, Holland Taylor, and Robert Morse star in Jack O’Brien’s revival of the 1928 comedy, about Chicago newspapermen on the crime beat. In previews.
Mary-Louise Parker and Denis Arndt reprise their roles in Simon Stephens’s drama, about two strangers who cross paths at a London train station. Mark Brokaw directs the Manhattan Theatre Club production. In previews. Opens Oct. 13.
A new musical from the Roundabout, featuring the songs of Irving Berlin and based on the classic 1942 film; Bryce Pinkham and Corbin Bleu fill in, respectively, for Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. In previews. Opens Oct. 6.
In Jenny Rachel Weiner’s play, directed by Kip Fagan for Roundabout Underground, two women venture under false identities into the world of Internet dating. In previews.
Janet McTeer, Liev Schreiber, and Birgitte Hjort Sørensen star in Josie Rourke’s revival of the Christopher Hampton drama, depicting the seductive games of aristocrats in pre-Revolutionary France. In previews.
In Adam Bock’s play, directed by Anne Kauffman, David Hyde Pierce plays a man who recovers from a breakup by looking for answers in astrological charts. In previews.
An evening with Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland, two Alan Alda-obsessed Upper West Side geezers played by the comedians Nick Kroll and John Mulaney. Alex Timbers directs. In previews. Opens Oct. 10.
Joe Sutton’s play, directed by Peter Hackett, imagines George Orwell on a book tour for “Animal Farm,” for which his publisher has deployed a young woman to keep his political pronouncements in check. Opens Oct. 12.
In David Leveaux’s revival of the David Hare drama, last seen at the Public in 1982, Rachel Weisz plays a British secret agent adjusting to everyday life after working in Nazi-occupied France. In previews.
Hal Brooks directs David Harrower’s adaptation of Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” in which a doctor discovers that his town’s main tourist attraction is toxic. In previews. Opens Oct. 9.
Primary Stages presents Horton Foote’s 1982 play about three women in Houston in the nineteen-twenties, directed by Michael Wilson and featuring the playwright’s daughter Hallie Foote. Opens Oct. 5.
Sarah Jones (“Bridge & Tunnel”) performs a new multicharacter solo show exploring the commercial sex industry, directed by Carolyn Cantor for Manhattan Theatre Club. In previews. Opens Oct. 18.
The Actors Company Theatre revives the eighteenth-century comedy by Oliver Goldsmith, in which a young lady poses as a barmaid to appeal to a shy suitor. Scott Alan Evans directs. In previews. Opens Oct. 16.
The comedian Lisa Lampanelli wrote and stars in a play that braids together the stories of four women with food issues. Jackson Gay directs WP Theatre’s production. In previews. Opens Oct. 7.
Keen Company revives this autobiographical musical by Jonathan Larson (“Rent”), about a composer on the verge of turning thirty. Jonathan Silverstein directs. In previews.
A.R. Gurney premières a pair of short plays: “Squash,” about a college professor grappling with a student’s provocative take on Plato, and “Ajax,” in which an actress turned teacher inhabits an ancient text.In previews.
Manhattan Theatre Club stages a play by Qui Nguyen, directed by May Adrales, about two Vietnam War refugees (based on the playwright’s parents) in a relocation camp in Arkansas. In previews.
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .
Bob Shuman, MFA, is a playwright, college professor, book writer, composer, agent, and editor of three titles in the Applause Theatre & Cinema Books Acting Series.
FESTIVAL/TOKYO SPEAKS WITH A DEFIANT VOICE
(Nobuko Tanaka’s article appeared in the Japan Times, 10/6.)
Press conferences are usually upbeat affairs, but at the one held to herald Festival/Tokyo — a two-month theater festival that kicks off Oct. 15 — Artistic Director Sachio Ichimura appears looking worried and begins proceedings by bemoaning the event’s financial situation and wondering aloud about its future.
It was quite a shock considering F/T is one of the country’s top theater happenings, and an annual must-see for many.
So, to discover what was going on, I sought out several people involved with the event. Gradually it became clear to me that the capital’s entire arts landscape is in the throes of unannounced seismic shifts.
A key sign of the change came when Yuriko Koike, Tokyo’s new governor, appeared in Minami Ikebukuro Park one recent sunny afternoon at the official opening ceremony for something called Tokyo Metropolitan Festival 2016.
(Read more)
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/
Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at [email protected] .