Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Hollywood Spends More Than Half of Its Film Budgets Outside the US, Union Study Shows

www.thewrap.com: Major Hollywood studios have gone from spending 72% of its production budgets within the United States at the end of the 20th century to spending more than half of that budget outside of the country, according to a new study commissioned by the entertainment industry’s major unions.

 

Students and Parents Protest After Wisconsin Superintendent Blocks High School Production of FLASHDANCE

BroadwayWorld: Students, parents, and community members in Watertown, Wisconsin rallied outside their school district offices this week after the interim superintendent blocked Watertown High School from staging Flashdance as its spring 2027 musical. The news was first reported by WPR.

 

Paramount completes $111B Warner merger, creating “Skydance” behemoth

Ars Technica: The post-merger company is called Skydance, taking the name of a firm that Paramount bought in a separate deal last year. The new Skydance combines two of the largest movie studios, streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max, CBS, CNN, “and a portfolio of live sports including CBS Sports and TNT Sports, as well as a deep programming library and expansive collection of brands and franchises,” Skydance said today in a press release announcing completion of the deal.

 

A Scottish "Midsummer!" Homecoming

College of Fine Arts: This summer, students, faculty and alumni from the School of Drama made a theatrical pilgrimage to Andrew Carnegie’s homeland of Scotland, where they performed a radically reimagined adaptation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

 

Ravinia Changed Almost Everything. The Trick Was Making It Feel Like Nothing Changed.

Architect Magazine: Few performance venues are asked to accommodate the Chicago Symphony Orchestra one night and a major pop act the next. For decades, that range has defined Ravinia—a historic outdoor music festival in Highland Park, Illinois, just north of Chicago—and it helped drive the just-completed transformation of its largest venue, the Hunter Pavilion.

 

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

IATSE Lauds Introduction of Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act, Urges Swift Passage

IATSE: The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) today applauded the introduction of the bipartisan Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act (MPTERA), which would create a federal incentive to level the playing field and bring film and television jobs back to the United States. The bill follows years of IATSE advocacy for a competitive, labor-based federal production incentive.

 

Reimagining Higher Education For The Future: A Fireside Chat with Ken Griffin at CMU

News - Carnegie Mellon University: Following the announcement of a historic $3 billion investment in Carnegie Mellon University from Citadel founder and CEO and founder of Griffin Catalyst Ken Griffin — the largest individual gift in the history of higher education, and which includes a new CMU campus in Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood — members of the Carnegie Mellon community were invited to join CMU President Farnam Jahanian and Griffin for a fireside chat.

 

Masks, Portals, and Non-Museums

ExhibiTricks: The Museum Exhibit Design Blog: Every few years, someone outside the museum world builds something that makes all of us inside the museum world squirm a little. People line up around the block. They pay real money (often more than museum admission). They come back again and again. And they tell their friends with the kind of breathless enthusiasm we'd love to hear about our galleries. So instead of grumbling about "those immersive things," let's look at what a few of them do right and steal (er, borrow) their best ideas.

 

Opinion: They Want Our Rhythm and Our Blues: AI and the New Digital Blackface

www.theroot.com: In the age of artificial intelligence (AI), the music industry has found a way to co-opt Black sound and swagger without paying a single Black artist. Meet “Sienna Rose.” Her sound is smoky, piano-driven neo-soul reminiscent of Alicia Keys. Depicted through imagery as a Black woman, she has attracted millions of monthly Spotify listeners and landed three songs on the Viral 50.

 

Theatre Wants Professional Artists. It Just Doesn’t Want to Employ Them.

theatreupstanders.substack.com: A short contract can be a real job, and a well-paid freelance practice can be a career. What bothers me and is a detriment to our field is the expectation that artists should keep collecting these scraps and keep calling it professional advancement. Why does theatre demand the availability of a profession while leaving so many of its practitioners to finance that availability themselves?

 

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Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Federal Tax Incentive for Filming Projects Extra $125B in Production

www.indiewire.com: A new study shows that if the United States were to adopt a federal film tax incentive program, the benefits could be enormous. Production spend between 2027 and 2035 could rise an extra $125.3 billion. Nearly $250 billion in overall income for the economy could be generated. The U.S. could add an estimated 143,500 full time jobs. And America’s share of filming around the world could reach as high as 65 percent of all film and TV projects.

 

SLAM FRANK Actor Reveals ‘People Have Walked Out’ of Controversial Off-Broadway Musical

BroadwayWorld: The production, which began preview performances earlier this month ahead of its official October 4 opening at the Orpheum Theatre, has been met with mixed responses. “I know that there are people who do get offended,” actor Olivia Bernábe, who stars as Anne, told The Guardian in an article published Saturday, September 26.

 

Confluence Theater of Pittsburgh announces 1st full season

triblive.com: On Wednesday, the new company announced its first full season, which will run throughout 2027. The season includes seven productions — one of which will be announced in the future — along with a “spirited holiday celebration,” education programs and more.

 

After Blackface at Blue Moon, Black Performers Are Asking Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ Community to Do More Than Be Outraged

QBurgh: An alleged blackface performance at Blue Moon Bar’s weekly Open Stage Wednesday has sparked anger, grief, and calls for accountability across Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ community, with Black performers asking not only how it happened, but what will change now that it has.

 

If Subscriptions Are Dying, Are We the Ones Killing Them?

AMERICAN THEATRE: Ask 10 theatre leaders whether subscriptions are dying and you’ll get 10 defensible answers. Some organizations have watched their base erode for a decade. Others will tell you, accurately, that their numbers have held steady or grown, and that the eulogies say more about which institutions get written about than about the field as a whole. All things are true at once, which is exactly the problem: It means that the health of any one organization’s subscription program tells you almost nothing about the health of subscriptions as a category.

 

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Paramount To Transform Hollywood With Warner Merger After AG Settlement That Clears Way For Warner Merger

www.forbes.com: An imminent settlement of the lawsuit by 12 states’ attorneys general blocking the $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery by much smaller rival Paramount Skydance removes one of the last barriers to a fundamental reshaping of Hollywood’s battered entertainment industry.

 

1776 Hair Plan-Related Lawsuit to Continue

BroadwayWorld: It has been over two-and-a-half years since Zuri Washington sued the 1776 tour producers for racial discrimination and retaliation, and finally a court has addressed the substance of her allegations. After a venue change and the filing of two amended complaints, a judge for the United States District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed Washington's claims for discrimination but allowed her claims for retaliation to continue.

 

AI and your intellectual property

www.thefabricator.com: In the 1980s, television stations across the U.S. picked up a tag line that originated in New York media for public service announcements that TV watchers from that decade will remember: “It’s 10:00 PM. Do you know where your children are?” Today, parents can track their children through their smartphones and tablets. They have a good handle on where they are most of the time. Can the same be said for manufacturing companies and their data? Do they know where that is?

 

George Lucas Reminds Hollywood Not to Listen to the Haters

gizmodo.com: Speaking to CBS Sunday Morning, Lucas was talking about the reaction to his tinkering with the Star Wars movies for the 1997 special editions when he dropped in this little gem. “It’s hard to explain to the studios that if you listen to the people who are unhappy, it’s not going to turn out well,” Lucas said. “It’s going to be sad. Because they’re not people who know how to make movies.”

 

Crisis at the Kennedy Center: Why Its Main Building Is Going Dark for Two Years

time.com: The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees on Tuesday voted to immediately close the lauded arts institution’s main building. President Donald Trump, who is its Chairman, announced the decision on Truth Social. Hours before the vote, a district court ruled against the Board’s latest effort to add Trump’s name back to the building—this time, in recognition of his purported role in the planned renovations. The closure decision also came one day after leadership claimed that the cultural center was on the brink of bankruptcy.

 

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Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Seeding the Chicago theater field with new productions and companies

Chicago Reader: In July, Oskar Eustis, the celebrated longtime artistic director of New York’s Public Theater (the venue where both A Chorus Line and Hamilton were birthed), announced he would be leaving his position in two years. In an interview with Michael Paulson of the New York Times, Eustis, while declaring the state of the Public itself “strong,” also said, “I think the American nonprofit theater movement is over. That doesn’t mean any individual theater is over. But every individual theater is having to make its own case and come up with its own business model. We’ve lost a lot of theaters, and we’re going to lose more.”

 

Kennedy Center could close as early as Tuesday, warns of bankruptcy, documents show

The Washington Post: Leaders of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, installed by President Donald Trump, say the center is on the brink of bankruptcy and argue that putting the president’s name on its facade — and thus ensuring his fundraising efforts — may be the only way to avoid imminent and “certain fiscal collapse,” according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

 

Songwriter Urges Supreme Court to Let Landmark Copyright Ruling Stand

www.billboard.com: The songwriter who won a landmark ruling on copyright termination is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reject efforts by major music companies to overturn it, telling the justices there is no “emergency” and that publishers are “doing just fine.”

 

What Burning Man’s Gen Z problem says about the festival

Salon.com: The first time Samantha R. went to Burning Man, it was on a whim. She hadn’t read much about it and had no idea what to expect. She received a free ticket from someone she met at a Grateful Dead event and had little time to prepare. She didn’t bring goggles or even a big coat to survive the cold, dusty nights. Despite the spontaneity and haphazardness of it all, which contributed to a rough burn, the 22-year-old returned on two more occasions — including this year.

 

The art of producing

Chicago Reader: Before any performer twirls a tassel, drops into a split, or picks up a mike, there’s a producer writing emails, organizing spreadsheets, calling venues, crunching numbers, creating posters, tracking ticket sales, wrangling tech information, hiring talent—you get the idea. I haven’t been producing that long, but from just the handful of shows I’ve put on, I can tell you it’s a heavy task.

 

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

The Creators of Come From Away Recall Living in NYC During 9/11, and How That Influenced Their Musical

Playbill: Irene Sankoff and David Hein have always considered their musical Come From Away as a show, not about 9/11, but about what happened on 9/12 and after. Notes Hein, "In times of tragedy, we often focus on the horrible things that happen. And in the days after, it's the wave of support and the wave of people who are doing good that doesn't get highlighted enough."

 

Laika Officially Doubles Down on Stop-Motion in the AI Era

collider.com: This past weekend, on Sunday during the Telluride Film Festival, Laika President and CEO Travis Knight sat down for a discussion with cinematographer and six-time Oscar nominee Caleb Deschanel and film expert Dave Karger to talk about Wildwood, the next stop-motion animated film from Laika.

 

Can More Pro-Shots Help Broadway’s Money Issues? Maybe, Says the Hadestown Film Team

Playbill: The Hadestown live stage film has successfully completed its run in movie theatres, taking home a very handsome $20.7 million over four weeks and making it the highest-grossing live stage film of all time (surpassing Hamilton)—and that's before you start counting on demand sales and rentals.

 

Pittsburgh CLO and Pittsburgh Public to Merge as Confluence Theater

AMERICAN THEATRE: In the latest news from a historic if bumpy theatre merger between Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera (CLO) and Pittsburgh Public Theater (PPT), a new name for the combined theatre has been announced: Confluence Theater of Pittsburgh. Confluence’s name was reportedly chosen by Pittsburgh residents themselves. According to release from the new company, it will combine the musicals that Pittsburgh CLO is known for with the classic and contemporary plays typically produced by Pittsburgh Public Theater.

 

Maybe Paramount-Warner Should Leave L.A.: Joseph Kahn Opinion Column

www.hollywoodreporter.com: However, for L.A., it’d be a death blow. The infrastructure is already suffering with vendors going out of business and crewmembers quitting. If Paramount-Warners leaves, the built-in advantage of being a mecca for filmmakers with access to top talent, props and equipment disintegrates overnight. Studio stockpiles of props, wardrobe, cranes and cameras can truck over to Nashville or Austin. Crews can suddenly live in lower-cost states and afford homes and schools for their kids. They may have to pray to Baby Jesus a little more, but a little Holy Ghost Power never hurt nobody.

 

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Merged groups announce Confluence Theater of Pittsburgh as new name

90.5 WESA: Confluence Theater of Pittsburgh is the name of Pittsburgh’s newest theater company — the result of the merger of two of its oldest troupes. The group announced the name Monday, about a month after the formal merger of Pittsburgh Public Theater and the Pittsburgh CLO.

 

The Federal Film and TV Tax Incentive Gets a Name as Momentum Builds

www.hollywoodreporter.com: Amid a precipitous drop in domestic film and television production in recent years, Hollywood has coalesced around support for a federal tax credit. It’ll almost always be cheaper to shoot in other countries, but the thinking is that government support could make it palatable to shoot more big-budget projects in the United States.

 

EFF to Courts: Don’t Rewrite Copyright Over AI Hype

Electronic Frontier Foundation: The history of technology is rife with copyright panics. In the 1980s, major rightsholders ran to Congress and the courts, claiming that videotape recorders (VTR) were “to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Then, the Supreme Court declined to embrace the hype, noting that the VTR was capable of all kinds of non-infringing uses, like time-shifting and cautioning courts to avoid rewriting copyright law in response to new technologies. We believe that courts now should be similarly wary about the hype surrounding AI.

 

8 things Gen Z sees as burnout that Boomers & Gen X just call having a job

stylegirlfriend.com: A 24-year-old and a 56-year-old describe the same Wednesday. The younger one says it was brutal. Back-to-back calls, a manager who wanted a revision, a Slack message at 6:40 that she answered from the couch. She uses the word burnout twice before she gets to what happened after work. The older one says it was Wednesday.

 

From Bacon to Bananas: Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2026 in 24 Shows

The Theatre Times: With more than 4,200 shows making up this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, twenty-four performances can hardly stand in for the whole thing. What follows is a subjective itinerary through a week shaped by my own tastes and curiosities, even if several stops were among the Festival’s conspicuous talking points. Across theater, comedy, clowning, and magic, certain motifs kept surfacing in parallel: the stories we tell about ourselves, the selves we perform for others, the seductions of visibility (both online and off), and the strange uses of laughter as camouflage, release, resistance, or simply a way of survival.

 

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Dolly Parton Turned Down Elvis. That May Have Been Her Smartest Move

www.hollywoodreporter.com: There’s a famous story in industry lore about how, back in the ‘70s, Elvis Presley’s team had come to Parton with an offer for The King to cover “I Will Always Love You.” It was a potentially life-changing offer, even for an already famous Parton, to have one of the world’s most beloved artists turn a song she’d written into a likely smash hit. But it came with strings attached: While Elvis didn’t write a word of the song, his manager, Colonel Tom Parker, demanded he get 50 percent of the publishing credit.

 

Artists Built A Site To Escape AI. Scrapers Are Coming For It Anyway

www.forbes.com: Cara, an image sharing social network built specifically for artists who do not consent to have their work used to train generative AI models, suffered a third scraping attack in the past ten days, with copyrighted images and metadata taken from the site without permission appearing on the open source data network Academic Torrents on August 22. This follows previous scrapes of the dataset posted on Reddit (since taken down by the original poster) and the AI model clearinghouse Hugging Face.

 

Why AI Filmmaking Will Fail: James Gray on Film's 'Vinyl' Retro Moment

www.indiewire.com: When it comes to AI, director James Gray doesn’t mince words. The auteur called the current push for AI-driven filmmaking “obscene,” but he told IndieWire in a recent interview he has increasingly come to believe that it is a movement that will ultimately fail.

 

TV’s Neurodivergent Casting Reckoning

www.hollywoodreporter.com: Television’s portrayal of neurodivergence has long suffered from a persistent blind spot. By casting neurotypical actors to play stereotypical — and often heavily coded yet undiagnosed — white male savant archetypes, Hollywood built a rigid standard that has largely erased women, people of color and the broader diversity of real-world neurodivergent experiences.

 

Disney patent could let attractions adapt to what guests want — or want to avoid

Attractions Magazine: A newly published patent application from Disney Enterprises describes a system that could learn what guests enjoy — or find uncomfortable — and use those preferences to recommend attractions, provide real-time warnings and, on compatible experiences, adjust elements including sound, lighting and motion. Disney even envisions giving thrill-seekers more of certain effects, such as increased G-forces on an individual simulator, within predetermined safety limits.

 

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Former Kennedy Center Arts Curator Details 'Cronyism, Incompetence, and Bizarre Moves' Amidst Trump Takeover

www.broadwayworld.com: The Kennedy Center has been a hot topic for the past year after the Trump administration took over leadership. Beginning with the removal of board members and Donald Trump assuming the role of chairman in 2025, the institution has faced ongoing restructuring, artist withdrawals, leadership departures, and programming shifts. It was also recently announced that the institution will shut down operations for two years to undergo renovations.

 

15 Chicago Theaters Cut Ties With Jeff Awards

www.broadwayworld.com: At least 15 Chicago theater companies have publicly cut ties with the Joseph Jefferson Awards after the organization named Invictus Theatre Artistic Director Charles Askenaizer "Best Director" at its Non-Equity ceremony on March 23, 2026. Askenaizer is the subject of an ongoing independent investigation into allegations of emotional abuse and harassment. He has denied the allegations.

 

Los Angeles City Film Czar Interview: 'Baywatch' and Cutting Red Tape

www.hollywoodreporter.com: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, aware of the city’s deepening production crisis — now a flashpoint in her reelection bid — appointed a filming czar to act as a liaison between entertainment productions and city departments. Steve Kang, a seasoned community affairs executive, started last year, running the Board of Public Works.

 

PGA Sustainability Toolkit Launches With Focus on Bottom Line

www.hollywoodreporter.com: The Producers Guild of America has unveiled a new sustainability initiative that is aimed at helping producers make the business case for eco-friendly decisions on film and television sets.

 

Why Two River Theatre Is Shifting to 7:30 PM Curtains

www.broadwayworld.com: Not long ago, I found myself doing that familiar pre-theater math: watching the clock at the end of the workday, checking train times, wondering if there was time to grab a quick dinner, and thinking, “Can I actually make this curtain without it feeling rushed?” It is a small thing, but it can make the difference between a great night out and a stressful one.

 

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

SAG-AFTRA and Studios to Resume Negotiations on April 27

www.hollywoodreporter.com: After the writers’ union wrapped a surprise deal with studios and streamers over the weekend, SAG-AFTRA announced that it will return to the bargaining table by the end of the month. The performers’ union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers resume negotiations on April 27

 

Intimacy coordinators' next chapter

NPR: Almost a decade after the height of the #MeToo movement, intimacy coordinators are a fixture on film sets. As of this year, the job is now covered by SAG-AFTRA, the labor union that represents actors.

 

Inside Chicago's innovative Steppenwolf Theatre Company as it marks 50 years

PBS News: Steppenwolf Theatre Company has long been one of the nation’s most influential ensemble companies. It's known for the actors it has launched and the groundbreaking work it has produced. It’s marking its 50th season at a moment of real uncertainty for theaters.

 

The V&A catalogue row shows China’s censorship now travels through cultural supply chains

theconversation.com: When people think about censorship, they often imagine an obvious ban: a book prohibited, an exhibition closed, or a speaker silenced. But the recent revelation that London’s Victoria and Albert Museum changed exhibition catalogues at the request of its Chinese printer points to something subtler.

 

How to Embrace the Dramaturgy of Creative Caption Design

HowlRound Theatre Commons: Captions play an important role in the accessibility of theatrical productions for all audience members, particularly those who are d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHOH), neurodivergent, and/or living with sensory processing disorders. Secondary to their use as an accessibility tool, captions are an important visual element of a theatrical production and should be approached with the same thought, artistry, and attention as design elements like lighting and projections. This is where the concept of creative captions come in.