Worth a Look

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

‘Why aren’t there Oscars for what we do?’ Choreographer Ellen Kane lets rip

Stage | The Guardian: Ellen Kane is on a roll. When we speak, the choreographer and movement director has two shows running, Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre, and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 at the Donmar. She has just finished Why Am I So Single?, the follow-up from the writers of Six, the smash hit about Henry VIII’s wives, and she’s in rehearsals for the revival of Dear England, James Graham’s funny and stirring depiction of Gareth Southgate’s tenure as England manager. If you watched all those shows in a row, you would have no idea the same person had a hand in them all, such is the art of the movement director, a job that many may not even realise exists. But it’s an essential one.

In 2021–22 Broadway Season, Black Actors Saw Large Increase in Representation While Other POC Groups Saw Decrease

Playbill: The 2021–22 season was a banner year for Broadway. It came as theatres were reopening after the 16-month pandemic shut-down. And after the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, which called for greater awareness of systemic racism and more diversity within all areas of American life, the theatre industry responded by having 12 out of the 33 shows that Broadway season written by a BIPOC writer. That was the year where a musical by a Black writer with an all-Black cast won the Tony Award for Best Musical: A Strange Loop.

New Audience Behavior Study Shows Promising Signs

AMERICAN THEATRE: JCA Performing Arts has released a new study on Trends in Audience Behavior: Elections, Shadow Audiences & Hidden Treasures. The results show a performing arts sector that has still not returned to pre-pandemic revenue levels, but with some intriguing and promising bright spots.

Theatre’s thriving horror revival reflects a cultural moment of collective anxiety

theconversation.com: The stage has long presented horror as entertainment, from 19th-century ghost and revenge melodramas to the blood-soaked spectacles of the grand-guignol, the Parisian “theatre of horror’.

SNL Costumes Through the Years, Photos: Coneheads to Target Lady

wwd.com/pop-culture: “Saturday Night Live” is the most Emmy-winning show in history, with 11 nominations in the Outstanding Costumes for a Variety, Nonfiction or Reality Programming category and one victory for costume designer Tom Broecker in 2014. Since 1975, the show has launched countless careers, catchphrases and, of course, memorable costumes that have inspired Halloween outfits everywhere.

Worth a Look

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

Producers Guild Calls Its Profession The ‘Pilot Light’ On Productions

www.forbes.com: When you hear about the year’s biggest films, the popular actors are often the first to be mentioned - then the director, maybe the writer - but what else? One organization celebrating 75 years in existence wants to remind us all about the pivotal role that producers consistently play on productions, big and small.

 

With Wildfires Contained, Hollywood Workers Try to Rebuild

www.thewrap.com: On Jan. 16, it was all hands on deck at the IATSE Local 80 headquarters in Burbank, and not just within the entertainment crew workers’ union. Representatives from the Motion Picture & Television Fund and Entertainment Community Fund were on hand to accept applications for financial assistance. Grief counselors and insurance advisors were available for meetings on the second floor.

 

Island Shakespeare Festival’s Sustainability in Action

HowlRound Theatre Commons: Tucked into the far northwest corner of the continental United States, nestled into the waters of Puget Sound, lies the forty-mile-long island of Tscha-kole-chy, colonially known as Whidbey Island, Washington. Pacific Ocean winds rush through majestic Deception Pass, rocking towering fir trees. Killer whales splash past the oyster-strewn shoreline (some sporting a dead salmon as a hat, potentially this season’s orca fashion trend). This fantastical place is also the real home of an outdoor theatre, Island Shakespeare Festival (ISF).

 

Jennifer Jones' Experience as the First Black Rockette

Dance Magazine: On January 31, 1988, I made my national debut with the world-famous Radio City Rockettes at the NFL Super Bowl halftime show in San Diego. It’s no exaggeration or cliché to say that it was an impossible illusion made real for my younger self, who desperately wanted to succeed as a dancer and performer.

 

How Sumo Wrestling Became New York’s Hottest New Play

www.thedailybeast.com: A small group sits in a windowless Public Theater rehearsal room, but the combination of dramatic taiko drumming, the sight of many of the actors clad only in the traditional mawashi (cloth-belt) costumes, and the painful thwack, thwack, thwack of bodies hitting the hard surface of the dohyō (ring) over and over again makes it feel as if we are at an actual sumo wrestling bout.