Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...
Are Chicago’s theater awards broken? The Jeffs face growing backlash
WBEZ Chicago: A week after “boos” rained down in a ceremony honoring some of Chicago’s top storefront theater companies, the Joseph Jefferson Awards — known conversationally as “the Jeffs” and akin to the local Tonys — are facing backlash.
Kennedy Center begins layoffs, rocking institution ahead of two-year closure
The Washington Post: The Kennedy Center began layoffs on Thursday, initiating the first wave of anticipated cuts tied to President Donald Trump’s plan to shut down the institution for two years. Multiple departments were affected — including programming, development, advertising, marketing and the office of the president — according to multiple people at the center who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel matters.
This Piece May Not Be Fed Into Any LLM or Other AI Software for Any Reason Whatsoever
HowlRound Theatre Commons: I recently heard that a large theatre organization screened plays for a competition by feeding them into a large language model (LLM). Then, I read two more accounts on a playwriting forum about other theatres that did this for marketing or public relations purposes. A couple of months ago, this happened to me firsthand. I learned that a theatre put a draft of my new play into an LLM to generate marketing materials. I expressed my concern to the theatre immediately, and I corresponded with a lawyer at the Dramatists Guild of America who gave me language that I could incorporate into my plays moving forward.
South Africa's Market Theatre hits 50
NPR: When it first started in the 1970s, South Africa's Market Theatre staged plays considered to be so subversive that it became a regular target of the apartheid government's zealous censors. Even the fact that its audiences were made up of Black and white South Africans mingling together was unheard of in a city where the law separated areas and people by race.
‘The Book of Mormon’ Is Sorry if You Were Offended for 15 Years
The New York Times: No one involved knew what to expect as the musical with the bizarre title prepared for its arrival on Broadway in 2011. There had been no tryout. Two of its authors, Trey Parker and Matt Stone of “South Park” fame, were newcomers to the theater, except that, as teenagers, Parker played Sammy Fong in “Flower Drum Song” and Stone played Danny Zuko in “Grease.”
