“For the theatre group, it was a time of tumult, turnover, ‘the sector is in disaster’ essays, present cancellations as a consequence of sickness, and budgetary shortfalls.” But additionally a response: “If our discipline is on fireplace, [we] need to be water.’”
That is an remark in a put up providing highlights of 2023 from HowlRound, which is arguably nonetheless a theater weblog, though it calls itself a theatre commons. In any case, lots of the theater bloggers beneath appeared to see 2023 the identical manner — as a 12 months of disaster but in addition considered one of hope. For some, it turned out to be a greater 12 months than the earlier three, which doesn’t sound prefer it’s saying a lot – till you learn, say, Adam Szymkowicz’s abstract of his landmark accomplishment, or Samuel Leiter’s description of his 31st revealed theater e-book. The appears to be like again and glimpses ahead are full of great points – the rising Broadway ticket costs, the impact on Broadway of the brand new congestion pricing coverage, modifications in theatergoing demographics, the weird banning of performs (see each Szymkowicz and Howard Sherman.) However there are additionally present-moment theatrical enthusiasms – which appears a transparent signal that theater, and even theater bloggers, will persist.
Adam Szymkowicz provides an in depth assessment of his 12 months, which was a contented one – not simply busy and productive (“I wrote lots this 12 months–4 one act performs, 3 full size performs, one quick movie and a e-book about playwriting”) however life-changing: He was capable of stop his long-time job at Juilliard and write full-time.
And in one thing of a theme for theater in 2023 , he studies that his play “Marian, or The True Story of Robin Hood,” a gender-bending take through which Robin Hood is basically Maid Marian in disguise, was canceled in a faculty in Fort Wayne, Indiana however then “made nationwide information when college students determined to supply it themselves.” In what seems like an apt ethical to this story, the publicity may clarify why the play was produced so extensively in 2023: 32 productions!
The Unhealthy Boy of Musical Theater, Scott Miller, assessed how his theater firm New Line fared in 2023, but once more in verse, extra optimistically than final 12 months,
‘Twas a 12 months stuffed with New Line, and yep, we’re nonetheless right here!
Inform me, who would’ve guessed we’d survive another 12 months!
However we’re rapidly returning to extra stable floor,
Because of New Line’s supporters, whose assist’s been profound!
These darkish occasions remind us how a lot we want Tales,
To assist us make sense of our stumbles and glories;
So New Line’s nonetheless right here, busting all classes!
Jan Simpson tells us she didn’t have such a contented 12 months, which is why in Broadway & Me, her end-of-year put up lists ten reveals that have been (as her title explains) “Not the Greatest Reveals in 2023 However These That Put A Smile on My Face Once I Wanted One” together with “The Phantom of the Opera,” which she had averted seeing for 35 years. “However after I heard that this landmark present was closing, I knew I needed to lastly see it. And I’m so glad I did….I already miss seeing the enduring white masks that sat on the Majestic Theater’s marquee and reigned over forty fourth Road for all these many years. “
In Broadway Journal, Philip Boroff dissects the most recent report from the Broadway League on the demographics of Broadway, discovering some “silver linings” within the diminished attendance: “25 to 49-year-olds who attended Broadway reveals outnumbered these 50 and up for the primary time since 2008-09.” Additionally: Whereas the Asian, Hispanic and mixed-race viewers was smaller, Black admissions jumped 14 p.c. The rise coincided with a revival of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson with Samuel L. Jackson in an acclaimed ensemble, in addition to a Tony Award-winning revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog. The season had the biggest Black viewers since 2011-12…”
In one other put up, Boroff appears to be like forward, reporting of the separate efforts to switch to Broadway two reveals with latest runs elsewhere – Stereophonic, which ran Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, and a musical model of The Nice Gatsby which ran at Paper Mill Playhouse.
Ken Davenport appears to be like with the eyes of a producer at My 10 favourite Broadway moments in 2023, which aren’t moments on stage, however extra like information and figures: In 2023, for instance, six Broadway reveals introduced recoupment (three musicals and three performs), and 237 individuals made their Broadway debuts.
Wanting forward, Davenport expresses blended emotions about New York Metropolis’s new congestion pricing plan. Beginning within the spring, the motive force of any automotive might want to pay $15 to enter Manhattan south of Sixtieth Road earlier than 9 p.m, with the cash going to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to fund mass transitc. As a New York Metropolis resident, he sees a lot advantage in it. However as a Broadway producer, “I’m scared.” It’s dangerous for Broadway, “principally as a result of it’s aimed squarely on the viewers that has been the toughest to get to come back again to Broadway”—individuals who dwell within the suburbs
George Hunka generated a number of posts whereas getting ready for a visit to Vienna, together with one about “The Final Days of Mankind,” a mammoth satirical play concerning the metropolis written by Karl Kraus across the finish of World Battle I. The play is so lengthy that Kraus estimated {that a} efficiency of the total play would run to “ten evenings in terrestrial time.” There was an try to carry out it a decade in the past, however Hunka focuses on a sequence of dioramas by an artist named Deborah Sengl primarily based on the play, “with stuffed rats standing in for human actors.”
Howard Sherman reasonably frighteningly catalogues dramatic works swept up in Florida e-book bans, which embody 4 performs by Aristophanes, the collected performs by Lillian Hellman, “M. Butterfly” by David Henry Hwang and “Sweat” by Lynn Nottage.
Maybe much more disturbing is the story Sherman recounts, in three earlier posts; how officers of the Sherman Unbiased Faculty District in Sherman, Texas have been disturbed by the “mature grownup themes, profane language, and sexual content material” of a present deliberate by the scholars of Texas Sherman Excessive Faculty, and wanted to assessment “all features of the manufacturing.” The present in query: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! This can be a sophisticated story, with a suggestion that their objection was initially to the forged of a trans scholar in one of many minor roles.
The weblog’s two authors provided “our favourite productions” of 2023, after which Jeff Kyler gave his three theatrical resolutions for 2024:
See as many new musicals as potential.
Convey my common paid ticket value down. Method down
Discover theater in quite a lot of venues and genres
Lauren Halvorsen’s assessment of 2023 is just for paid subscribers, but it surely’s value excerpting her preface:
Within the annals of regional theatre historical past, 2023 will at all times be the 12 months of The Disaster™. I don’t must meticulously recount each emergency fundraising marketing campaign, theatre closure, layoff cycle, and season discount… It’s straightforward to really feel discouraged about The State of The Discipline, however each time I really feel hopeless (which is commonly, as I’m a catastrophizing depressive), I take into consideration the primary line of my favourite Alice Walker poem: “I’ve discovered to not fear about love; however to honor its coming with all my coronary heart.” It’s onerous to not agonize over an unsure future — however even when we are able to’t but think about how we get there, we are able to honor the transformation forward.
Chris Peterson’s put up on his On Stage Weblog proclaims “Broadway Ticket Costs Received’t Ever Get Cheaper” and he explains why: prices, restricted seating capability, excessive demand, unionized expertise. He concludes: “I mentioned it a few years in the past and I’ll say it once more now – the one manner Broadway thrives and survives the following 50 years is thru streaming choices. Till the powers-that-be settle for that actuality, don’t count on ticket costs to lower.”
Samuel Leiter turns his theater weblog right into a theater e-book weblog, no less than termporarily, describing his two newest books — his thirtieth, revealed initially of final 12 months Meiji Kabuki: Japanese Theatre via Overseas Eyes, his 31st, simply revealed Brooklyn Takes the Stage: Nineteenth-Century Theater within the Metropolis of Church buildings.
In a separate put up, he opinions Hermione Lee’s biography of Tom Stoppard, who he says makes a convincing case for Stoppard being the English-speaking world’s foremost dwelling playwright (and certainly “it’s onerous to give you anybody comparable, no matter what language they write in”) destined to get the Nobel Prize in Literature
For a unique viewpoint, Rev Stan’s Theater Weblog feedback on having seen Tom Stoppard’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll” at Hampstead Theatre, in its annual checklist of prime 10 favorite performs (and 4 least favorite): This was my final try to seek out an attractive Tom Stoppard play that isn’t Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Useless. And it didn’t work. I didn’t care about any of the characters or get many of the cultural/historic references, which left me feeling silly and aggravated.
In his once-a 12 months weblog posting at Theatre Afficionado at Giant, Kevin Daly lists My 12 months in Present Music, from Six on January 1st to Kimberly Akimbo on December 31st.
Brian Eugenio Herrera provides what he guarantees to be the primary of a month-to-month foray into a selected work of theater; this primary is his tackle Annie Baker’s Infinite Life, with some normal observations as properly concerning the playwright. “What I most savor about Annie Baker’s performs is the belief that they put money into the capability of her actors (and her audiences) to hear, to watch, and to be unsure… or what Vogue’s Liz Appel describes because the “expertise of attunement.”
Associated
