Clockwise from high left: Heidi Schreck in “What the Structure Means to Me” (picture by Joan Marcus); The scene store at Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Cables, Fla.; Ron Cephas Jones in “Richard III” (picture by Joan Marcus); Guadalís del Carmen, Christin Eve Cato, and Julissa Contreras (picture by Valerie Terranova Images); Luke Halpern, Alec Phan, and Crystal Claros in “Tick, Tick…Increase!” (picture by Jenn Udoni)
Although 2023 was the 12 months that American Theatre lastly got here again into print after a COVID-induced hiatus, that didn’t decelerate our publishing on-line, the place we’re nonetheless in a position to be well timed and go lengthy in methods we sometimes can’t on paper. Accordingly, our analytics present that readers had roughly equal curiosity in information and in-depth options—and never solely as a result of there was an additional serving to of each referred to as for in a time of contraction and nervousness for the nation’s theatres.
As all the time with these round-ups, we’ll first inform you which tales you clicked on most, then inform you which nice items too lots of you appear to have missed.
2023’s Most In style Posts
- Theatre in Disaster: What We’re Shedding, and What Comes Subsequent. This extra-long piece, which shared a byline amongst six writers, did its finest to reckon with the theatre’s summer time of discontent, by which a cascade of closures and cancellations had many within the trade on edge and worrying that the sky was falling. Whereas our headline used the phrase “disaster” advisedly, and the piece concluded with an inventory of 35 U.S. corporations that had shuttered since early 2020, we additionally reported indicators of resilience and lifelike optimism amid the gloom.
- Artists Repertory Theatre Suspends Manufacturing on 2023-24 Season. Coming in August, only a month after the above piece, this information was a blow not just for the Portland, Ore., theatre in query however for its new creative director, Jeanette Harrison, who had solely simply gotten located and picked an bold season when the theatre’s board pulled the plug and laid her off.
- The Difficult Triumph of ‘Right here Lies Love.’ This considerate essay by Amanda L. Andrei (which we favored a lot, we included it in our Fall 2023 print situation) examined David Byrne and Alex Timbers’s immersive musical from a wide range of angles, from its groundbreaking employment of so many Filipino American abilities on Broadway to its controversial portrayal of the historical past of U.S. relations with the Philippines.
- The Prime 10* Most-Produced Performs of the 2023-24 Season. These lists are likely to do nicely, for apparent causes. This 12 months particularly, I feel they could have drawn further consideration for the mere concept that there have been any performs being “most-produced” in any respect, in addition to for the clear image they paint of an trade judiciously balancing relevance (What the Consitution Means to Me) and familiarity (Dial M for Homicide) in its programming.
- New Repertory Theatre to Shut Doorways After 40 Seasons. One other little bit of shitty information, coming down in October. As Jenna Scherer wrote in a beautiful memorial tribute, New Rep had set itself aside with progressive, usually bold programming at its Watertown, Mass., location. However a return to programming this 12 months after years of pandemic lockdown couldn’t survive fundraising shortfalls, so it was curtains for yet one more mainstay.
- The Large Crunch: Theatre’s Labor and Supplies Disaster. Invoice Hirschman’s piece from June put its finger on one motive the 12 months was so robust for the nation’s theatres: The return from lockdown coincided not solely with inflation in the price of supplies however with a shortage of labor, as lots of theatre’s important staff had spent the pandemic discovering different, much less punishing avenues for his or her abilities.
- The Prime 20 Most-Produced Playwrights of the 2023-24 Season. One other well-liked listing, this 12 months’s featured greater than the same old variety of musical theatre librettists, each residing and useless, in a single signal of a programming pattern towards the tuneful.
- Some Exhausting and Lovely Truths About Making Performs. Each every now and then a author involves us with an essay, generally primarily based on a speech they gave someplace or a guide they’re engaged on. On this case, it was the latter, and the writer was playwright Steven Dietz, who’s been no stranger in our pages over the a long time, with some bracing recommendation for writers (together with the clever admonition that “the author you envy has outworked you”).
- 3 Issues to Know Concerning the Miracle That Was Ron Cephas Jones. We misplaced and paid tribute to a variety of greats this 12 months, however this fierce, humorous, shifting farewell to the actor finest recognized for his work in LAByrinth Theater productions, Clyde’s on Broadway, and the TV present This Is Us did stand out, not least as a result of it was written by Jones’s longtime colleague and pal Stephen Adly Guirgis.
- NYC’s Metropolitan Playhouse to Shut After 31 Years. This one hit residence for me personally, as this occurred to be the one New York Metropolis theatre I labored at in knowledgeable capability (as composer/music director on the present The Satan and Tom Walker). A tiny firm distinguished by its emphasis on rescuing early American performs, in addition to on commissioning new ones about its neighborhood, it fell sufferer to what creative director Alex Roe known as “the bounds inherent in an organization of our small dimension…It’s time to draw the curtain on an exquisite run.”
As all the time, we thanks for studying (and studying this far). Whereas we’ve you, please take into account studying (and sharing) a few of the following 2023 posts (for the sake of this listing, in contrast to the one above, we’ve excluded posts that additionally appeared in our Fall 2023 situation, most of which is on-line right here).
Louder Than Phrases: Discovering Trans Pleasure in ‘Tick, Tick…Increase!’ Woodzick, who hosts the podcast Theatrical Mustang, kicked off the 12 months with this inspiring report about Bo Frazier’s trans and gender non-conforming revival of Jonathan Larson’s musical for Chicago’s BoHo Theatre.
The Play That Bought Away: A Historical past of ‘The Register Sidney Brustein’s Window.’ Elise Harris contributed this must-read deep dive into the contested historical past of Lorraine Hansberry’s last play on the eve of its starry revival at BAM (which later moved to Broadway), as a part of our three-story package deal in regards to the seldom revived work.
Exhausting of Listening to Shouldn’t Must Be This Exhausting. Theatrical musician Jo Brook contributed this fascinating, usually harrowing take a look at working in theatre as a hard-of-hearing particular person, which, with the steering and encouragement of affiliate editor Alexandra Pierson, Brook was a helpful, wide-ranging call-in for better entry for all disabled theatre staff.
‘This Is Why We Inform Tales’: 3 Afro-Latina Playwrights on Their Off-Broadway Debuts. This dialogue, hosted by Jacob Santos, marked the extraordinary convergence of NYC premieres of latest performs by Guadalís Del Carmen (Bees & Honey), Christin Eve Cato (Sancocho), and Julissa Contreras (Vámonos). “It’ll be the primary time that my household can come out and watch a full manufacturing of mine,” stated Contreras. “This isn’t going to be my mother and the elders being like, ‘Oh, that was good, it was fairly, however I don’t know what I used to be watching.’” Extra of this, please.
When the Course of Is the Drawback. Alexandra Pierson reported this difficult, nuanced piece a couple of dispute that arose between playwright Mushaq Mushtaq Deen and New Dramatists, the place he was a resident, and grew right into a wider battle over privilege and process that appeared to me as emblematic of the nonprofit theatre’s systemic challenges as Francisco Mendoza’s post-mortem of The Lark.
How Does the WGA Strike Have an effect on the Theatre? Ask Playwrights. Intrepid reporter Amelia Merrill first headed out to the picket strains to seek out out if extra new performs can be one byproduct of writers not working in movie and TV, however whereas she was reporting, a contemporary controversy erupted over whether or not writers ought to attend the televised Tony Awards, which famously increase Broadway ticket gross sales (and therefore theatre staff’ livelihoods). A deal was labored out by presstime, however the seemingly zero-sum standoff showcased the excessive stakes of the battle for all involved.
No Sondheim Is Alone: 3 Administrators on His First Posthumous Revivals. I hosted a whole lot of meaty Q&As this 12 months, however this one with Into the Woods‘s Lear deBessonet, Sweeney Todd‘s Thomas Kail, and Merrily We Roll Alongside‘s Maria Friedman is a chunk I’ve gone again to reread repeatedly, simply because there’s a lot great things in it—not solely about Sondheim particularly however in regards to the artwork of theatre and what it has to say in regards to the world.
Black Ensemble Theater: The Jackie Taylor Story. Profiles of theatre leaders will be inspiring, entertaining, generally fascinating. Seldom are they as instructional and eye-opening as this piece by Crystal Paul in regards to the longtime chief of one in all Chicago’s most profitable but least extensively recognized theatres. I defy you to learn this and stay hopeless about the way forward for the artwork type.
Decentering Doom: A Phrase From Chicago Theatre Employees. Talking of Chicago-based antidotes to despair, this piece, co-authored by Yasmin Zacaria Mikhaiel and Elsa Hiltner, explicitly got down to counter the disaster narratives that took maintain of theatre protection this 12 months with some examples of how the city’s theatres and artists are rebuilding the trade on their very own phrases. (For the document: Our metrics confirmed this submit was the eleventh most learn of 2023.)
Superheroes on Native Land. This three-part collection by Todd London is a bona fide #longread a couple of years-long course of undertaken by Cornerstone Theater Firm in South Dakota’s tribal lands to create a play about and for the Lakota and Dakota folks of the area, by a regionally raised writer making a homecoming, playwright Larissa FastHorse. To this point, it’s a bumpy and exquisite trip (half 3 needs to be out subsequent week) into territory, I feel it’s truthful to say, that in all probability solely American Theatre would dare to discover.
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