We really don't care about theatre do we?

Last month I've been to a Proust theatre adaptation.
My favorite shows are from Pina Bausch, Alain Platel en Jerome Bel.
I was more interested in dance-theatre than in plays really.

I think modern/contemporary dance is no big issue here either tho.

I am interested in musicals up to and including (some of) Sondheim, from a pop, maybe even rock 'n roll, perspective. But as a phenomenon today, I think there's little to talk about because they have almost nothing to do with changes in culture. I don't know if that's a cause or effect of their audience (at least in New York) - very old people and tourists.

Being a social outcast has some advantages, then!

But no, I really don't care about theatre. Not that much.

Thus I am "sophisticated."

I don't see any theater at all, really. I've not even been able to keep up with film for the past few years, and at some point I gave up even trying; theater's unfortunately even a step below that in priorities.

edmonton theater is really vivid and i try to see one a month, but it is prohibtivley expensive.

Quite so. This is the strength and the weakness of theater.

What about the differences between watching a concert video or being at a concert. The is more excitment and energy live, it is happening 'now', and there is no setbacks of use of media when seeing it live.

I think potentially theater could be one of the most amazing artforms, but I've never seen anyone do much good with it.

and Top Girls at the Guthrie Lab- no idea.

anyway the Guthrie is nice and usually lush and well-produced an stuff, and i get starry thinking about upcoming Shakespeare but it is warping my young mind by relentlessly beating on about the CLASSICS. etc. i really need to find myself a wealthy sugar-momma to take out to other theaters.

ok i got my tightpants on- i'm off to lurk 'mysteriously' outside high-priced Edina hairsalons.

good theatre is great. people who think theatre is obsolete know nothing.

In addition Lepage/ Ex Machina were frequent visitors to Glasgow and i think i have seen most oof his plays here. Theatre de Complicite don't come here anymore either. I miss stuff like this.

Of course, this is only true if you disregard the technical differences between onstage performance, film and television. As far as I am concerned the differences really are minor technicalities.

In all three media you have scripted dialogue telling a story with actors, costumes, scenery, lighting, incidental music, and so on.

The fact that a camera lens imposes a control over the audience's point-of-view that cannot be utilized in stage performances does not make much difference in my view. Stage direction tries to filter the audience's attention, too, except it uses lighting effects, blocking of actor's movements, and other technical means that are somewhat less effective than a camera. The goal is quite similar.

Theater people are just blinded by their nostalgic love of certain techniques that must be modified or discarded in a filmed setting as opposed to a stage setting. They identify these technicalities with 'theater', abhor the new technicalities of movies and tv, and overlook the overwhelming similarities between all the various forms of the modern theater.

you're making like montage is just another nifty gadget in the film director's toolbox; really it is ESSENTIAL to film, much more so than lighting and blocking is to theatre

xpost

the spatial quality of film and theater are to a large extent opposed.... the camera's "field of vision" is like an upside-down triangle, whereas a conventional stage is a bit the opposite (why it's rare for a theater director to stage a signification action in the back of the stage--harder to ensure that the audience's attention is directed to it). so they pose very different staging problems. i don't quite buy aimless's argument that this means they are different only in the method by which an audience's attention is directed. i think there is a place for ontological speculation....

that one's easy to brainfart

is it though

if you're directing, sure, because you're facing the stage which flips things in your brain, whereas if you're on stage you're facing the audience and SR and SL are literally your left and your right.

yeah everyone confuses SL and SR eventually. i'm not scorning asking about upstage either! it was just v funny.

we had a fairly disastrous tech rehearsal for the 0rlando Fringe yesterday, in which we didn't finish the light and sound cues, and didn't get to run the show at all. for Fringe, you get one four hour tech rehearsal...and that's it (unless you buy another one, which we didn't).

so tonight opens and....as expected, half the sound cues were late, lighting was all wrong, and we entered and exited in complete broad daylight at least three or four times. and we had issues navigating the curtain, which has a difficult to locate slit. AND I managed to lose a piece of my costume between last night and today.

but...nobody died!

things drastically improved, positive review from local theatre critic (for show AND me).

few pics from it

https://i.ibb.co/vJB3HhJ/283113619-692476275386095-6316558625155990583-n.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/dgb3XxS/283573100-692476142052775-7998236158147932870-n.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/cDGSxf3/283113619-692475638719492-9026594461226398902-n.jpg

FYI forks is 100% OTM about A Strange Loop

i remain shocked that it blew up as big as it did and that broadway audiences are flocking to a musical featuring a non-ironic number about a suburban buttfucking daddy hookup
can't wait to see what Jackson does next

You mean non-ironic master/slave complete with n-words and racism suburban butt-fucking daddy hookup

It was great. It was also basically him having a two hour argument with himself and his parents, on stage. I didn't really think about it at the time, because it was pretty dazzling, but yeah.

seeing this when it was off broadway and i had no expectations was a punch to the mouth
have not seen the new staging but it's hard to imagine anyone can be as good as larry owens was in the lead.

I'm pretty much retired from theatre now but the director I did the Fringe Festival with the last five years needed another cold reader for a reading of the terrible Moose Murders for a fundraiser.

So I'm here doing that tonight. Playing Stinky. They're so not used to be not being in their shows anymore that I showed up without a script and dude got annoyed, not realizing he'd posted it in the FB group that I'm not a part of cos I'm not in their show.

Should be fun.

*used to me

He just handed me the script and it's 90 fucking pages lmao like I was going to print that at home

The character is a 20 year old who wants to fuck his mother.

What could go wrong?

been stress-testing myself the last month or two: designing lights for one musical (the netflix adaptation starred meryl streep) while appearing as a high school theater teacher in another (the original production starred stephanie hsu) and simultaneously directing a student showcase because all of a sudden i actually do teach high school theater (in a neighboring town). the streep show's done; the hsu show closes this weekend; the school play's next thursday; next friday i start rehearsals as benedick in much ado. not sure yet if i care about theatre, but by the time i am it may be too late.

Benedick!! Love that guy

dang, when do you sleep?!

break legs in Much Ado!

thank you! tbh the only thing rly cutting into my sleep rn is stellaris. everything else just makes me need it.

benedick's speech about change (doth not the appetite alter?) is so major: you're laughing at the character rationalizing so you don't notice shakes has begun preaching straight to you about his core/heart stuff.

barbaric imo to expect actors to print their own scripts. there should be a big clean stack of them on a table when you walk in.

I saw a fantastic production of Much Ado at The Globe a few years ago.. the whole thing set during the Mexican Revolution! What I remember most is the guy who played Benedick was just so good at it that his soliloquies just came upon you without you even realising that he was doing one.. it just felt so natural, like he was just sharing his thoughts with us. Halfway through I'd be like, oh, right, this is a monologue!

Tomorrow we're off to see Vardy vs Rooney: the Wagatha Christie Trial at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End!

Over the past couple of months we've seen Jessica Swale's Nell Gwynn at the Oxford Playhouse and Lucy Prebble's The Effect at the Burton Taylor Theatre which is a tiny place (40 seats or so?) behind the Playhouse. Both excellent.

it's the most exhausting time of the year:

https://i.imgur.com/IIjgV1Y.jpg

a few times a year the theater i work at hosts these vast scripted showcases put on by a kids' dance studio that rehearses in their own space for months; holds a single dress rehearsal in our theater, during the real-time runtime of which i design+program the lights+fx; then opens the following night. always a lil fraught and becomes more so if i have a conflict and have to deputize someone (last time i did this i did not see the results of course but afterwards the studio's formidable auteur demanded a reduction). cannot work this weekend's show because am starting rehearsals up the street for my own prod of the tempest, but was able to design the show at dress tonight accompanied by my substitute for the operation, ben, a much sharper guy and faster learner than last time who is very interested in and excited about the work and whom i'm not worried about, but whom i have had to train up for this v quickly. as we passed thru the office on our way into the house, the theater's exec director stopped us to say meaningfully, under his breath, "ben is an experienced theater tech." ben has run lights for our last few concerts, so we nodded knowingly and said "of course he is." we entered the house and climbed to the tech table. thirty seconds after the show's director sat down next to us and i made introductions, ben neatly clicked a pen open over his copy of the script, looked at the first lighting cue, and in a v winning dot-every-i just-checking kind of voice said "what's 'upstage' mean again?"

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, May 12, 2022 10:23 PM bookmarkflaglink

update: this guy (not really named ben) is now my constant collaborator and has entirely taken over designing these dance shows; could not live without him.

Go Ben go

I've been thinking about trying to go to the theatre regularly in London w/o seeing any adaptations or revivals. Could be a fun challenge!

i was in the West End yesterday and passed by VANYA starring andrew scott and i was like wow, i didn’t know about that, i’ll see andrew scott in uncle vanya and i crossed the street to read the notices and finally realised it’s a ONE MAN SHOW inspired by uncle vanya and instantly i lost all interest can you imagine

Been going on about an album of Patti Lupone cabaret performances from 1980 called Live at Les Mouches an another thread but maybe this is a better place. From earlier today before the slowdown:

Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

This thing has such a cult there was even a reanactment tribute: https://playbill.com/article/diva-talk-chatting-with-lupone-at-les-mouchess-leslie-kritzer-plus-rogers-evita-on-disc-com-135109

From the other thread:
Been digging a live version of “Because the Night” by Patti…Lupone. She makes it sound like an outtake from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 9 March 2024 11:50 (yesterday) link

From this:
https://playbill.com/article/patti-lupone-at-les-mouches-vintage-lupone-club-act-arrives-in-stores-nov-11-com-155028

― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 9 March 2024 11:57 (yesterday) link

Which was a midnight Saturday cabaret show she was doing in 1980 while she was in the midst of doing Evita.

― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 9 March 2024 11:59 (yesterday) link

From old cassette tapes! Pretty appropriate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMRF7PiJBAs

I found some weird casting things while I was deep down that rabbit hole yesterday. Maybe I will post, perhaps on a new thread.

Good in-depth review of the Jeremy Strong / Michael Imperioli Enemy of the People on Broadway. Interesting that it barely discusses the staging, where other shows directed by Sam Gold usually have conceptual tricks that overshadow the story and actors.

i wrote about "An Enemy of the People," those enviro-protests i somehow missed, Amy Herzog's Ibsenism and the gently troubling poems of Tomas Tranströmer, the allure of Jeremy Strong, and the inconvenience of telling the truth. https://t.co/JAekaWfHFS

— Vinson Cunningham (@vcunningham) March 22, 2024

So given my recent NYC visit a couple of people were all 'Go see Stereophonic' and I did and it was quite good. And I had some thoughts:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/some-weekly-115-104293989

The documentary on Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play, on Max, is pretty great. It captures actors in rehearsal in regular clothes and scripts in hand, making drama in a way that I’ve only seen before onscreen in Vanya on 42nd Street.

More SR during Velma reveal

Weird closedown after no her husband was not at home? remove?

Debug jazz climax

More SL in cell block

Reds out on punchline of each story in cell block

DEBUG ENTIRE CELL BLOCK IT HAS BECOME A HIDEOUS PALIMPSEST

Mama "reciprocity" fadeup slower

Debug Billy's office

Both reached flashbulbs: place movers in advance

Extend second Kitty tommy gun burst

Mama needs SR light in me & baby

Debug me & baby tracking issue

Half second longer blackout on second never even know I'm there

More razzle, more dazzle

Sign up on Velma exit music

Fan dancers completely unlit why did no one say anything do they think it's art

scooby doo tech notes

couldn't start the show w/out me

Can wholeheartedly recommend the revival of Complicité’s 1999 play Mnemonic at the National Theatre, on the South Bank.

this thread title is one of my all time ilx favorites. on the rare occasions when I see theater I absolutely love it but I feel like it's the hardest of the art forms, along with maybe dance, to include in the pace of modern two-kids-two-jobs life for me

they need to start the shows at like 5:30 or like 8:30 imo

haven't done any play longer than 10 minutes since 2022, auditioning for another series of short pieces tonight with a group I've worked with for the last 15+ years.

didn't have a recent resume and they were asking for one so I put in a two sentence summary of previous productions I've done w/ this group and then posted a two paragraph excerpt from The World According to Garp

Went to see the revival of Tom Stoppard's 'The Real Thing' at the Old Vic in London today. The stage design is excellent, and it's always great to have the privilege of seeing actors at work... But I found the play itself strangely remote and impersonal for a work about the nature of love, and was finding it difficult to concentrate in the first half. The second half improves a lot though some of the characters seem a little stilted. Overall, well worth seeing though.

This aside in the NY Times review of All In, with Mulaney, Armisen, et al:

Theatergoers likely to get the most mileage out of the show’s 90 minutes at the Hudson Theater are those who bust a gut reading The New Yorker’s Shouts & Murmurs section — they must exist, right? — where some of this material has appeared.

Nice

I saw Cabaret last week in London btw and it was great. Fuckin bleak though! Happy holidays, welcome to Nazism!

not sure yet if i care about theatre, but by the time i am it may be too late.

― difficult listening hour, Thursday, April 27, 2023 3:56 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

my 2024 in small-town theatre

january: r.p. mcmurphy

march: cinna the poet (beaten and beheaded by a mob of old friends and current students) as uncredited cameo in my own multimedia modern-dress grand guignol julius caesar staged in the 1925 movie theater i work at (excerpt from one of the post-show write-ups my portia, a high school english teacher, had her field-tripping students do for extra credit: "i never saw a play before. i didn't know they were like this")

july: the one who plays all the women's parts in the complete works of shakespeare abridged-- this show is probably only 15% as funny as i thought it was when i was 12 but it's fun to do

also july: lighting designer for chicago (as documented upthread)

october: donkey in shrek the musical (had to rebuild part from ground up obv: my concept was "hipster bullwinkle" but if you think about it that's just code for "blonde on blonde"), wearing six icepacks strapped to my body like bombs

december: jacob marley in a christmas carol

also december: director of a singing-cowboy as you like it at my old high school, even though these two shows' performance dates had a 100% overlap, such that i would get into my makeup+chains, scare scrooge, get out of my makeup+chains, sneak out of one theater, drive to another, and arrive at as you like it usually just as the night's bewildered audience volunteer (coaxed onstage by touchstone) was finishing their scene as sir oliver mar-text

currently: co-directing hadestown at the high school, lighting the little mermaid the musical at the movie theater, prepping the winter's tale for summer in the park, just showed the film of caesar to its cast+crew after a year on-and-off of editing, trying to sell a christmas-season macbeth as a followup, directing the party scene from romeo+juliet as a school-play-within-a-school-play at a different high school...

https://i.imgur.com/VK5VbRM.jpeg

I hadn't seen an Annie Baker play until last year, when I finally saw a production of Inifinite Life. (Still haven't seen her first film, Janet Planet.) Would recommend it to anyone if it's produced in your town. Super mundane and super enthralling all at once.

xp dlh, i enjoyed your update immensely! please keep us updated

How was yr 2025 in small-town theatre, dlh?

My MiL is volunteering at our local community theatre so caught An Ideal Husband, Murdered To Death, It's A Wonderful Life and Assassins (which led me down a year-long Sondheim rabbit-hole). Going to try and catch more local musicals in 2026 - one company's performing William Finn's A New Brain, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, and Pippin.

I was in a staged reading two weeks ago, at a community theatre in Stoke Newington. It went great. We only did three rehearsals and then just performed it once, but it was sold out and the authors were really pleased. It was a new play based on a novella by Czech-Austrian novelist Franz Werfel. It's about a charming civil servant who is very good at self-deception. A long-ago affair with a Jewish woman many years his junior comes to light, he discovers he has a son with her, this gives him a sudden dose of courage to stand up to the anti-semites infesting Vienna, but not all is as it seems, and his supposed courage turns out to be pretty self-serving. I got like 70% of the lines, no idea how I'd have memorised them if we'd had to be off book. I felt a little self conscious having so much of the spotlight and these other lovely actors only getting like 5 minutes. But I'm not going to say I didn't glory in it privately lol.

You never really know how to take feedback, whether it's just luvvie positivity or whatever, but I did detect some sincerity in the praise which I am going to bank

The Tower Theatre? Five minutes from my house, you should've plugged it!

Only made it out to one play this year, but it was a great one: Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew at the Bush Theatre. A young person's coming out as non binary launches their father into memories of a deceased friend. Very moving.

Can report the reading of the Werfel play was right up my street. I've never read him but I will try one of his bks.

Tower Theater is a really nice venue, has quite a few adaptations of books that went on to be well regarded films.

ah Sorry Daniel, I didn’t realise. Next time!