EXCLUSIVE: The coronavirus epidemic must be “under control” and testing be frequent and accurate before it’s safe for actors and stage managers to return to work, the executive director of Actors’ Equity Association, Mary McColl, wrote to members today. Continue Reading
BROADWAY SHUTDOWN WILL LAST THROUGH LABOR DAY; ‘PLAZA SUITE’ BOOKS MARCH 2021
Broadway has given up predicting when it will be back.
With no indication about when it will be safe to produce theater in New York or when audiences will feel comfortable returning, the Broadway League, the trade association of theater owners and producers, made its shutdown open-ended, announcing Tuesday that its 41 theaters will be dark through at least Sept. 6.Continue Reading
BROADWAY LEAGUE EXTENDS SHUTDOWN THROUGH JUNE 7
The Broadway League extended its shutdown through June 7, the original date of the Tony Awards, guaranteeing that Broadway will be closed at least three months due to the coronavirus pandemic.
A BROADWAY MAVERICK CONTEMPLATES A POST-COVID FUTURE: INTERVIEW
Producing theater is quixotic in the best of circumstances. Weathering the industry’s longest-ever shutdown, which has halted shows and cut off incomes, makes the endeavor that much more daunting.
“Cameron Mackintosh has said, ‘theater has always survived on mavericks who go their own way,’ and we need more of them out there,” producer Ken Davenport said in a Zoom interview earlier this week from his Upper West Side apartment.
BROADWAY LEAGUE CREATES FINANCIAL RELIEF INFO SITES
BREAKING: The Broadway League today introduced websites with information about city, state, federal and philanthropic relief packages for employees and employers battered by the covid-19 crisis.
The site for employees is here. The site for employers, here.
League President Charlotte St. Martin alerted members of the trade association to the sites in an email obtained by Broadway Journal.
BROADWAY SHOWS ‘MAY BE THE LAST AREA OF BUSINESS TO COME BACK,’ ST. MARTIN SAYS (EXCLUSIVE)
Broadway can’t reopen without New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s permission, and it may be among the last sectors of society to get it, Broadway League President Charlotte St. Martin wrote to members and staff of the trade association this morning.
RUDIN CLOSES ‘VIRGINIA WOOLF’ REVIVAL
With no indication of when New York and Broadway will reopen for business amid a worsening public health and economic catastrophe, producer Scott Rudin cancelled his revival of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
BROADWAY LEAGUE REACHES SHUTDOWN PAY PACT AS ‘HANGMEN’ CANCELS
With no end in sight for the global coronavirus pandemic and U.S. theater shutdown, the Broadway League announced an agreement with the industry’s unions requiring suspended productions to pay an additional two weeks to actors and other workers who lost their incomes. Continue Reading
SONDHEIM, LORD LLOYD WEBBER RECALL PRINCE AT MEMORIAL
Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber were among the collaborators and friends who spoke about the legendary director and producer Hal Prince at his memorial today at the Majestic Theatre. Prince died on July 31 at 91. Continue Reading
CRITIC JOHN SIMON DIES AT 94; ‘I DID NOT COMPROMISE’
John Simon, the theater, movie and music critic who died last night at 94, took erudition to another level.
Never mind that English was his fifth language — after German, Hungarian, French and Serbo-Croatian, the language of his native Yugoslavia — every review sent you to the dictionary. He could be cruel, famously so when reviewing actresses’ looks, but also loyal. Betty Buckley wrote on Facebook this morning about her “abiding gratitude for his support of my work through all of these years and his friendship.”
When Bloomberg News hired Simon as its theater critic, in 2005, after 36 years at New York magazine, arts editor Manuela Hoelterhoff assigned me the fun task of interviewing him in the book-lined Upper West Side apartment he shared with his wife, Patricia Hoag Simon. I found him to be soft-spoken, thoughtful and unapologetic, except regarding his early assessments of Stephen Sondheim and Adam Guettel. Excerpts follow.Continue Reading
