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.
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 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.
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.
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
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
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
Tootsie , the Broadway musical adapted from the 1982 movie about a struggling actor whose career takes off when he plays a woman, will close on Jan. 5, the production announced tonight.Continue Reading
The Broadway League and Actors’ Equity Association reached a tentative pact that will raise the weekly minimum for Broadway actors 3.5 percent to $2,168.Continue Reading
The Prom, the $13.5 musical comedy that developed a cult following but not a mass audience since opening in November, will close on Aug. 11.Continue Reading
