Friday, August 23, 2019

Remember in November Bard will be on the Beach: Swim Between The Flags

Coming Soon ... Being challenged to do better is uncomfortable! Life needs more theatre and confessions (Lidka and Christopher could not disagree less)

Down Under and especially Down Under from Sydney in Melbourne most aspiring actors know how to echo ancient themes today. And what we really love is that these themes of love, family, friendship are all filtered through intimate, very personal conversations with just a small cast. It's all very passionate ... after all Gabbie aka Bella aka Coco is catalysing the stage ;-) These youthful cast  dares to raise risque Shakespearean topics at a time and in places where human emotions and weaknesses are still tabooish... The end is nothing.  The ride is all. 


 Can our age speak of tragedy 
 Anymore? Or is comedy 
The only plot left in the room





Using Theatre Games To Teach Police Officers And Civilians To Communicate With Each Other

Brooklyn director Terry Greiss worked with the NYPD to develop a program called To Serve, to Protect, and to Understand, which brings officers and civilians together with meals and acting games and ultimately gets them to tell and act out each other’s stories. In New Jersey, a similar program called Walking the Beat involves police with high school students. – American Theatre

Power of good sentence

Swim Between The Flags

Performance

Swim Between The Flags
Martyn Myer Arena
Enter via Lionel's
Southbank
Grant Street
This original devised work is the graduating piece by Theatre Company 2019 – the first graduates of the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Theatre) – developed in collaboration with graduating Production students. The work was conceived, researched, written and designed by the students themselves and reflects their commitment to ensemble collaborative practice and the creation of new Australian work.
Devised and Performed by: Theatre Company 2019 Presented by: Theatre and Production
We strongly encourage booking in advance for all of our events. This guarantees your seat, and allows us to communicate any unforeseen event scheduling changes with you. Please note, tickets are required for entry to paid events.



Related: No, Sally Rooney is not the “great millennial novelist.” This generation is too diverse for that — its books seek specific audiences, not universal ones... Towards Storytelling in 2019








How Communists and Napoleon Used Theatre To Legitimize Himself As Emperor

From one year to the next, he manipulated the Comédie-Française, selecting plays and scheduling performances on or around his birthday (which fell, conveniently, on a major Catholic feast) to give himself (born into minor Corsican nobility) the aura of a divinely appointed monarch. – History Today


CODA:




Yes, The Show Must Go On… Even Without Lights

Performers from multiple Broadway shows gave impromptu renditions to crowds along the streets outside the theaters when the power went out in Manhattan Friday night just before shows were about to start. – Washington Post





Shakespeare In Canada, Set In India

It’s the first time a Bard on the Beach production has been set in India – and that’s a boon for Sarena Parmar, the woman playing Helena, who grew up one of very, very few kids of color in Kelowna, B.C. But the country has changed, she says. “Bard on the Beach has been making a push for diversity, but even so, this is the first time it’s had such a large South Asian cast. ‘We’re getting so many more South Asians coming to see the show and suddenly they can see themselves in the story in a way that maybe they couldn’t before,’ [Parmar] said.” – CBC




New Professional Company Will Tour Shakespeare Around Asia

Says producer Jamie Hendry, founder of the New English Shakespeare Company, “There’s an appetite for this. Audiences are being developed in a lot of cities around the world. We are focusing on the Middle East, Asia and South East Asia, and they are all beginning to become accustomed to NT Live and the big musicals. So to be able to provide some drama and something they would not receive otherwise is a fantastic challenge.” – The Stage




Can Theatre Really Help Fight Climate Change? Yes

Lyn Gardner: “Science … can give us the facts or the knowledge. But as a species we don’t always respond to facts because they make us feel guilty and paralysed. What we respond to as human beings are stories.” – The Stage


WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: Newsweek: Cannibalism Is Taboo ‘For Now.’ ... 







Can Theatre Motivate Action On Climate Change?

“It’s all about awareness and action. The artist’s job is to raise consciousness and cut through the complacency. I asked playwrights to meditate on the theme of, ‘Wake up—act now!’ We’re creating awareness, and stimulating action.” – Pacific Standard






Lynn Nottage On Staying Political

Nottage is the only woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice: for Sweat and Ruined. The former reached Broadway, while the latter – a story about women in war-torn Congo – played a sustained Off-Broadway run. As a result of where they were first staged, the plays have had somewhat different lives after their New York engagements. – The Stage






Ruth McGowan On How To Curate Shows For A Fringe Festival

“How, then, do you avoid the cringingly awful? The shows so bad you feel you’re never going to get those precious moments of your finite life back again? McGowan smiles and looks up – as she does when she’s thinking or, as is most likely in this case, remembering just such a show.” – Irish Times







London’s National Theatre Says 35 Percent Of Its Plays By Living Writers Were By Women Last Season

This figure is still 15% short of the NT’s stated 50/50 target for gender representation, which the theatre has said it will achieve by 2021. It is also below the 42% figure recorded in 2016/17. However, the theatre argued that it is still “on course” to meet its targets. – The Stage








On Broadway, Female Lead Producers Are Coming Into Their Own

“Many in this new generation of female producers are taking alternate paths to the industry’s top rung — picking up skills in the nonprofit theater world, which has become an important breeding ground for Broadway shows, or in the corporate entertainment industry, home to many of the movie and pop-music brands that end up seeding international stages.” – The New York Times






At Edinburgh Fringe, There’s A Tremendous Amount Of Raw Talent That Needs Support To Thrive

Lyn Gardner says that “the fringe is like a machine churning out ever more raw talent, which is attractive to venues who buy it up cheaply. But the issue is they then offer very little ongoing support to develop that talent in a way that allows companies to grow and develop.” (Instead, they just get more raw, cheap talent the next year.) – The Stage (UK)





What Is Community Theatre For?

Jocelyn Allgood, who participates in several community theatres near her in Texas, says that “it’s our small contribution to humanity — to ease the burden of life, to make you laugh, to stir that emotion burning inside of you — be it jeers for the villains, tears or cheers for the heroes and (we hope) applause for the cast.” – Dallas Morning News






Should Theatre Critics Also Be Artists? Does It Make Them Better?

“Why should we take seriously the words of someone who doesn’t understand the great amount of work involved in creating a performance? A critic’s opinion is unreliable if it’s based only on a writer’s personal preference. Personal preference tells the reader what the writer enjoys, it doesn’t tell the reader why the writer enjoyed it.” – Howlround





Two Big London Drama Schools Are Leaving The Arts Consortium One Of Them Founded

Both the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art are ducking out of the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama. Why? They both say that becoming independent institutions will help them because “higher education policy has changed significantly” since RADA helped found the Conservatoire. – The Stage (UK)





Martha Plimpton Does Something Very Few Actors Ever Do — Quit Steppenwolf Theatre

“Why would anybody want to go? It’s inarguably among the most prestigious collections of stage actors in the world and yet membership comes with no formal minimum participation requirement. … However, two sources close to Steppenwolf said that there was no love lost between the actress and the current artistic administration, although Plimpton had wanted to keep her action as private as possible.” – Chicago Tribune


dinburgh Fringe’s Looming Problem: Not Enough Critics

“[The worrisome development is] the recent decision of leading Scottish newspapers and magazines to slash their coverage of the festival in half. Coupled with the dwindling size of the annual contingent of London critics, the threat to the ecology of the festival is real.” – The Observer 


All the world’s a stage, especially when you have no job prospects Believe it or not, life as a travelling theater actor making $225 a week performing Shakespeare for high school students isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  (UK)