Digital innovation continued this year, but experiencing plays in isolation grew tiring. Then came an in-person season as exciting as a child’s first fireworks.
Theater is in the streets of New York, if you listen
The Visitation is among recent outdoor theater works intended to be experienced on your feet and through headphones. Recent audio and walking tours provide a gentle return to spectatorship while also revealing overlooked corners of the city. Daniel Efram via The New York Times.
by Alexis Soloski
(NYT NEWS SERVICE)
.- It is so easy to forget: that native footpaths predated avenues, that streams surged where subways now rattle, that deer and rabbits used to bound underfoot at every grimy crosswalk. And here is another thing we may have forgotten during this past strange year: what it feels like to constitute an audience.
Hamlet and a play by James Graham. Young Vic Theatre
Young Vic Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah has decided to make streaming performances a permanent fixture of the London institution s productions. The Best Seat in Your House broadcasts will offer two ticket types: The Directorâs Chair, with the possibility to cut live to any camera in the theatre at any time, The Directorâs Cut, a chosen edit.
Kwei-Armah told
The Guardian that the decision to present a streaming offering for each show came out of a need to adapt to the post-pandemic industry landscape and a desire to provide access to theatergoers who might not be able to afford prime seats.
Lewis Cornay and Rachel Tucker PND Photography
West End star Lewis Cornay and Olivier nominee Rachel Tucker will star in a London staging of
John & Jen this summer. The two-hander musical will begin performances July 28 at Southwark Playhouse.
This production is the world premiere of an updated version of the show by Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald, with orchestrations by Jason Robert Brown and Lippa.
John & Jen follows Jen and her relationships with the two Johns of her life: her younger brother, and his namesake, the son who is trying to find his way in a confusing world. The show is split over two timelines: 1985 and 2005.