Today July 27th being the start of the one year countdown to the London 2012 Olympic Games in Stratford, East London as part of the countdown launch, a large number of West End theatres have announced new extensions to the period for which the most popular shows can be booked. This is to allow London Theatre breaks to be booked well in advance for the period of the Olympics, and indeed the Olympic year 2012 as a whole, during which there are all sorts of special events laid on. Some of the shows announcing 2012 booking dates extensions are the following West End musicals and plays: We Will Rock You Wicked The Wizard of Oz Billy Elliot the Musical Blood Brothers Dreamboats and Petticoats Jersey Boys The Phantom of the Opera Mamma Mia! Legally Blonde the Musical Ghost The Musical Les Misérables Shrek The Musical Disney’s The Lion King Million Dollar Quartet The Mousetrap The 39 Steps Stomp Thriller Live War Horse The Woman in Black Rock of Ages Matilda The Musical
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I posted to theatrebreaks.co
London 2012 Olympics Theatre Breaks
http://theatrebreaks.co/1538/london-2012-olympics-theatre-breaks/
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July 27 2011, 7:10am | Comments »
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I posted to theatrebreaks.co
What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips
http://theatrebreaks.co/514/what-to-see-lyn-gardners-theatre-tips/
Despite it being a double bank holiday week, there are plenty of theatre events activity all around the UK. Here’s the cream of the crop
This article titled “What to see: Lyn Gardner’s theatre tips” was written by Lyn Gardner, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 22nd April 2011 16.11 UTC With Easter and the royal wedding (arguably a massive piece of street theatre, but give me an elephant any day) bookending the coming week, theatrical activity is low-key and openings are few. But by the time you read this, The Passion will already be underway in Port Talbot – the last event in National theatre Wales’s first season. It’s been a wonderfully varied year of work, and if not all of it has glistened, it has nonetheless probed how a national theatre might operate and what forms theatre can take. I’m really looking forward to the announcement of the new season, which I have high hopes will be as invigorating as the first. But it’s not the only theatrical activity in Wales this week, where a revival of Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money goes out on tour, starting at Chapter Arts Center in Cardiff next week. Moving across the Severn bridge, head down to the Hall for Cornwall in Truro for Groupe Acrobatique de Tanger’s Chouf Ouchouf, which checks in next Thursday after finishing its South Bank run on Sunday. The Brewhouse in Taunton is celebrating both St George’s Day and the royal wedding with the imaginative England, My England. Up in Bristol, things are gearing up for the fabulously juicy Mayfest , but there is still time to catch Tristan Sturrock’s Frankenspine at the Old Vic studio and the excellent Propeller Comedy of Errors at the Tobacco Factory. Salisbury Playhouse offers two contrasting shows that are both well worth a look: a fabulous revival of Guys and Dolls in the main house and Martin Crimp’s teasingly enigmatic The Country in the studio. Probe’s dance-theatre piece May, written by the mighty Tim Crouch, stops off at South Hill Park in Bracknell next week. Mike Bartlett’s satirical baby-boomer comedy, Love, Love, Love, http://www.painesplough.com/current-programme/by-date/love-love-love stops off at the Nuffield Southampton next week. Brighton’s Basement will play a major role in the upcoming Brighton Festival but also opens its doors on Saturday night for one of its regular Supper Club nights, a tasty mix of performance, interventions and installations. In London, meanwhile, the Digital Stages festival takes place for five days from today (22 April) bringing together performances, discussions, workshops and exhibitions. Among those who may take your fancy are Pecora Ura with Part 11 of the Hotel Medea Trilogy and Lightwork’s installation, The Good Actor, which aims to capture the moment prior to actors going on stage to perform. The Spill festival also continues in fine fettle, and includes the Spill National Platform over the weekend, featuring work by Jo Bannon as well as Martin O’Brien’s punishing The Mucus Factory. There’s also a chance to see new work by Sylvia Rimat and Kings of England. The Globe’s touring production of Hamlet, directed by Dominic Dromgoole, heads to home base for a few performances before setting out on a long tour. I saw the viciously funny and sad Chekhov in Hell at the Drum in Plymouth and now you can catch it at Soho, and Told by an Idiot’s examination of what motivates violence, And the Horse You Rode in On, clip clops into the Barbican Pit before galloping off to the Brighton Festival. It’s your last chance for David Eldridge’s Knot of the Heart at the Almeida. Birmingham Rep’s Behna (Sisters) makes its London debut in somebody’s kitchen in a secret location in North London from Thursday. I’m looking forward to Philip Ridley’s first new play for three years, Tender Napalm, at Southwark Playhouse and The Fat Girl Gets a Haircut at the Roundhouse, a show created with teenagers by the brilliant Mark Storor, and am still dying to see the Ipswich musical London Road at the National which everyone seems to have an opinion on. If you live in the east of the country, take a look at a very well-received A View From the Bridge at the Mercury in Colchester, and book for the High Tide festival which opens on Thursday with the European premiere of Stephen Belber’s Dusk Rings a Bell about a teenage romance reignited 20 years later. Put the weekend of 30 April in your diary for the Junction Sampled at the Junction in Cambridge, which includes a chance to see work from some really talented artists including Deborah Pearson, Greg McLaren, The Other Way Works, Dancing Brick, Non Zero One and others. And don’t forget that the Norfolk and Norwich festival opens on May 6. There are some great shows, including a number of Without Walls outdoor theatre commissions. Pulse won’t be far behind at the New Wolsey in Ipswich. The RSC open their new season with a version of Shakespeare’s lost play, Cardenio, and Jonathan Slinger as Macbeth on the main stage. Plenty of Macbeths at the moment, in fact, with Belt Up getting lost in the mind of the anti-hero in an old underground prison in Clerkenwell, and David Morrissey losing his Lady M – Jemma Redgrave – in Liverpool. (She’s been replaced by Julia Ford.) It’s your last chance for a blistering Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Northern Stage and you don’t have long for Arthur Miller’s The Price which is at the Stephen Joseph in Scarborough. Book for Fissure, a walking performance over the weekend of 20-22 May in the Yorkshire Dales. Heading into Scotland, you should catch Catherine Wheels’ Caged, a beauty and the beast variation, which is at the Macrobert in Stirling, Eastwood Park and the Tron this week. Des Dillon’s revenge comedy Six Black Candles goes into Dundee Rep, Liz Lochhead’s spin on Moliere, Educating Agnes, continues at the Lyceum in Edinburgh and Rona Munro’s rom-com, Pandas, is at the Traverse. Phew. That’s that. Enjoy your Easter break.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
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April 25 2011, 6:26am | Comments »
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I posted to theatrebreaks.co
Isn’t it time to lay off the list-making and let our artists make art?
http://theatrebreaks.co/293/isnt-it-time-to-lay-off-the-list-making-and-let-our-artists-make-art/
An appeal for less competitions, awards, prizes and ten best lists in the theatre world and in general can’t be a bad thing.
This article titled “Isn’t it time to lay off the list-making and let our artists make art?” was written by Laura Barnett, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 16th March 2011 13.03 UTC There are, to borrow a phrase, two types of people in the world: those for whom the vagaries of life take form only when neatly broken down, numbered, and summarised, and those who break out in a cold sweat at the very thought of list-making. I count myself definitely among the former – no day has really got under way until I have compiled a to-do list and set about fulfilling it. Yet even I, a great lover of lists, felt my heart sink a little on discovering that Red magazine has unveiled a list called “20 under 30″ in its new April issue. Published to launch the magazine’s annual Red Hot Women awards for “the most inspiring working women across Britain”, this list is intended to identify “Red’s hottest women of tomorrow”. Alongside a fashion designer, chef and “digital guru”, the list includes several women in the arts, with whom regular readers of the Guardian’s culture sites will no doubt be familiar. Royal Ballet principal Lauren Cuthbertson, 26, who wowed audiences as Alice in Christopher Wheeldon’s new production of Alice in Wonderland, is rightly singled out as “the prima ballerina”. Comedian Josie Long, 28, is given the somewhat dubious accolade of “funny girl”: dubious not because she’s not funny, but because the epithet sounds more than a little patronising. Singer Alexandra Burke (still only 22 – yikes!), has been named “the X Factor survivor”, while 29-year-old actor Michelle Dockery, fresh from ITV’s Downton Abbey and an acclaimed turn as Ophelia at the Sheffield Crucible, is called, with good reason, “the rising star”. Among the magazine’s more under-the-radar choices are 30-year-old architect Hana Loftus, co-founder of the Colchester-based architectural practice Hat Projects, and the poet and playwright Caroline Bird, who is 24. So far, so fair enough – they’re all talented women, and hats off to them for having that talent recognised. But do they really need to be singled out in yet another list? The arts scene is already swamped with lists. At this time of year, the zenith of awards season, you can’t open a paper or turn on a computer without discovering yet another round-up of nominees for “best blah” or “most convincing blah blah” or “best supporting blah blah blah”. In the last month alone we’ve had, in quick succession, the Baftas, the Oscars, and the Oliviers. The rest of the year is no better, revolving around a succession of “hot 100s” (the figure is almost always 100). In theatre, we have The Stage 100; in art, the ArtReview Power 100; and across media and the arts, The Hospital Club 100, to name but a few. What all these lists have in common, of course, is the desire to sort the proverbial wheat from the chaff: to tell us who’s hot and who’s not, who’s in and who’s out – and, in some cases, to present those with the talent or good fortune to fall into the former categories with a big shiny trophy. Women-only lists like Red magazine’s are also about redressing the balance, celebrating female achievement and inspiring other women to follow suit. All of which is perfectly laudable. But do any of these lists really tell us anything remotely interesting or unexpected about our arts scene? What about the people left off – the hundreds and thousands of talented artists, actors, screenwriters, singers, poets, comedians, dancers and so on who never merit a mention because they don’t have a PR, or they don’t look quite good enough to be primped and preened for a magazine shoot, or their work isn’t mainstream enough? Does their absence from such lists make them any less important, their art any less worthy of our time? I wonder how much the artists who regularly crop up on these lists really benefit from our obsession with ranking and categorising. The grateful tears of each year’s crop of Olivier, Oscar or Bafta winners – and the quickfire offers of major roles – suggests the benefits are substantial. But the worst thing for any artist is to compare themselves endlessly with others. Lists may be brilliant for giving form to the drudgery of the day-to-day, but let’s lay off telling artists who’s hot and who’s not, and just let them get on with what they do: making art.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
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March 16 2011, 8:49am | Comments »
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I posted to theatrebreaks.co
Jerry Springer from Chicago at West End Live Theatre Breaks
http://theatrebreaks.co/82/jerry-springer-from-chicago-at-west-end-live-theatre-breaks/
Amongst the divas, dancers and troupers performing yesterday at West End Live 2009 was the well known TV personality of Jerry Springer who happens to have a part in the London production of Chicago at present. Here’s the video from youtube theatre breaks
Chicago is one of the most popular shows for theatre breaks in London and manages to keep viable over the years through a mixture of clever promotion, good word of mouth reputation and a succession of stars and cameos to bring fresh interest in each of the cities where Chicago is playing.
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June 21 2009, 2:30am | Comments »
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