Stage Voices

AUGUST STRINDBERG EXPLAINS IT ALL TO YOU

“Some people have accused my tragedy of being too sad, as though one desired a merry tragedy. People clamor for Enjoyment as though Enjoyment consisted in being foolish. I find enjoyment in the powerful and terrible struggles of life; and the capability of experiencing something, of learning something, gives me pleasure.”--August Strindberg, quoted in Otto Heller's Prophets of Dissent

From: http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/strindberg_august.html

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DAVID EDGAR ON THEATRE AND THE AFGHANISTAN DEBATE

(Edgar’s article appeared in the Guardian, 7/21.)

Last year, 12 writers wrote 12 plays about the same subject: a mountainous, land-locked country on which other countries have, over the course of three centuries, failed to impose their economic, cultural and military will, due to the resistance of a fiercely tribal, traditionalist society.

via www.guardian.co.uk

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SHAKESPEARE IS SHAKESPEARE

(Sophia Lear’s article appeared in the New Republic, 7/7.)

In London in the 1940s a man named Percy Allen, overwhelmed by grief at the death of his brother, sought out the renowned psychic of the day, Hester Dowden. Through Dowden’s primary connection to the dead—an ancient Athenian named Johannes—Allen spoke at length to his recently deceased brother. Astounded by Dowden’s occult talents, Allen decided that she could assist him professionally as well: Allen, president of the Shakespeare Fellowship—a group that believed the Earl of Oxford was the author of Shakespeare’s plays—returned to Dowden and asked her to summon the spirit of the Earl of Oxford, or Shakespeare, or Francis Bacon. Dowden—fortuitously enough the daughter of a Shakespeare scholar—managed to summon all three, and they confirmed that Oxford was indeed the man. Oxford was even generous enough to relay a few unpublished verses. Allen ecstatically published his discussions and findings in Talks With Elizabethans in 1947. This was not the first time Dowden had precipitated a book’s publication: Alfred Dodd’s The Immortal Master, in which the ghost of Francis Bacon assures Dodd of his own claim to Shakespeare’s oeuvre, was released in 1943.

via www.tnr.com

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SIMON STEPHENS ON TAKING PLAYS INTO PRISONS

(Stephens’s article ran in the Guardian, 6/25.)

The most memorable experience I've had watching one of my own plays wasn't at the National Theatre or in Manchester's Royal Exchange. It wasn't at the Traverse in Edinburgh or London's Royal Court or at the Kammerspiele Vienna, or the Deutsches Theater Berlin. It was in the converted gallows of Wandsworth jail, six years ago, watching my play Country Music, which is currently being revived and toured to prisons by West Yorkshire Playhouse.

via www.guardian.co.uk

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INGMAR BERGMAN ON AUGUST STRINDBERG

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THE OHIO THEATRE TO CLOSE IN SOHO

(Trav S.D.’s article appeared in the Villager, 6/16-22.)

By now it seems as inevitable as scientific law: Pioneering arts institutions, as they grow, sow the seeds of their own destruction by improving their iffy neighborhoods and making them attractive to retailers willing to pay much higher rents. In effect, the arts groups are priced out of the very neighborhoods they help transform. 

Ironically, the latest Off-Off Broadway theatre to fall victim to this depressingly familiar phenomenon is one of the oldest (and thus, one would think, one of the most well-established). On August 31st, the Ohio Theatre (66 Wooster St.) will close its doors for the last time — following 26 years of operation and hundreds of innovative productions. 

via www.thevillager.com

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INDHU RUBASINGHAM: “WE GOT SCARED OF THE WORD FEMINISM”

 

 

(Johanna Thomas-Corr’s interview with the director appeared in the London Evening Standard on 6/9.)

As the new Government was called to Downing Street last month and David Cameron's Cabinet filled up with white public-school boys, it was hard to suppress a feeling of dismay. Why does Britain have a smaller percentage of female ministers than almost every other European country? Is Theresa May all we have to show for a century of women's suffrage?

via www.thisislondon.co.uk

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RETHINKING TERENCE RATTIGAN

(Dan Rebellato’s article appeared in the Guardian, 6/9.)

No theatrical genre lasts forever. City comedy, commedia dell'arte, mystery cycles, masque, equestrian drama, theatre of the absurd, living newspaper: the history of theatre is studded with the wreckage of once-successful genres that just stopped responding to the times they lived in.

via www.guardian.co.uk

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CHRIS HEDGES ON THE DECIMATING OF THE ARTS

(Hedges’ article appeared 6/13 at http://www.truthdig.com /.)

Orson Welles and John Houseman were preparing to mount a production in June 1937 in New York City called “The Cradle Will Rock,” a musical written by Marc Blitzstein and set in “Steeltown USA.” The musical followed the efforts of a worker, Larry Foreman, as he attempted to unionize steelworkers. His nemesis was the heartless industrialist Mister Mister, who owned the steel mill and controlled the press, the church, local civic groups, politicians, the arts and the local university, where, as a trustee, Mister Mister made sure the pliant college president fired professors who did not laud the manly arts of war and capitalism. “The Cradle Will Rock” spared no one, from Mister Mister’s philanthropic wife and spoiled children to Reverend Salvation, who preached war in the name of Jesus, to feckless artists who devoted themselves to the cult of art. At one point the artists, along with Mister Mister’s wife, sing:

via www.truthdig.com

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NOAM CHOMSKY: HELPING TO GO BEYOND ENTERTAINMENT-ONLY THINKING IN THE THEATRE

 

(From a NY peace action benefit for ‘Prophecy’)

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