Skip to main content

'There will be positives': artistic directors on theatre's terrible year

The Observer revisits six theatre bosses appointed in 2019 to discuss the existential threat to their industry, and the fightback

Last summer, the Observer profiled a group of newly-appointed artistic directors – a fresh surge of talent taking its place at the top of six of our best-loved theatre companies. A notably diverse cohort, they were bursting with optimism and ideas for shaking up the industry. Our theatre critic Susannah Clapp, introducing the new talent, looked forward to seeing how they would transform the theatrical landscape – with the caveat that “it is hard, though, to guess what changes will be wrought”.

No one predicted the cataclysmic changes they would all have to reckon with in their first year. “Everyone would like to go back to ‘precedented’ times, wouldn’t they?” says Sean Foley, artistic director for Birmingham Rep, who had arrived full time at the theatre in February – only to shut it within a month. The job, he says, is certainly “not what I bargained for”; no one dreams of overseeing redundancies, after all.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2S0WVRB

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Degrees of separation: what connects Seinfeld to Steve Bannon?

From the US sitcom to the far-right rabble rouser, we go down the rabbit hole, thanks to the arrival of Jerry’s show on Netflix Seinfeld All 180 episodes of the 90s’ most misanthropic sitcom have arrived on Netflix, but not everyone is happy. Some viewers have complained that the new transfer puts Jerry Seinfeld ’s show in a different aspect ratio: from an older square format to widescreen … yada-yada … now the picture crops out some sight gags and just seems slightly bizarro . Motion impossible: fallout It’s not the first time modern technology has caused problems. HD TVs can make even visually stunning films look like cheap soap operas, through motion smoothing – a process to reduce blurring (good for on-screen sport). But Tom Cruise was there to save the day: in a slightly awkward 2018 video , he explained how to adjust TV settings to undo this flat fiasco. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/3mr722c