Summer for theater folk is usually a time to savor the past season, as illustrator Ray Kampf did in his clever rendition of “Stereophonic” as an Archie comic book. (The play didn’t win the Pulitzer, but it did win the Tony, and both the set and the dialogue are more or less accurate.) It’s also a time to take a break, as Tommy’s Ali Louis Bourzgui did at the beach, The Outsiders’ Brent Comer at the park, Kimberly Akimbo’s Justin Cooley at riverside celebrating his twenty-first birthday with his cast mates — all of which Jeff Kyler dug up from social media for his blog, JK’s Theatre Scene
But this summer also turns out to be a time for fears and worries — in politics, for sure (which is always part theater), but also in theater itself.
Ever-active theater blogger and Broadway producer Ken Davenport is promising “The State of the State of Broadway in 2024” – how the box office is doing, how the demographics changed, what’s in store in the new season – tomorrow (July 17) at 5 p.m. In an earlier blog, he suggested some of that state: The Biggest Threat to the Broadway Business (His answer? New York State will phase out the three million dollar tax credit for Broadway productions.)
In Broadway & Me, Jan Simpson offers a terrific Theater Books for Summer Reading 2024 (The list below is my usual mix of new books and old ones, fiction and non-fiction all of which I think will keep you in good company right through Labor Day.
Broadway Journal’s Philip Boroff offers a scoop:
“Newly minted Tony Award winner Jonathan Groff will play the 1950s and ’60s crooner Bobby Darin in a staged reading next month, ahead of a planned Broadway opening in spring 2025, people familiar with the musical said…”
And an update: Hell’s Kitchen Aims to Defy Big-Budget Slump
“Hell’s Kitchen could break a big-budget Broadway curse, as escalating production and operating expenses contribute to premature closings while crimping profits of the rare success stories.”
In Call Me Adam, Adam Rothenberg interviews Julia Knitel, who, like many New York performers during the summer, has a gig out of town, in “Beautiful – The Carole King Musical” at The Cape Playhouse (which is in Dennis, MA ), playing the lead character, which she understudied on Broadway and performed on tour – but differently: “When I first played the role, 16 year old Carole was very easy for me to access. I was 22 when I joined the Broadway company, and while I loved growing with Carole throughout the show every night, I felt intimidated by where her story goes in Act Two. I wanted to do her justice, and I didn’t feel like I had the lived experience to do that yet.” Now she does.
In Onstage Blog, Adriana Nocco catalogues 20 Ways to be the Actor Everyone Wants to Work With, from the obvious (Be on time) to the less obvious (Don’t bring the props home.)
In TheaterClique, Brian Eugenio Herrera presents his favorite nine minutes from the 2024 Jimmy Awards (the annual nation-wide contest of high school thespians)
