The landscape has changed for theater. The loss of the Connelly Theater, while under unusual circumstances (see Joey Sims’ interview below with its departing director) feels emblematic of the struggle, in the words of Ken Davenport, “to restore the business to pre-pandemic times.” In a recent blog post Davenport writes: “The wisest elders in the industry, who have seen dark times before (although nothing like this) all say the same thing: We need a hit.” The post is entitled Can Wicked be Broadway’s Golden Ticket Back to Before? And he answers basically yes, arguing that the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical can take the place of past megahits that occurred on stage (Hamilton, Jersey Boys, Mamma Mia), which he implies boosted all of Broadway.
But there is another way to look at the landscape, as Vulture theater critic Sara Holdren pointed to in the introduction to her end-of-year Top 10 theater list: “Fully half the plays that ended up on my best-of-the-year list were co-productions, and not among the big dogs — institutions like Transport Group, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, En Garde Arts, HERE, Rattlestick, and Theatre for a New Audience have been coming together to pool resources and share premieres. What it means is, despite a climate of continuous scarcity, and despite some infuriating losses, more brave art.”
Theater is finding a way.
The same can be said of theater blogging. One need only glance at my “Theater Blogroll” on the right-hand column of this blog (or, if you’re reading this on a phone — which most of you probably are — scroll down to the very bottom of the screen) to realize how few on the list are kept up-to-date. (Kevin Daly does two a year each year for his Theatre Aficionado at Large, — which is more than many.) But most of those (ex? infrequent?) bloggers are still covering and commenting on the theater, just in different ways (formats, platforms.) Kevin is active on social media. The Wicked Stage’s Rob Weiner-Kendt, to give an extreme example, is the editor of American Theater Magazine. (His title is NOT a reference to Oz, but to a song from Hammerstein and Kern’s musical “Show Boat,” “Life Upon the Wicked Stage.”)
The term “blog,” coined in the 1990s, feels old-fashioned, but the concept persists, thrives. (Wasn’t Vulture set up as the arts blog of New York Magazine?) There are theater Substacks and podcasts (and Substack podcasts) and TikTok channels – not all of which can be easily summarized or linked to in a roundup such as this one. But a few can.
And luckily, there are still regular old-school theater blos still active after all these years. Whatever else they put on their site, a core of New York theater bloggers continue to review theater (and sometimes theater books): Jan Simpson in Broadway & Me, David Sheward in The David Desk 2, Jeff Kyler in JK’s Theatre Scene, Scott Harrah in Stagezine, Samuel Leiter in Theatre’s Leiter Side.
And enough with other aspects of theater worth linking to.
In On Stage Blog, Chris Peterson assesses the pros and cons of the appointment of Jason Laks as president of the Broadway League, the trade group for Broadway theater owners and presenters. On the downside, “a leader with a predominantly legal mindset might prioritize maintaining the status quo over embracing transformative change.” Yet, “I think Laks is incredibly more qualified than [past president] Charlotte St. Martin. The Broadway League needs a leader who can unite the industry under a shared vision, balancing artistic integrity with financial sustainability. Whether Jason Laks is the right person for that role depends on his ability to transcend his legal roots and embrace the multifaceted nature of Broadway.”
One of the issues Laks must face is spelled out In Broadway Journal, where Philip Boroff reports on the box office union’s protest against TodayTix: “The Treasurers and Ticket Sellers Union — Local 751 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — accused the League and two of its largest landlord members, the Shubert and Nederlander Organizations, of “unilaterally changing terms and conditions of employment…concerning the distribution of theater tickets.” The complaint was filed with the National Labor Relations Board in connection with TodayTix, the 11-year-old, easy-to-use app for buying tickets to Broadway shows and other cultural events.”
In his Substack Transitions, Joey Sims interviews Josh Luxenberg, longtime director and general manager of the Connelly Theater,who offers a history of East Village venue, his ten-year involvement in it, and how it died, at least for the foreseeable future. The building is owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, but it was the parish priest at the Church on 3rd Street that would approve the contracts that Luxenberg arranged between the theater and the individual productions. When the parish priest left, and was not replaced, the responsibility for signing the contracts “moved up the chain of command at the archdiocese,” and they started turning down shows for their content. This is why Luxenberg quit. “It made us into censors, and it required discrimination—discrimination against the very artists who had made the space such a wonderful, welcoming, vibrant, joyful community,” Luxenberg tells Sims….
“Losing it this way is deeply hurtful to a lot of people, people who made the space what it was. The idea that the New York Theatre Workshop play Becoming Eve, because it was about a trans person, was deemed unsuitable, cuts to the core of people’s identities. It’s the opposite of everything that I was working for in my time there.”
The Connelly now sits empty. “,:That room has been many things in its century-and-a-half existence. I hope—and believe—that this will not be the end of the road…”
The latest Marks and Vincentelli Substack podcast is an interview with Melissa Errico.
They write in the introduction: “Peter and Elisabeth both have a long history with Melissa, having converted to fandom with her revelatory performance in the Encores! production of “One Touch of Venus,” back in 1996.* In the intervening years, she has emerged as a top-shelf interpreter of two songwriters we are especially fond of: Stephen Sondheim and Michel Legrand. She talks about her relationship with them, and how they differed from each other, about working on and off Broadway, and her career as a traveling concert performer.”
(*That’s when I, and most people who attended, fell in love with her too)
Earlier, they interviewed Richard Nelson, the author/director best-known for “The Apple Plays,” who recently directed a production of his play “Conversations in Tusculum” in Kyiv, Ukraine, and wrote a book about it: “A Diary of War & Theatre — Making Theatre in Kyiv, Spring 2024,”
In one of his Culture Vulture columns, a regular feature of his substack Another Eye Opens, Don Shewey wrote (among other things) about a tribute at Lincoln Center Theater for the playwright Christopher Durang,
“How I Met Christopher Durang, and The People Who Love Him” – The celebration of Christopher Durang at Lincoln Center Theater was aptly titled (a reference to his 2009 opus Why Torture Is Wrong, And The People Who Love Them). A “This Is Your Life” slideshow put together by Durang’s adorable husband John Augustine alternated with excerpts from Mrs. Sorken, Adrift in Macao, and the Tony Award-winning Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike.…
“…We think of Durang as a writer of crazy comedies, as well as an amusing comic actor with a surprisingly adept musical-theater singing voice. But when I really think about his body of work – Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Beyond Therapy, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Laughing Wild – I mean, those are some deep plays, often driven by immense sorrow and rage…”
Adam Szymkowicz interviews his 1122nd playwright Corey Allen (What kind of theater excites you? A: Visceral, embodied, uncomfortable, messy, intimate, or epic storytelling…”)
In Call Me Adam, Adam Rothenberg interviews Karen Mason about her new album celebrating the music of John Kander & Fred Ebb, but concludes with lightning round questions. The final one:
Glinda or Elphaba?
Wanna be Glinda; wanna sing Elphaba
