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Theater News

PROLIGHTS Tick All the Right Boxes for the Stamford Shakespeare Company

Founded in 1968, the amateur Stamford Shakespeare Company has been putting on performances of Shakespeare’s classics for audiences of all ages for over 50 years. Since 1977 the Stamford Shakespeare Company has called the beautiful Tolethorpe Hall home, with their concrete-stepped amphitheater, allowing them to recreate the Shakespearian magic in a similar environment to the original performance spaces.Read More »PROLIGHTS Tick All the Right Boxes for the Stamford Shakespeare Company

Staging Concepts Sets the Stage for the Opening of “The Shell” in San Diego

The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park is the San Diego Symphony’s brand new venue

The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park (a.k.a. “The Shell”), the San Diego Symphony’s brand new, cutting-edge venue will be the first permanent, year-round waterfront concert and events venue in the nation operated by a symphony orchestra. As concertgoers eagerly return to live events, the facility anticipates swaths of people flocking to attend the array of events scheduled to take place along San Diego Bay in Embarcadero Marina Park South.Read More »Staging Concepts Sets the Stage for the Opening of “The Shell” in San Diego

Robert Juliat SpotMe for Czech Republic’s Brno City Theatre

Pretty Woman – hard-edge beams and strong backlight are the order of the day for this upbeat production. Photo Credit: ©Tino Kratochvil

The largest performance space of Brno City Theatre (Městské divadlo Brno), The Music Theatre, is a 680-seat venue that hosts a program of current musicals and large-scale drama. It was built in 2004 as the best technically equipped theatre in Europe. To maintain these modern standards, technical manager, David Kachlíř, recently added a Robert Juliat SpotMe tracking device to the venue’s lighting inventory, thereby increasing its existing complement of Robert Juliat products of three RJ Ginger followspots, Dalis 864 colored footlights and a number of RJ 600 and 700 series profiles. The RJ SpotMe device was supplied by Prague-based Prolight s.r.o., Robert Juliat’s exclusive distributor for the Czech Republic, as part of an improvement initiative to future-proof the theatre.

SpotMe is Robert Juliat’s award-winning server that produces real-time tracking information with no emitters or cameras on stage or performers. It uses feedback from sensors mounted on a tripod and followspot to coordinate moving lights with the movement initiated by a followspot and its operator – a perfect combination of high technology and human control in lighting design and operation.Read More »Robert Juliat SpotMe for Czech Republic’s Brno City Theatre

NEA Offers Relief Funds to Help Arts and Culture Sector Recover from Pandemic

NEA Opens Doors to Applications for American Rescue Plan Funding

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is announcing two programs to distribute American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds. These programs are open to nonprofit arts and culture organizations and local arts agencies, regardless of whether they have received NEA funding in the past. This is a change from previous emergency funding requirements at the NEA and significantly expands access to federal funds for the arts and culture sector. The NEA encourages applications from first-time applicants, and will offer workshops, question-and-answer sessions, and other resources for those new to federal funding.Read More »NEA Offers Relief Funds to Help Arts and Culture Sector Recover from Pandemic

Costume Industry Coalition (CIC) Marks its One Year Anniversary

One year ago today, Costume Industry Coalition was launched to advocate for the survival of the custom costume industry in New York City. They can’t thank you enough for sharing in our journey. Here’s a video from the CIC looking back at the year.

You can also read and learn more about the CIC in this article from the June 2021 issue of Stage Directions, Industry Advocates, the Costume Industry Coalition.

Read More »Costume Industry Coalition (CIC) Marks its One Year Anniversary

Cory Pattak and CHAUVET Professional Ovation Fixtures Light Tuacahn Amphitheatre

Like anyone who enters Tuacahn Amphitheatre for the first time, Cory Pattak was awed by the surroundings when he arrived there in 2017 to light a production of Newsies. Located at the mouth of Padre Canyon in southwestern Utah, with its towering sandstone cliffs dotted with sage brush and yuca trees, the setting offers a quintessential image of the American West in all its rugged, untamed beauty.Read More »Cory Pattak and CHAUVET Professional Ovation Fixtures Light Tuacahn Amphitheatre

The 15th Edition of the Prague Quadrennial Will Take Place June 8–18, 2023

The 15th edition of the Prague Quadrennial will take place June 8 to 18, 2023 and the main venue is the Pražská Tržnice. Here’s a video from PQ with the announcement of the theme, which took place on Tuesday, June 23, 2021. The theme for the 15th PQ is RARE: art springing out of ideas, materials, artistic approaches, and design practices that connect to the human level from within your environment, with its genius loci and unique situation. By this theme, the PQ responds to the changes in all areas of human life that the pandemic situation has accelerated and the physical experience has become rare. They call on performance designers, scenographers, and performance practitioners to use their RARE imagination and creativity to help them envision what the world and theatre could look like in the post-pandemic future.

Read More »The 15th Edition of the Prague Quadrennial Will Take Place June 8–18, 2023

Stage Directions to Merge into PLSN Magazine

June 21, 2021—Timeless Communications, publisher of Projection, Lights and Staging News (PLSN); Front of House (FOH); and Stage Directions (SD) magazines, is looking beyond the pandemic to a strong future for the industry and its publications. To that end, they today announced that Stage Directions magazine will merge into PLSN magazine. This will both expand the comprehensive coverage offered by PLSN, the industry’s indisputable leading publication and will better reflect today’s entertainment technology business sector.Read More »Stage Directions to Merge into PLSN Magazine

AAPAC Releases Expanded Diversity Report for New York City’s 2018-19 Theatre Season

The Visibility Report: Racial Representation on New York City Stages finds inequity in arts funding between largest theatre companies and theatres of color. Gains in diversity came from non-profit sector while Broadway remained stagnant or declined.

A graph from the AAPAC’s The Visibility Report: Racial Representation on New York City Stages

 

The Obie Award-winning Asian American Performers Action Coalition (AAPAC) released its 10th annual report today, The Visibility Report: Racial Representation on New York City Stages, covering employment statistics by race for all shows that opened on Broadway and at the 18 largest non-profit theatre companies in the 2018-19 New York season—the last full season before the COVID-19 pandemic. The report tracks actors, playwrights, composers, librettists, lyricists, directors, artistic directors and—new to the report this year—designers, Broadway producers, general managers, and board members at the non-profit theatre companies. It is the only publicly available report of its kind.Read More »AAPAC Releases Expanded Diversity Report for New York City’s 2018-19 Theatre Season

The Hot Wing King, by Katori Hall Honored with 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Drama

We at Stage Directions send our sincere congratulations to Playwright, Katori Hall for her being awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for her play The Hot Wing King. The play is a funny, deeply felt consideration of Black masculinity and how it is perceived, filtered through the experiences of a loving gay couple and their extended family as they prepare for a culinary competition. From the Pulitzer Prize announcement – For a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life, Fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000). Here’s a trailer of The Hot Wing King from NY’s Signature Theatre:

Read More »The Hot Wing King, by Katori Hall Honored with 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Drama