Category Archives: Theatre

The Nepalese play letting the crowd reimagine the ending – and their lives

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Familiar issues of discrimination and child marriage are being taken to the stage through interactive theatre in remote villages

High in the mountains of a remote village in western Nepal – a region once home to a fierce Maoist insurgency – a large crowd is gathering.

Women arrive with babies strapped to their fronts; children sit at the edge of the makeshift stage; local officials take up ad hoc seats. Not only is this the first time a play has been performed here – it is the first time a vehicle has ever reached the village. Whatever this travelling theatre group intends to perform, it is a spectacle not to be missed.

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‘I felt unwanted’: Zodwa Nyoni on the immigration tales behind Nine Lives

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The playwright’s monologue, staged at the Bridge theatre, reflects the anger and pain of refugees and asylum seekers

My family migrated from Zimbabwe to England in the late 90s. Most of my teens and all of my 20s were shaped by applying for residency. I spent a lot of time feeling unwanted despite giving back to communities and to the arts, representing the UK at international poetry festivals and exchanges, and contributing to the landscape of British theatre.

In 2014, I was commissioned to write a play for Leeds Playhouse and Glasgow’s Òran Mór as part of the series A Play, a Pie and a Pint. I wrote Nine Lives, a one-man show about Ishmael, a gay Zimbabwean asylum seeker who is dispersed to Leeds while he awaits the Home Office’s decision on his case.

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Madrid’s Teatro Real cancels opera after social distancing protests – video

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Audience members clapped and shouted in protest over a lack of social distancing measures in Madrid on Sunday night causing an opera to be pulled at the last minute.

A performance of Verdi’s A Masked Ball at the Teatro Real was abandoned after two failed attempts to begin. The decision was made to bring down the curtain at about 9.10pm.

One member of the audience said there were rows of more than a dozen people without any gaps between them. In a statement, theatre management said the house had been operating at just 51.5% of its total capacity

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Alex Winter: ‘I had extreme PTSD for many, many years. That will wreak havoc’

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He is starring in a new Bill & Ted movie and releasing a documentary about child actors. The film-maker discusses the abuse he experienced as a young performer, his close friendship with Keanu Reeves – and why he quit acting

By the age of 12, Alex Winter knew both the highs and horrors of life as a child actor. Three years into his career, he was sharing a Broadway stage with Yul Brynner in The King and I. “But at the same time,” he says, “I was dealing with really intense and prolonged abuse.

“There was The King and I – eight shows a week, happy face – feeling genuinely happy in that role. Great relationship with my mom and dad; great relationship with the co-workers around me; doing interviews, signing autographs, living this amazing … and then this nightmarish other existence.” He has not named his abuser, who he says is dead.

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Diana Rigg, Avengers and Game of Thrones star, dies aged 82

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Actor who played Emma Peel in hit spy series and James Bond’s only wife was diagnosed with cancer in March

The actor Diana Rigg, known for her roles on stage and in film and television – including The Avengers and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – has died at the age of 82.

Rigg, who rose to prominence in the 1960s through her starring role as Emma Peel in The Avengers alongside Patrick Macnee, enjoyed a long and varied career, playing Lady Olenna Tyrell in HBO’s smash hit Game of Thrones, a show she admitted in 2019 that she had never watched. She also played Countess Teresa di Vicenzo, or Tracy Bond, James Bond’s first and only wife to date, in the 1969 film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

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Ruth Mackenzie: the British change-maker sacked by Paris’s artistic elite

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Despite fulfilling her brief to bring diversity to the Châtelet Theatre, the veteran director was brusquely dismissed. So what went wrong?

When the British arts supremo Ruth Mackenzie was named artistic director of Paris’s Châtelet theatre she thought everyone knew what they were getting.

Her pitch for the job, approved by the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, after a gruelling four interview panels, was to reinvent the historic Paris venue – known as “Broadway sur Seine” after the previous director’s penchant for American musicals – as a more diverse and inclusive people’s theatre.

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Australian theatres nervously reopen with mandatory masks and temperature checks

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Sydney Theatre Company, Belvoir and Adelaide’s STCSA are among the main stages pushing ahead. No one expects a profit – and many will take a loss

Sydney Theatre Company has announced it is ready to open the doors of the Roslyn Packer theatre and present its first show since March.

Wonnangatta, a new drama written by the award-winning Melbourne playwright Angus Cerini and featuring the actors Hugo Weaving and Wayne Blair, will play from 21 September to 31 October in a socially distanced production for audiences numbering no more than 147 (the Roslyn Packer can usually seat 880 patrons).

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‘I’ve had men rub their genitals against me’: female comedians on extreme sexism in standup

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For years, sexual predators have infested the live comedy scene. But female comedians are demanding action. Is this British standup’s #MeToo moment?

‘If this was a normal office where, on your first day, someone higher up than you goes: ‘Here’s a list of guys in the office who might rape you,’ you would go straight to HR. But there’s no HR – there’s nowhere we can go to say this is happening,” says Laura Duddy, who started out in standup comedy last year.

“For new comics, it’s normal that a more established comic will give them a list of open-mic gigs to try,” says Ellie Calnan, who began standup 18 months ago. “Whereas for women, it’s: ‘Here’s the people and gigs to avoid.’”

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Nick Cordero: Broadway star dies aged 41 of coronavirus complications

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Tony-nominated actor spent more than 90 days in hospital and had his right leg amputated

The Tony award-nominated Broadway actor Nick Cordero, who starred in hit musicals including Waitress, A Bronx Tale and Bullets Over Broadway, has died in Los Angeles from severe medical complications after contracting coronavirus. He was 41.

Cordero died on Sunday at Cedars-Sinai hospital after spending more than 90 days in the hospital, according to his wife, Amanda Kloots. “God has another angel in heaven now,” she posted on Instagram. “Nick was such a bright light. He was everyone’s friend, loved to listen, help and especially talk. He was an incredible actor and musician. He loved his family and loved being a father and husband.”

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Ian Holm, star of Lord of the Rings, Alien and Chariots of Fire, dies aged 88

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The versatile actor went from the RSC and Harold Pinter to international movie stardom with roles as the hobbit Bilbo Baggins and an android in Alien

Ian Holm, the versatile actor who played everything from androids to hobbits via Harold Pinter and King Lear, has died in London aged 88, his agent confirmed to the Guardian.

“It is with great sadness that the actor Sir Ian Holm CBE passed away this morning at the age of 88,” they said. “He died peacefully in hospital, with his family and carer,” adding that his illness was Parkinson’s related. “Charming, kind and ferociously talented, we will miss him hugely.”

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Larry Kramer, groundbreaking author and Aids activist, dies aged 84

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  • Kramer founded pioneering Gay Men’s Health Crisis group
  • Playwright and author died Wednesday morning in Manhattan

The groundbreaking American writer and tireless activist for gay rights and a national effort to tackle the HIV/Aids crisis, Larry Kramer, has died in New York.

Related: Coronavirus US live: cases still increasing in two dozen states amid push to reopen

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Shakespeare’s secret co-writer finally takes a bow … 430 years late

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Thomas Watson recognised by literary scholars as the Bard’s forgotten 16th-century collaborator

He was one of the most celebrated English playwrights of the 16th century, yet none of his plays survived, and today the name of Thomas Watson is virtually unknown. Now the writer, poet and pioneer of the English madrigal – who also saved the life of the playwright Christopher Marlowe in a street brawl – is being seen in a new light.

Watson has been identified as the most likely primary author of Arden of Faversham, the first domestic tragedy in English, which was published anonymously in 1592. Many scholars believe that five of the play’s scenes were co-authored with William Shakespeare.

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Covid-19 prompts all major British theatres to close doors

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Fifty London theatres and 250 throughout UK to close, says industry body

All major British theatre will cease and several cultural institutions will close or postpone shows as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the UK’s arts and culture sector grows following the government’s call for “drastic action” to halt its spread.

The Society of London Theatre (Solt) and UK Theatre, the industry body that represents nearly every British theatre, announced that, as of Monday night, all its members would close their doors. The groups represent about 50 London theatres and almost 250 others throughout the UK.

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Theatre firm made ‘unexplained’ loans to Sarah Ferguson, court told

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Shareholder owed £2.5m wants administrators brought in at firm now chaired by Lord Grade

Unexplained personal and business loans to the Duchess of York of more than £500,000 from an entertainment investment company were a “matter for investigation,” a high court judge has been told.

Gate Ventures loaned Sarah Ferguson at least £287,577 personally, and loaned £232,003 to Ginger & Moss, her upmarket tea, dinnerware and jewellery venture, court documents showed.

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Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood: ‘I confronted my own school bully’

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She loved her nude scenes in the Netflix hit but the West End’s Uncle Vanya gave her stage fright. The Stockport star remembers being the class clown and tracking down her tormentor

Aimee Lou Wood wasn’t sure she wanted to be in Uncle Vanya, even as she made her way to the audition. Having trained at Rada, she knew the lineage of actors who had played the prized part of Sonya, and what an honour it would be to star in a West End Chekhov at the age of 25. “But I just thought it was so the opposite of what I would want to do,” she says.

She did have a point. Sonya is a church-going, sexually naive teenager from the backwaters of 19th-century Russia. Wood, at the time, was fresh out of filming the Netflix teen drama Sex Education. Her character opens the first series with a bout of energetic sex that ends in her boyfriend’s faked orgasm. (Connor Swindells, who played the boyfriend, is her real-life partner of two years.)

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Scenes from Santiago: Chile’s protests spill from streets to stage

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The city’s theatre is emotional, indignant and polemical finds our critic on a whirlwind trip through a dozen shows

The sparky young performers on stage thank us for coming out tonight. There are so many other things we could have been doing, they tell us, before launching into their show, Too Much Sexual Freedom Will Turn You Into Terrorists. “Burning subways” gets the biggest laugh. We are, after all, in Santiago, where only three months ago people took to the streets and did exactly that. Even now, in spite of soaring summer temperatures, Chileans continue to protest every weekend. Their list of complaints ranges from inadequate private pensions to an out-of-touch president.

The graffiti creeping across every surface calls for an end to police violence, for the renationalisation of water and for the indigenous Mapuche people to fight back. Sprayed everywhere is the figure 6% – President Sebastián Piñera’s popularity rating.

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Brian Blessed: ‘All my life, 90% of men have bored the arse off me’

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Dressed in pyjamas and wellies, the great actor talks about his astronaut training in Russia, the original Cats – and putting his might behind his daughter Rosalind’s very personal plays

On a shelf in Brian Blessed’s study is a plastic toy, a replica of himself as Prince Vultan in the film Flash Gordon. There is a resemblance but, with this actor, the very idea of a miniature seems wrong.

The mountainous original is sitting at his desk, wearing a striking winter morning costume of red fleece, pyjama bottoms and wellington boots. He must be the hairiest 83-year-old man in existence, his huge head crowned by a thick grey thatch, his neck Tudor-ruffed by what seem metres of white beard.

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Hamilton star accuses London blues bar of racial profiling

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Giles Terera claims Ain’t Nothin’ But blues bar denied group of actors entry because they were black

A star of the hit musical Hamilton has accused a Soho bar of racial profiling, claiming that it denied a group of actors entry because they were black.

Giles Terera said the Ain’t Nothin’ But blues bar had allowed 10 white people next to them to enter, but that the group of eight black actors were turned away.

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