Posts from — July 2010

Thirty years ago this summer, a wooden hut appeared in Leicester Square and changed the London theatre forever.

That tiny building, which officially opened on August 10, 1980, was London’s first half-price ticket booth, and it’s gone on to sell almost 11 million tickets to more than 1,200 shows.

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Buzz Cohen’s favorite moments from Shakespeare in the Park

When there’s something strange in Delacorte, who ya gonna call? Buzz Cohen, probably, who’s stage managed fourteen of the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park productions at the Delacorte Theater. (This summer, she’s overseeing The Merchant of Venice.)

Actors and directors may get all the applause, but few of them will face the level of insanity that a stage manager faces every day—especially a stage manager who’s working on an outdoor show in Central Park. Cohen, whose job has included sheep wrangling and recovering sinking ships, recently regaled TDF with tales of her decades-long tenure at the city’s least-predictable venue.

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How audiences impacted a new Off Broadway play

There’s a wise old adage in the theatre that you can’t know a play until you’ve seen it in front of an audience. By noticing when a crowd is leaning forward, staring at the ceiling, or holding its breath, an artist gets a concrete lesson about how a show works.

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A new musical puts theme before character

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When someone asks what a musical is about, you generally can mention the characters: Jersey Boys is about The Four Seasons.Mame is about Mame. But See Rock City & Other Destinations demands a different response. It may have plenty of characters, but it’s about something else.

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Joe DiPietro has become a sneakily serious playwright. Granted, his shows are still comedies, but now there are weighty issues lurking inside the jokes.

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