ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR APRIL 9, 2024
A challenge to Berlin's artistic freedom, a leadership departure at Sydney Theatre Company, Broadway in Chennai, and more
Happy day after the eclipse—don’t go feeding any strange and interesting plants!—and welcome to Jaques, your guide to the global theater industry. New to Jaques? Find out what the deal is over here, and check out the full archive of past issues—both ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS and SPOTLIGHT STORIES—over at the Jaques website. ICYMI: Last week’s SPOTLIGHT was all about the surge of sustainable theater initiatives around the world, including a handy guide to all the resources out there for artists, producers and institutions looking to go green.
And now: the latest international headlines.
ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS
“The arts scene in Germany—and especially Berlin—has been turned upside down by Hamas’s attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, and the siege and bombardment of Gaza,” says a lengthy read in the New York Times that touches on performers and theater companies impacted by rising concerns over artistic freedom. “The Maxim Gorki Theater, one of the city’s most acclaimed playhouses, canceled a prizewinning play about Israelis and Palestinians in Berlin—leading several intellectuals and artists to cancel appearances there in turn,” notes writer Jason Farago, who also spoke to musician-performance artists Peaches and Laurie Anderson (who withdrew from a guest professorship at a German art school in a controversy over her signature on a two-year-old open letter). Farago adds, “It is rare for Berlin’s theaters or festivals to cancel someone for what they actually sing or paint or film. What gets you now are statements, posts, likes, signatures: the imperatives of social media.”
Meanwhile, the Stage has a survey of the many ways that theatermakers around the world regularly grapple with censorship, ranging “from overt interference and the pressure to self-censor to the grey areas that can restrict artistic freedom.” In a story by Natasha Tripney, artists from Hong Kong, Turkey, Serbia, Hungary, Poland, and Belarus detail the ways that “public order and terrorism prevention legislation can be used to legitimize censorship and limit artistic freedom”—as well as the ways that censorship “can be subtle and opaque, with concerns around job security, funding or potential public outcry all contributing to a system of self-censorship.”
Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Kip Williams will step down at the end of 2024, a year before the end of his current contract. Appointed to the post in 2016 when he was just 30, Williams leaves STC as his production of The Picture of Dorian Gray starring Sarah Snook is winning raves on the West End and gearing up for a move to New York. The outgoing leader was quoted as saying that “he was leaving STC as Dorian Gray would be touring to Broadway next year, and he felt he wouldn’t be able to juggle the production with programming the 2026 season,” reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai has logged more than one million visitors in its first full year in operation, according to numbers released by the Centre on the facility’s first anniversary. That’s attendance at 700 performances across five venues, plus four visual arts exhibits. The well-appointed venue has caught the eye of Broadway types hoping it’ll become a long-term, viable home for touring musical productions. The Sound of Music and Mamma Mia! were among the offerings on the docket during the Centre’s first year. Next up: Matilda.
India was one of the three global territories that I highlighted on the Jaques heatmap of markets on the rise:
Speaking of India: The well-known Indian composer A.R. Rahman is writing a new musical and wants to create Broadway-like hub for musicals in Chennai. Speaking at the Times Now summit, he said, “My dream is actually to start an arts collective in Chennai, to build a place where we can do stuff like Broadway. So, along with a couple of friends, we’re planning on doing that.” Rahman, who won two Oscars for his work on Slumdog Millionaire and has written the score for musicals Bombay Dreams and The Lord of the Rings, didn’t say much about the new theater project on his docket: “I’m currently writing a musical for a director in London, but can’t reveal much info on it as it is set for six months later.”
In a coda to an ongoing controversy, Japan’s famed Takarazuka Revue fully acknowledged all claims of harassment against a member of the troupe who died last year in a suspected suicide. “The two sides have reached a broad agreement on various issues, including compensation, as the theater company acknowledged all 14 incidents of harassment pointed out by the family,” says The Japan Times. “Many of [the company member’s] seniors who perpetrated the harassment submitted personal letters of apology to the family.”
Probably the highest-profile annual theater festival in the world, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, has been denied funding support by the Scottish government twice in the last month. As reported by Brian Ferguson in The Scotsman, the “Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society is demanding an overhaul of how culture funding is allocated in Scotland after a bid to secure £155,000 to help artists appearing at the event was rejected.” Recent rejections come despite a separate government report that “hails the Fringe as an ‘economic powerhouse,’ and highlights how it has inspired more than 200 other events around the world and attracted performers from more than 150 countries in recent years.” Shona McCarthy, the Fringe Society chief exec, says in the story, “There is an urgent need for Scotland’s cultural and funding bodies to review their current frameworks before the heart of our nation’s cultural landscape is changed in ways that may not be recoverable.”
As evidenced by the current Manila run of the show, Filipino audiences love Miss Saigon: “It can’t be denied the strong connection Filipinos have to Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s Miss Saigon,” says the Philippine Star. “The legacy dates back to the production’s first-ever run on the West End when [Filipina actress] Lea Salonga starred as Kim, a role she would reprise on Broadway leading to historic Olivier and Tony Award wins.” Among the performers singled out for praise in GMG Productions and GWB Entertainment’s staging of the musical is Seann Miley Moore, the non-binary Filipino-Australian actor who “dubs their character the ‘EnginQueer’ and portrays them with “bakla energy’” (using a Tagalog and Cebuano word that challenges exact translation but connotes queerness and feminine gender expression).
Quintessential German musical Der Tanz der Vampire (Dance of the Vampires) has turned 25 years old—and if the show’s enduring popularity is something of a mystery to the rest of the world, it’s also not so easy to account for even among its Germans fans. Thomas Borchert, the actor who plays Count von Krolock in the current Hamburg production, says in an interview timed to the musical’s anniversary: “It’s probably so iconic because you can’t explain it. To me the term ‘cult’ actually means something like this, that some form of magic is happening. You can’t really explain what it is. Maybe that’s the beauty of it.” (I saw Stage Entertainment’s current production of the show when I was in Hamburg in December; I also can’t explain it, but I sure did have good time with it.)
IN NEXT WEEK’S SPOTLIGHT STORY
Humor hurdles, subtext subtleties and too many syllables: The art and craft of translating musical theater, coming up in the next Jaques. See you in a week.