ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR FEB. 27, 2024
Punitive cuts to performing arts funding in Hong Kong, Hezbollah's immersive theater tour, detailed data on Madrid's musical market, and more
If it’s Tuesday it must be Jaques, your weekly guide to international theater. New to Jaques? Learn more here.
In last week’s SPOTLIGHT STORY: How Chicago played as big a part as Cats and The Phantom of the Opera in introducing the world to the contemporary, commercial Broadway industry as we know it.
This week: Your survey of the latest global theater headlines, coming right up.
ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS
“Funding cuts, cancelled shows leave Hong Kong arts groups guessing about ‘red lines’ caused by national security law.” That’s the headline in a sobering South China Morning Post story about the destabilization of the local arts scene thanks to recent moves by the city’s Arts Development Council to pull funding over violations of an often-nebulous 2020 law banning content relating to secession, subversion of the state, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. “The arts world was shocked by news last month that the city’s funding body had decided to retain about HK$88,000 (US$11,253) of its HK$441,700 (US$56,460) grant for the [Hong Kong Federation of Drama Societies’] awards ceremony last June,” writes Cannix Yau. Such cutbacks are impacting the city’s “40,000 cultural and creative industry-related groups,” including the “more than 1,000 performing arts groups which stage as many as 8,000 shows and draw audiences of more than 3 million a year.” Among anecdotes about last-minute production shutdowns, artists self-censoring to sidestep punishment, and confusion over the exact specifics of redlined content, Arts Council chairman Kenneth Fok Kai-kong is quoted as saying, “This is a warning to the industry that if they are disobedient, they will be punished and see their funding axed.”
The Atlantic has a surprising story with details of a touring immersive theater production staged by Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant movement. Writer Robert F. Worth saw the show—consisting of three short plays about war and martyrdom, plus a walk through a tunnel reminiscent of Gaza—in Beirut after the production had already traveled to Iran, Iraq and Syria. “Hezbollah has produced a stream of resistance-themed agitprop over the years, but this show’s scale is unusually ambitious,” Worth writes. “Presumably, the four-country premiere is an effort to stir the faithful at a time of crisis. But the play’s selective take on recent history inadvertently hints at some difficulties Hezbollah is now facing.”
A feature in El Español includes some revealing data about the booming musical theater market in Madrid, which in the last decade has evolved into the Spanish-speaking world’s Broadway. Angelica Francesca Rimini writes that the 13 musicals on offer in Madrid in 2023 doubled the number that opened in the city in 2019, the last full calendar year before COVID rocked the industry. Musical theater titles sell more than 1 million tickets a year in a city that annually logs 10.5 million tourists, who shell out 35% of their local spending on cultural activities. This year the Madrid City Council plans to invest €500 million for the promotion of theaters and musicals—€100 million more than in 2023. Also in the story are factoids about production costs (€300,000 to €10 million) and theater inventory (49 venues all around the city, with musical theater offerings claiming almost a third of Madrid’s total seats).
Meanwhile, Stage Entertainment is touting some impressive figures in Hamburg, including an audience survey that found that visitors to Stage’s shows had an economic impact of €1.01 billion on the city in 2022. In a story in Hamburg News, the company also said it recorded a 30% rise in new customers thanks to its production Hamilton, which closed in the fall.
Speaking of Germany’s enthusiasm for musical theater: Get the inside story on what’s kept Starlight Express running in Bochum for 35 years.
Remember that Chinese-language stage adaptation of The Shawshank Redemption I mentioned in the last ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS? A recent story in the New York Times provides the illuminating context, noting that a four-night run of the show in Beijing almost sold out—and explaining why its success seems to run counter to local trends. Vivian Wang and Claire Fu write: “Chinese audiences’ interest in Hollywood films is fading, with moviegoers turning to homegrown productions. China’s authoritarian government has stoked nationalism and cast Western influence as a political pollutant. Censorship of the arts has tightened. Yet the production reflects how some artists are trying to navigate the changing landscape of both what is permissible and what is marketable in China. And its success shows the appetite that many Chinese still have for cultural exchange.”
Mirvish Productions announced an upcoming Toronto season that includes Back to the Future, Beetlejuice and Moulin Rouge! In The Canadian Press, writer David Friend notes that the season relies on well-known titles and familiar franchises (also including Life of Pi, The Lion King and Mamma Mia!) as part of a push to get business back up to pre-pandemic levels. “Mirvish said current subscribers to the theatre company’s main season grew 33 percent over the previous year, reaching 40,000 subscriptions for the 2023-2024 season,” Friend says. “They hope to reach pre-pandemic levels of 47,000 subscribers with the 2024-2025 season, according to John Karastamatis, the company’s director of sales.”
The Broadway-style spectacle Jai Shri Ram—Ramayan will tour the U.S. and Canada. Created, written, produced, and directed by Puneet Issar (a well-known television actor) and Siddhant Issar, this retelling of the Ramayana includes 13 original songs. In a tour organized by Shri Balaji Entertainment and Dome Entertainment, Jai Shri Ram—described as “India’s longest-running Broadway-style musical extravaganza”—will play Dallas, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New Jersey, Chicago, Houston, Toronto, Vancouver, Raleigh, and Boston in a tour that runs from mid-April through May.
The international tour of The Phantom of the Opera reopens in Shenzen, China, in July, ending a COVID-induced hiatus that began in 2020. As noted in Playbill, further stops on the tour include Shanghai, Xi’an, Suzhou, Chengdu, and Beijing.
Seoul is the latest stop for the School of Rock global tour, and a feature in The Korea Times, focused on two of the U.K. natives in the cast, touches on the responsiveness of Korean audiences. “Before arriving in Korea, [actor Reuben] Browne had heard that Korean audiences might be quiet and that some humor could be lost in translation. However, he found the reality to be quite different,” writes Kwon Mee-yoo. The reporter adds that the “unique experience of allowing photography during the final curtain call left a lasting impression on the actors.”
Broadway, the West End and the National Theatre have all become increasingly open to earlier curtain times, as highlighted in a story in the New York Times. The hook in writer Alex Marshall’s feature is the National’s current experiment with a 6:30 pm curtain. Those performances are “marginally outselling” other midweek shows, according to the story.
Speaking of the National: The London institution has just launched a new digital platform for its 10-year-old Black Play Archive, encompassing more than 850 plays from more than 300 Black British, African and Caribbean writers, plus video and audio recordings and interviews. As noted in International Arts Manager, the archive’s new accessibility is part of an effort “to help practitioners, teachers, students and academics to discover lesser-known scripts, encourage the commissioning or restaging of these works, and support the teaching of more diverse texts on the syllabus.”
IN NEXT WEEK’S SPOTLIGHT STORY
Licensing is sexy! Or at least, it’s a really important force in international theater. I’ll tell you why in a week.