ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS FOR JULY 23, 2024
Two Russian theatermakers get sentenced, a Spanish creator-producer gets arrested, a disgruntled artist gets sued for mooning a French critic, and more
Welcome to the latest edition of ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS, my regular roundup of theater headlines from around the world. New to Jaques? Check out this handy explainer.
A Moscow court sentenced Russian director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petrichuk to six years in jail after finding them guilty of “justifying terrorism.” The two theatermakers have been in custody since May 2023 for their 2020 play The Brave Falcon Finist, about a Russian woman who becomes radicalized online and goes to Syria to marry a member of the Islamic State. As reported by the BBC’s Anna Lamche, the prosecution argued the play included “signs of justification of terrorism”; the defendants insisted the play was created and staged to prevent terrorism. It’s a case that has been closely watched by arts circles both in Russian and abroad as “the trial heightened alarm about freedom of expression in Russia among members of the country’s artistic community,” Lamche writes, and as “Russia’s artistic community has come under increasing pressure from the Kremlin since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.” Berkovich and Petrichuk will be sent to a penal colony to serve their sentences, and will also be barred from “administering websites” for an additional three years. The defense lawyer for the two women has vowed to appeal, and “[s]everal high-profile Russian artists, writers and journalists have come out in support of the women.”
Spain’s National Police arrested Nacho Cano, the creator-composer-producer of the successful, controversial musical Malinche, for illegally hiring immigrants to work on the show. As enumerated in an article in Spanish outlet Público [via Google Translate], it’s the latest in “a string of controversies that includes allegations of preferential treatment by the PP [the People’s Party of the Community of Madrid], neighborhood protests, a questionable view of Spain’s colonial past in Mexico and a fruitful friendship with [Isabel Diaz] Ayuso [President of the Community of Madrid].” The recent arrest occurred after “several complaints [were] filed by the musical show’s workers to the National Police for alleged irregularities in contracts. According to the sources consulted, they point to Cano as the author of crimes against workers’ rights and of promoting illegal immigration.”
I wrote about Madrid’s booming musical theater industry in this SPOTLIGHT STORY from May:
Artist gets bad reviews; artist moons critics at a prestigious European theater festival; critic sues. As reported by Philip Oltermann in the Guardian, Spanish theatermaker Angélica Liddell is being sued for defamation in the wake of an onstage demonstration—including the flashing of her bare backside—during one of her performances at the Festival d’Avignon in France. In “a stunt that has sparked a debate about the limits of artistic freedom in politically divisive times,” Liddell “read out a list of negative reviews of her past work from French critics, many of whom were in attendance,” Oltermann writes. “‘I despise and hate you,’ the 67-year-old said, at one point lifting the back of her dress to the 1,000-seater auditorium of the Palais des Papes.” A critic singled out by Lidell, Stéphane Capron of the radio station France Inter, filed the complaint with the support of the Syndicat de la Critique, the French union for performing arts critics. In response, the festival said it “defended freedom of expression and freedom of the press,” while Liddell “said she had not yet received a court summons or an injunction, but dismissed the critics for lacking a sense of humour.”
Also in the Guardian, reporter Eve Livingston says Edinburgh’s theater business is struggling ahead of next month’s Fringe. “[A]s arts spaces across Scotland’s capital struggle to stay afloat, the number of venues hosting fringe shows this year is among the lowest of the past decade,” she writes. “In August, according to official Fringe figures, 262 venues will welcome audiences, an almost 20% reduction since the festival’s peak of 323 venues in 2019.” By way of explanation, Edinburgh journalist Will Quinn is quoted as saying, “The triple-whammy of austerity-induced funding cuts, decades of wage stagnation, and a lack of commercial acumen among local artistic leaders has pushed many of the city’s performing arts venues and organisations near, or into, the red.”
Remember that new musical produced by Canadian donut chain Tim Hortons, created by and starring legit musical theater talent? Audiences who missed the recent Toronto run will have another chance to catch it now that The Last Timbit will stream on Canadian platform Crave starting next month. The production, starring Broadway alum Chilina Kennedy in the story of a group of people trapped by a blizzard in a Tim Hortons, was recorded in June and filmed for streaming by Bell Media Studios.
U.K. theater execs are confident that the industry can hit the sustainability goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2030—but caution that further effort must be made to tackle the business’ “unavoidable emissions,” many of them related to travel, transit and shipping. As detailed by Katie Chambers’ story in the Stage, Theatre Green Book co-founder Paddy Dillon agreed with other industry leaders in calling it “‘perfectly possible’ for theatres across the U.K. and Europe to reach carbon neutrality by 2030,” especially with the aid of the new, second edition of the Green Book, an industry guide to sustainability. “Touring productions, audience transport and deliveries are among the operations listed in the Theatre Green Book 2 as having emissions that should be ‘offset’ or ‘minimized,’” Chamber notes.
I covered the Theatre Green Book as part of this story from April about the global theater industry’s new wave of sustainability efforts:
A “dark musical comedy” about witches is selling out in Kyiv, according to a fun listen from NPR’s Morning Edition. Reporter Ashley Westerman says the play The Witch of Konotop has become a “summer blockbuster” because “even though the plot takes place centuries ago, the play’s takeaways and parallels to today resonate with Ukrainians.” The storyline follow a Cossack military leader’s pursuit of an unavailable Konotop woman and his ridiculous efforts to root out the town’s “witch problem.” In interviews, local performers and producers cite Russia and Putin in the contemporary resonances they see in the story, and Westerman also attributes the show’s popularity to “the overall push to celebrate Ukrainian culture and literature—Putin has repeatedly said victory, to him, means nothing short of Ukraine losing not just their sovereignty, but also their identity.”
The Korea Times has a rundown of the many stars populating Seoul’s stages this summer, and while international readers might not recognize many of the performers’ names in writer Jin-Hai Park’s story, they’re sure to be familiar with the lineup of shows on offer ranging from Angels in America and The Sound Inside to Chicago and Your Lie in April.
Don’t miss my deep dive into the bustling Seoul market from last month:
Speaking of summer theater guides, the Toronto Star has a roundup of the 13 shows on the 2024 calendar of the venerable Shaw Festival, from a revival of My Fair Lady that organizers hope will reinvigorate the fest’s finances after reporting “the largest single-year operating deficit in its history” following its 2023 season, to stagings of One Man, Two Guvnors, The House That Will Not Stand, a new adaptation of The Secret Garden, and more.
A WORD ABOUT THE JAQUES SUMMER PUBLISHING SCHEDULE
After next week’s SPOTLIGHT STORY, I’ll be taking a late-summer hiatus from those in-depth stories in order to prep for Year 2 of Jaques, which launches this autumn. But I won’t disappear completely! These ABROAD/WAY BULLETPOINTS will continue to land in your inbox every other week, rounding up all the global theater headlines you need to know.
After next week’s SPOTLIGHT STORY, paid subscriptions will be temporarily paused, which means that billing cycles will be frozen for both monthly and annual subscribers. They’ll resume (with ample warning) in the fall, when I’ll return with the first of the SPOTLIGHT STORIES I’ve got on deck for Season 2.
Any questions? Drop me line. And see you next week!