#theatre

[the-tenth-arcanum]

🗣🗣🗣 free youtube premiere of the national theatre the importance of being ernest announced!

nationaltheatre

[schmergo]

Whenever I tell people that I dream of playing as many versions of Cinderella’s stepsisters as possible, I have to mention the mildly deranged illegal production of Cinderella I was in when I was 12.

I used to go to this small drama camp as a kid that was entirely run by one nice lady, I believe named Carol. We would put on abridged minimalist versions of popular musicals at a local church with only one week of rehearsal. These weren’t licensable junior versions. Carol created them herself.

She wrote the scripts to include the major plot highlights and famous lines from the various musicals and she arranged and accompanied all of the songs on the piano herself. We did Annie, Mary Poppins, the Wizard of Oz, and, the year before I came, Peter Pan. These shows were definitely illegal, but they were so small that nobody really noticed, and they were a ton of fun. The camp was also extremely affordable, so nobody was getting rich off of it.

But Cinderella, my final production with them, was next-level. When I arrived for the first day of camp, I was curious to see if it would be the Disney version or the Rodgers and Hammerstein version.

It was both. And neither.

Carol somehow wrote an almost entirely original book for Cinderella that used the best songs from both the Disney and R&H versions. That meant that I, as a stepsister, got to sing the “Stepsisters’ Lament,” a peak song if you ask me, but adorable little kids playing mice also got to sing “Cinderelly, Cinderelly.”

The one thing about combining both versions is perhaps an overemphasis on the Fairy Godmother, because the songs “Bibbidy Bobbity Boo” and “Impossible” are both no-brainers to include. But somehow, things worked out perfectly there, too, by splitting the role.

See, we didn’t just have a Fairy Godmother.

We also had a Fairy Godfather.

I was 12, so I didn’t quite get the joke, but as an adult, I’m obsessed with the implication that Cinderella got her dress, slippers, and carriage through some kind of vague affiliation with the mafia.

[pers-books]

Sir Ian McKellen is to open a new production of the Shakespeare classic Twelfth Night that will feature all trans and non-binary performers.

Sir Ian McKellen to open historic all-trans and non-binary production of Shakespeare classic

Sir Ian McKellen (Getty)

Sir Ian McKellen will open a brand new production of the Shakespeare classic Twelfth Night featuring all trans and non-binary performers.

The Lord of the Rings star, 86, will join in on the one-night only rehearsed reading by the theatre group Trans What You Will in July.

Staged at London’s The Space Theatre, the reading will be broadcast globally via a livestream. All profits are going to the UK-based trans charity, Not A Phase.

The performance will take one of Shakespeare’s most well known and gender-fluid works and reimagine it through a trans lens.

“With mistaken identities, cross-dressing, and declarations of love across shifting gender roles, Twelfth Night has long explored the complexity of identity,” a press release reads.

“This production makes that queerness explicit, reclaiming the story through the lived experiences of trans and nonbinary artists.”

Sir Ian McKellen (Getty)

Phoebe Kemp, who is directing, has said: “Twelfth Night already toys with gender and performance, it feels like Shakespeare wrote it for us. This reading is about joy, solidarity and showing what’s possible when trans and nonbinary artists are at the centre of the story.”

The performance, which will take place ahead of London Trans+ Pride, has also been billed as “a joyful act of protest and pleasure activism, celebrating gender diversity at a time when trans representation remains under threat.:

Twelfth Night – A Rehearsed Reading by Trans What You Will is set to take place on 25 July 2025 at The Space Theatre. Tickets to attend in person are available here. Tickets for the livestream are available here. Pay-what-you-can tickets are available.

-- Pay-what-you-can livestream?! I love you, Sir Ian!

[gnossienne]

King Lear performed in the fire-damaged ruins of Teatro Municipal de Lima (c. 1999), conceived by architect Luis de Longhi

[literaryreference]

community theatre is quite possibly the funniest hobby, because you will meet all these people who are insanely talented and could probably have gone pro if luck and/or nepotism had allowed, and not only that but you will meet people with Star Quality, the inexplicable magnetism that makes you go "wow i would listen to them read their grocery list." and then you'll be hanging out with them backstage and they'll be like "yeah i'm a receptionist at a dentist's office"

[1five1two]

'Death of an actor'. Karolis Strautniekas. 

[transxfiles]

cant talk rn obsessed over the design concept of this 2017 production of pinocchio as a stage play where pinocchio is the only character played by a human actor and the rest of the cast are portrayed as puppets ,,,