“For the theatre neighborhood, it was a time of tumult, turnover, ‘the sector is in disaster’ essays, present cancellations on account of sickness, and budgetary shortfalls.” But additionally a response: “If our discipline is on hearth, [we] need to be water.’”

That is an commentary in a publish providing highlights of 2023 from HowlRound, which is arguably nonetheless a theater weblog, though it calls itself a theatre commons. In any case, most of the theater bloggers under appeared to see 2023 the identical means —  as a 12 months of disaster but additionally certainly one of hope. For some, it turned out to be a greater 12 months than the earlier three, which doesn’t sound prefer it’s saying a lot – till you learn, say, Adam Szymkowicz’s abstract of his landmark accomplishment, or Samuel Leiter’s description of his 31^st revealed theater e book. The seems to be again and glimpses ahead are full of significant points – the rising Broadway ticket costs, the impact on Broadway of the brand new congestion pricing coverage, modifications in theatergoing demographics, the weird banning of performs (see each Szymkowicz and Howard Sherman.) However there are additionally present-moment theatrical enthusiasms – which appears a transparent signal that theater, and even theater bloggers, will persist.

Adam Szymkowicz gives  an in depth  evaluate of his 12 months, which was a cheerful one – not simply busy and productive (“I wrote quite a bit this 12 months–4 one act performs, 3 full size performs, one quick movie and a e book about playwriting”) however life-changing: He was in a position to stop his long-time job at Juilliard and write full-time.

And in one thing of a theme for theater in 2023 , he stories that his play “Marian, or The True Story of Robin Hood,” a gender-bending take during which Robin Hood is actually Maid Marian in disguise, was canceled in a college in Fort Wayne, Indiana  however then “made nationwide information when college students determined to provide it themselves.” In what appears like an apt ethical to this story, the publicity would possibly clarify why the play was produced so broadly in 2023: 32 productions!

The Unhealthy Boy of Musical Theater, Scott Miller, assessed how his theater firm New Line fared in 2023, but once more in verse, extra optimistically than final 12 months,

‘Twas a 12 months stuffed with New Line, and yep, we’re nonetheless right here!
Inform me, who would’ve guessed we’d survive yet one more 12 months!
However we’re shortly returning to extra strong floor,
Due to New Line’s supporters, whose assist’s been profound!
These darkish occasions remind us how a lot we want Tales,
To assist us make sense of our stumbles and glories;
So New Line’s nonetheless right here, busting all classes!

Jan Simpson tells us she didn’t have such a cheerful 12 months, which is why in Broadway & Me, her end-of-year publish lists ten exhibits that have been (as her title explains) “Not the Greatest Reveals in 2023 However These That Put A Smile on My Face Once I Wanted One” together with “The Phantom of the Opera,” which she had averted seeing for 35 years. “However after I heard that this landmark present was closing, I knew I needed to lastly see it. And I’m so glad I did….I already miss seeing the long-lasting white masks that sat on the Majestic Theater’s marquee and reigned over forty fourth Road for all these a long time. “

In Broadway Journal, Philip Boroff dissects the most recent report from the Broadway League on the demographics of Broadway, discovering some “silver linings” within the decreased attendance: “25 to 49-year-olds who attended Broadway exhibits outnumbered these 50 and up for the primary time since 2008-09.” Additionally: Whereas the Asian, Hispanic and mixed-race viewers was smaller, Black admissions jumped 14 p.c. The rise coincided with a revival of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson with Samuel L. Jackson in an acclaimed ensemble, in addition to a Tony Award-winning revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog. The season had the most important Black viewers since 2011-12…”

In one other publish, Boroff seems to be forward, reporting of the separate efforts to switch to Broadway two exhibits with current runs elsewhere – Stereophonic, which ran Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, and a musical model of The Nice Gatsby  which ran at Paper Mill Playhouse.

Ken Davenport seems to be with the eyes of a producer at My 10 favourite Broadway moments in 2023, which aren’t moments on stage, however extra like information and figures: In 2023, for instance, six Broadway exhibits introduced recoupment (three musicals and three performs), and 237 individuals made their Broadway debuts. 

Wanting forward, Davenport expresses blended emotions about New York Metropolis’s new congestion pricing plan. Beginning within the spring, the motive force of any automotive might want to pay $15 to enter  Manhattan south of Sixtieth Road earlier than 9 p.m, with the cash going to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to fund mass transitc. As a New York Metropolis resident, he sees a lot advantage in it. However as a Broadway producer, “I’m scared.” It’s unhealthy for Broadway,  “largely as a result of it’s aimed squarely on the viewers that has been the toughest to get to come back again to Broadway”—individuals who stay within the suburbs

George Hunka generated a number of posts whereas making ready for a visit to Vienna, together with one about “The Final Days of Mankind,” a mammoth satirical play in regards to the metropolis written by Karl Kraus across the finish of World Conflict I. The play is so lengthy that Kraus estimated {that a} efficiency of the complete play would run to “ten evenings in terrestrial time.”  There was an try and carry out it a decade in the past, however Hunka focuses on a sequence of dioramas by an artist named Deborah Sengl based mostly on the play, “with stuffed rats standing in for human actors.”

Howard Sherman reasonably frighteningly catalogues dramatic works swept up in Florida e book bans, which embody 4 performs by Aristophanes, the collected performs by Lillian Hellman, “M. Butterfly” by David Henry Hwang and “Sweat” by Lynn Nottage.

Maybe much more disturbing is the story Sherman recounts, in three earlier posts; how officers of the Sherman Unbiased Faculty District in Sherman, Texas have been disturbed by the “mature grownup themes, profane language, and sexual content material” of a present deliberate by the scholars of Texas Sherman Excessive Faculty, and wanted to evaluate “all facets of the manufacturing.” The present in query: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!   This can be a sophisticated story, with a suggestion that their objection was initially to the forged of a trans scholar in one of many minor roles.

The weblog’s two authors provided “our favourite productions” of 2023, after which Jeff Kyler gave his three theatrical resolutions for 2024:
See as many new musicals as potential. 
Carry my common paid ticket worth down. Method down
Discover theater in a wide range of venues and genres

Lauren Halvorsen’s evaluate of 2023 is just for paid subscribers, however it’s price excerpting her preface:

Within the annals of regional theatre historical past, 2023 will all the time be the 12 months of The Disaster™. I don’t must meticulously recount each emergency fundraising marketing campaign, theatre closure, layoff cycle, and season discount… It’s simple to really feel discouraged about The State of The Subject, however at any time when I really feel hopeless (which is commonly, as I’m a catastrophizing depressive), I take into consideration the primary line of my favourite Alice Walker poem: “I’ve discovered to not fear about love; however to honor its coming with all my coronary heart.” It’s onerous to not agonize over an unsure future — however even when we are able to’t but think about how we get there, we are able to honor the transformation forward. 

Chris Peterson’s publish on his On Stage Weblog proclaims “Broadway Ticket Costs Gained’t Ever Get Cheaper” and he explains why: prices, restricted seating capability, excessive demand, unionized expertise. He concludes: “I mentioned it a few years in the past and I’ll say it once more now – the one means Broadway thrives and survives the following 50 years is thru streaming choices. Till the powers-that-be settle for that actuality, don’t anticipate ticket costs to lower.”

Samuel Leiter turns his theater weblog right into a theater e book weblog, a minimum of termporarily, describing his two newest books  — his thirtieth, revealed in the beginning of final 12 months Meiji Kabuki: Japanese Theatre by way of Overseas Eyes, his 31^st, simply revealed Brooklyn Takes the Stage: Nineteenth-Century Theater within the Metropolis of Church buildings. 

In a separate publish, he critiques Hermione Lee’s biography of Tom Stoppard,  who he says makes a convincing case for Stoppard being the English-speaking world’s foremost residing playwright (and certainly “it’s onerous to give you anybody comparable, no matter what language they write in”) destined to get the Nobel Prize in Literature 

For a unique standpoint, Rev Stan’s Theater Weblog feedback on having seen Tom Stoppard’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll” at Hampstead Theatre, in its annual checklist of prime 10 favorite performs (and 4 least favorite): This was my final try to seek out an attractive Tom Stoppard play that isn’t Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Useless. And it didn’t work. I didn’t care about any of the characters or get many of the cultural/historic references, which left me feeling silly and aggravated.

In his once-a 12 months weblog posting at Theatre Afficionado at Giant, Kevin Daly lists My 12 months in Present Music, from Six on January 1^st to Kimberly Akimbo on December 31^st.

Brian Eugenio Herrera gives what he guarantees to be the primary of a month-to-month foray into a selected work of theater; this primary is his tackle Annie Baker’s Infinite Life, with some normal observations as nicely in regards to the playwright. “What I most savor about Annie Baker’s performs is the belief that they spend money on the capability of her actors (and her audiences) to pay attention, to watch, and to be unsure… or what Vogue’s Liz Appel describes because the “expertise of attunement.”