New York Times: How to Shoot a Sex Scene in a Pandemic: Cue the Mannequins. “Of all the weird ways that Covid-19 has affected life in this country, one of the most bizarre is taking place on a soundstage in Los Angeles. That’s where actors on the CBS soap opera ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ have been shooting intimate scenes with mannequins.”
acting
Backstage: These Orgs Are Helping Out-of-Work Actors Affected by Coronavirus
Backstage: These Orgs Are Helping Out-of-Work Actors Affected by Coronavirus. “The show must go on—and now you can watch it from your living room. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encouraging self-isolation to halt the coronavirus’ spread, those who are financially dependent on the television, film, and theater industries have seen their livelihoods flash before their eyes. But in true showbiz fashion, nobody is going down without a fight.”
Backstage: How This VO Actor Is Helping Connect African American Talent With More Opportunities
Backstage: How This VO Actor Is Helping Connect African American Talent With More Opportunities. “Over the years building his voiceover business, Bryan [J. Howard] recognized the need for a go-to source where casting directors could find professional African American voice actors and founded the African-American Voice Actor Database. I spoke with Bryan about creating the database, how his music career influences his voiceover work, and more.”
Go London: Ian McKellen interview footage will be used to create huge, free educational resource
Go London: Ian McKellen interview footage will be used to create huge, free educational resource. “Sir Ian McKellen is a busy man – he’s starring in a one-man show to celebrate his 80th birthday, and now will be the focus of a new website designed to help students. The creators of documentary McKellen: Playing The Part will develop the interactive website to include hours of unseen interview footage that didn’t fit into the film.”
Playbill: The Actors Fund Launches Performing Arts Legacy Project Documenting Veteran Performers’ Careers
Playbill: The Actors Fund Launches Performing Arts Legacy Project Documenting Veteran Performers’ Careers. “The Actors Fund has announced the launch of the Performing Arts Legacy Project, a new online platform that invites veteran performers to create and share their own pages, documenting their careers in the performing arts. The website… launched May 7 with contributions from 10 veteran performers including Tony Award winner Len Cariou (Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music), three-time Tony nominee André De Shields (Hadestown, The Wiz), Michael David Arian, George Bartenieff (I Will Bear Witness: The Holocaust Diaries), Vinie Burrows (Green Pastures, The Skin of Our Teeth), Susan Lehman (I Can Get It For You Wholesale, Fiddler on the Roof), Agosto Machado, Richard Masur (Lucky Guy), Gilda Mirós, and Virginia Wing.”
New York Post: Studios are now looking for actors who are Insta-famous
New York Post: Studios are now looking for actors who are Insta-famous. “Today, when studios ask an actor for their credits, chances are they aren’t looking for their roles — they want to know how many social media followers they have. And it’s stressing some actors out.”
University of Pennsylvania: Prospecting Playbills
University of Pennsylvania: Prospecting Playbills. “A 1790 playbill advertising two comedies performed in the English town of Hull, The Belle’s Strategem and Harlequin Foundling, has 40 lines of text to describe the performance, including: “To conclude with a DANCE of FAIRIES in THE TEMPLE OF LIBERTY.” Playbills for 18th- and 19th-century dramatic performances such as this one are not only engaging, but filled with valuable information for researchers. How to capture and catalogue all of those varied, and often quirky, details for meaningful analysis? Neither a method nor a database exists. Until now.” That’s a heck of an opening for this article, but I’d love to learn the differences between this project and the British Library’s Playbill project, which was announced last September. Not that I think there should be only one or anything like that, I just want to know how this one is so different.
Variety: Broadway Critics Launch New Site for Theater Reviews
Variety: Broadway Critics Launch New Site for Theater Reviews. “There’s a new place for New York theater reviews. Those aren’t words you expect to hear these days, not as traditional media outlets scale back their theater coverage and more and more critics lose their full-time posts. But now a group of longtime reviewers — all veterans of city papers — has banded together to create New York Stage Review, a website that’s pushing back against criticism’s demise.”
‘Angry boredom’: early responses to Waiting for Godot showcased online (The Guardian)
The Guardian: ‘Angry boredom’: early responses to Waiting for Godot showcased online. “Today, Waiting for Godot is the most celebrated of Samuel Beckett’s plays, but newly digitised material from the depths of the British Library shows how its first audiences responded in horror to its ‘lavatory references’, while some anticipated that ‘this ugly little jet of marsh-gas’ from ‘the late James Joyce’s secretary’ would soon be forgotten.”
UT-Austin: Archive Acquired of Theatre and Film Actor Peter O’Toole
UT-Austin: Archive Acquired of Theatre and Film Actor Peter O’Toole. ” The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin has obtained the archive of British theatre and film actor Peter O’Toole (1932–2013)…. The extensive archive contains theatre and film scripts along with O’Toole’s writings, including drafts, notes and working material for his multivolume memoir ‘Loitering with Intent.'”
Theater Mania: Primary Stages Launches Off-Broadway Oral History Project
Theater Mania: Primary Stages Launches Off-Broadway Oral History Project. “Primary Stages has announced the launch of Off Center: The Off-Broadway Oral History Project. Officially launched on Thursday, March 2, at WNYC’s Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, the project was created to fill a gap in theater history and establishes a video archive featuring the innovative artists who transformed off- and off-off-Broadway in the years after World War II.”
Minority Actors in Shakespeare Performances
A new database details the performances of minority actors in UK Shakespeare productions, and the roles they’re getting – or not getting. “The British Black and Asian Shakespeare Performance Database details the casts of 1,189 Shakespearean productions dating back to 1930. It reveals that Laertes and Ophelia have been played by black or Asian actors 14 times in productions of Hamlet, compared to six times in the title role.”
