The Flip Side: Hamilton, Jeff Daniels, and Women in Entertainment

/By Hannah Antaki / Mar 29, 2016

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There are a ton of possibilities as to how you ended up on this website. Maybe you work in theatre: building sets, raising money, writing. Maybe you’re a drama teacher or a Broadway fanatic or someone who sees The Nutcracker each year and nothing else. Or maybe you simply found yourself here after one click too many and, having seen a play once in high school, thought you’d hang around and see what all the fuss was about.

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Whoever you are, thanks for reading, and for joining our extended family of thinkers, observers, and creators.

Sometimes, despite how artistically connected or inclined we are, we forget that in other countries, across cultures and time zones, creative visionaries are imagining, writing, and building wonderful worlds in theatres of their own. I’m here to keep you connected to those worlds.

Each week I’ll leave you with a list of select articles, interviews, and podcasts with performing arts professionals working outside of Toronto. It’s my hope that you find at least one that resonates, inspires, or at the very least sparks lively conversation.

Happy reading.

If you only know one thing about entertainment in 2016 it’s this: white artists, unfortunately, unfairly, and (let’s face it) unsurprisingly, still have more opportunity than non-white artists. If you know two things, the second is that Hamilton is the best thing to hit Broadway—and maybe the world—since, well, maybe since ever. Gene Demby’s article for NPR on race within Broadway combines these topics in a fresh way.

Speaking of Broadway, Jeff Daniels returned to the Great White Way this month, reprising the role of Ray in David Harrower’s Blackbird. Here is his piece for The New York Times about the revival process.

Across the pond in London, following a series of fainting audience members at the National’s staging of Sarah Kane’s Cleansed, The Guardian took a look at the extent to which theatre should challenge and provoke.

Challenging an audience is only one reason to stage a theatrical production. Sometimes theatre is simply needed as a way for people to share stories and connect. Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson understood this need when volunteering at the Calais refugee camp. Their Good Chance theatre company is just getting started.

Let’s head southbound now to Buenos Aires, where The Argentina Independent sits down with legendary theatre producer Gustavo Schraier.

Lastly, hooray for 2016 and increased dialogue on equal rights for women in entertainment! See here for Playbill’s look at women to watch.

WRITTEN BY

Hannah Antaki

Hannah works in casting, the only profession that allows her to truthfully use work as an excuse to stay home and watch TV. A dropout of both preschool and law school, she loves Montreal bagels, Harry Potter, and conversations about diversity. Her diet starts tomorrow.

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