Howard Sherman is a New York based arts administrator, writer and advocate. He is director of the Baruch Performing Arts Center, founder of the Arts Integrity Initiative and author of Another Day’s Begun: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town in the 21st Century. Howard has been The Stage’s US columnist since 2012. Read his latest column every other Friday.
Post-shutdowns, there is a greater sense of what people must give up for a career in the arts and less willingness to accept the idea that it is done for love, not money
Losing Off-Broadway venues, such as Second Stage’s Kiser Theatre, to high rents and redevelopment only contributes to the hollowing out of the city and the reduction of opportunity for artistic innovation
The effect of detaching a person from their voice can be comic, freeing or both. Recent productions in New York demonstrate the theatrical possibilities of ventriloquism
Andrew Lloyd Webber has proved himself open to radical re-conceptions of his shows, but allowing experimentation is not something that has always been easy for creators
The weeks before the Tony Awards nomination deadline is always busy for Broadway openings, this year more so than most. But does timing really help to hedge those shows’ chances of an award?
When seeing shows becomes a box-ticking exercise, the pleasure is lost, says Howard Sherman, and shaming people for missing out smacks of an elitism not conducive to spreading a love of theatre