UNMARRIED MAN now available for licensing
And other global theatre news this week
Good morning (or afternoon) world!
HOT OFF THE PRESS: Broadway DNA is proud to represent the new reality dating show comedy “Unmarried Man” by Alice Nora and Emmy Kuperschmid— now available for licensing worldwide.
EMEA Region
“SpongeBob Musical” to tour UK and Ireland next year ahead of London run
Tour producers Selladoor Worldwide released the below heinous teaser trailer with Nick Jr.-esque energy
The new production curiously lacks any announcement of the new creative team, although they’d do well to look to the current success of Germany’s non-replica premiere tour.
Antonio Banderas-led “Company” to remount at the Umusic Hotel Teatro Albéniz in Madrid starting November 17
Previously premiered this year at Banderas’ Teatro del Soho in Málaga
Disney's “AIDA” is coming to the Netherlands
The previously intended US tour production reimagined by Schele Williams will star Naidjim Severina as Radames, hot off his performance of Fiyero in Stage Entertainment Germany’s non-replica “Wicked” which was *chef’s kiss*
K-Musicals in the News
New footage from Korean producer Seensee’s first remount of their 2019 licensed “Matilda” (currently lagging in sales behind the upcoming “Moulin Rouge” Korean premiere)
Top Korean theatre magazine “더뮤지컬 THE MUSICAL” November issue features Broadway’s "K-POP”
FINALLY some footage released from the new musical based on smash-hit K-drama “Crash Landing On You”
The footage is a “making of” teaser trailer for a potential filmed performance release done with 19 4K cameras and 100 production crew members. Producers A2G Entertainment tease “the biggest creative musical performance movie project! We will visit a global audience once again.” HELLO???? PLEASE?????
My hobby is tracking audience demographics on Korean ticket site Interpark (I’m a ton of fun at parties)
While the gender stats are similar to Broadway, the age of theatergoers in Korea never ceases to stun me, check it out below.
What We’re Seeing: Off-Broadway’s “HOUND DOG” at Ars Nova
Machel Ross’s direction generates compelling, rich images of feeling varying degrees of separation between community, family, and one’s own relation to the world. Feeling being the operative word here, as the play fluidly bounces between real and fictional, sometimes in overt showmanship and other times in discreet disarray. The charm and ultimate heartbreak of the piece is found in this memory play sleight of hand that Ross guides, masterfully filtering us through the twists, turns, and tumults of a young woman’s perceptions and percolations. Framing the story through the lens of our heroine’s glazed-eyed jitters, Ross excavates a raw tension lurking beneath the text, music, and performances that when unearthed, reveals a holistic wonder at the heart of the whole production.
What I’m Reading:
Review: ‘Hamilton’ in German? It’s a Thrill.
I’ve been wrestling with this NYT review of Stage Entertainment Germany’s replica “Hamilton” all month. Garnering much deserved local praise for the four-year-long efforts of translators Kevin Schroeder and Sera Finale, the production marks the first non-English production in the world (still replica). The review also spends a lengthy amount of time lauding the wide net of trans-national casting needed to pull off the show’s core DNA of portraying non-white Founding Fathers— an intriguing requirement in the context of any future global licensing because by its very nature it was created to subvert an American/Western context of multiculturalism and racism in mind. The question that keeps me up at night has long been one with no “right” answer, but one (hopefully) rooted in conversations that will be had with the Authors and Licensing Agency— is the heretofore American moral importance of prioritizing the visibility of specifically black bodies a requirement, or is the show’s DNA transferable to other racial power dynamics around the world (thinking specifically for example of inter-Asian or inter-Latinx racism in different contexts across their respective continents)? While the “easy” answer is limit the show to mainly English-language productions drawing on a US-Euro-Aus cast touring to “rest of world,” or limiting future productions solely to those territories period, wouldn’t that in itself be an act of theatrical imperialism? Is the goal of the show to be seen in an original context, or engaged with locally?
What I’m Listening To:
Antonio Banderas-Led, Spanish-Language Company
The album is the first Spanish-language cast recording of the 1970 musical, and only the third non-English release, following albums in German and Portuguese, both released in 2001. The new album is also the first to use Jonathan Tunick's full, original orchestration since the 1970 original Broadway cast album; though Teatro del Soho's production featured an orchestra of 15, the recording has been supplanted with additional players bringing the total to 29.
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