Travis Alabanza

2023 has been a big year for theatre. It’s easy to say that every year, but in the past twelve months we have seen a real shakeup of artistic directors, as well as a whole series of new smash hits, from revivals to new musicals to cutting-edge plays. With the pandemic era of closed buildings and Zoom plays fading into memory, theatre is well and truly back and thriving.

The mainstay of Sydney’s high summer season, Sydney Festival, sails back this January with a first class line-up of World Premieres, extraordinary immersive experiences, cutting-edge public art, Australian exclusives, free events, trailblazing First Nations programming and an epic live music offering. 

Open Clasp Theatre Company is set to premiere 'Mycelial,' their most ambitious international production to date. Co-created with sex worker activists from around the world over four years, the play offers a reality check on assumptions made about people involved in sex work.

Its strength is obviously in its joyous and uncompromising queer nature. McDougall casts it entirely gender-blind, making it a piece where gender doesn’t matter, even though its role is at the very core of it. They turn it into an exploration of the performative quality of identity with plenty of tongue-in-cheek moments that tug at the artifice of drama.

A range of 39 free events have been added to Edinburgh International Festival's 2023 programme, the first from incoming Festival Director Nicola Benedetti.

Hot off the heels of their award-winning BURGERZ by Travis Alabanza which had its final shows in March this year, followed by a run of their new show Tomorrow Is Already Dead by Ms Sharon Le Grand at Soho Theatre in June and the launch of their new stage on wheels, the Bobby Dazzler, Hackney Showroom in association with Brixton House, today announces the world première of The Legends of Them.

Birthmarked is a semi-improvised-gig-theatre-musical based on my personal experience growing up and being disfellowshipped (shunned/ex-communicated) from the religion of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Awards were presented last night to 34 outstanding actors, directors, designers, choreographers, musicians, and 5 visiting productions by the Boston Theater Critics Association (BTCA) at the 40th Anniversary Elliot Norton Awards ceremony, held at the Huntington Theatre in Boston.

Veteran Boston actor Bobbie Steinbach will receive the Elliot Norton Prize for Sustained Excellence at the 40th annual Elliot Norton Awards, presented by the Boston Theater Critics Association (BTCA) on May 8 at the Huntington Theatre.

A vibrant and diverse cast of 14 LGBTQIA+ and Deaf performers will come together to perform Emma Frankland and Subira Joy's adaptation of John Lyly's early modern play Galatea at Brighton Festival, which was written in the 1580s and performed in front of Elizabeth I.

BLUE was Derek Jarman's final film. Completed in May 1993, just months before his death, it is his testament. For 74 minutes, an unchanging screen of celestial blue is accompanied by voices which deliver a collage of fragments from Jarman's diary, describing the gradual onset of blindness as he battles with HIV. As his daily life is stripped away, only the essentials remain.

Rose Bruford College has launched a new postgraduate Masters course in Queer Performance, the first course of its kind available worldwide, training students to create, explore, examine and expand queer performance practice. This new programme is delivered in a hybrid way, with full or part time options, via distance learning and in-person, offering the opportunity for students to continue their work as artists outside of their learning. 

Hackney Showroom has welcomed six new people to its Board of Trustees to support their aims of producing outstanding live performance, fostering the careers of experimental theatre artists and creating a home where locals and artists can thrive.

Sound of the Underground, co-created by Travis Alabanza and Debbie Hannan, unleashes queer chaos on the historic Royal Court. Over the course of three acts, a cast of real London drag performers use every weapon in their arsenal to shed light on the realities of the city’s dying queer nightlife scene, the commercialisation of drag, the persistence of homophobia and transphobia, and the lack of money in the arts… but they have a lot of fun in doing so.

Read the reviews for Travis Alabanza’s Sound of the Underground, now playing at the Royal Court Theatre.

This season of work invites Roundhouse audiences to contemplate the present, reflect on the past and conceive new possibilities for a world in need of change. This sprawling and highly inclusive treasury of ideas, shared by world-leading artists, writers and thinkers, will challenge perceptions of what the future can hold.

Director and CEO of Fuel, Kate McGrath has announced the company's first shows for 2023. A UK tour of Hannah Lavery's new play Protest directed by Natalie Ibu will begin performances at Northern Stage in May followed by dates in Scotland and England. 

The winners have been announced for the 2022 BroadwayWorld Boston Awards, honoring the best in regional productions, touring shows, and more which had their first performance between October 1, 2021 through September 30, 2022.

We start the 2023 as we mean to go on; with some cracking West End shows. From some well-deserved transfers from the Theatre Royal Bath and Chichester Festival Theatre, to the UK premiere of George Takei's musical and the unknown story of Charlie  Chaplin and  Stan Laurel there are some true theatrical treats in store in January.

The latest standings as of Monday, December 19th, have been released for the 2022 BroadwayWorld Boston Awards! Nominations were reader-submitted and now our readers get to vote for their favorites.