Theater, Opera and Dance

Twilight at the Met: Capitalism’s contempt for culture

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 03:56:30 GMT

The company’s announcement this week of yet another round of devastating cutbacks exposes the incapacity of American capitalism to sustain even its most celebrated cultural institutions.

British playwright, screenwriter Tom Stoppard (1937-2025): Dazzling, erudite, damaged by history

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 02:48:03 GMT

His identification of Marxism and communism with the repression of its Stalinist distortions hampered his work. He exemplified the intellectual crisis of the later 20th century.

Russian soprano Anna Netrebko facing continued blacklisting threat

Sat, 16 Aug 2025 02:21:46 GMT

Netrebko is being punished for not lending her voice in favor of the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, although she has made clear her opposition to the invasion when it took place 3 and ½ years ago.

The work of theatre director Robert Wilson (1941-2025)

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 22:43:03 GMT

“I do theatre, I do not do meanings”—exchange between Robert Wilson and film director Katharina Otto-Bernstein.

182 Royal Ballet and Opera staff denounce “genocide in Gaza,” forcing cancellation of Tel Aviv Tosca production

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 01:16:01 GMT

The open letter declares that, “To call what is unfolding [in Gaza] anything less than genocide is to ignore the overwhelming weight of evidence and the cries of those living—and dying—under siege.”

Detroit Opera cancels season opener as Trump’s cuts impact cultural life across Michigan

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 02:56:30 GMT

The Detroit Opera, like arts organizations across Michigan and nationally, is being staggered by the elimination of federal support for the arts and cultural organizations.

On the death of German theatre director Claus Peymann: “War makes resistance necessary–art can do that”

Sat, 26 Jul 2025 02:11:52 GMT

Peymann's importance lay in the fact that he understood and defended the theatre as a politically and socially significant and indispensable institution, without making any artistic concessions

The Trial of Dedan Kimathi returns to the Kenya National Theatre: The unresolved issues of the Mau Mau struggle

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 17:03:15 GMT

The Trial of Dedan Kimathi confronts the betrayal of the Mau Mau struggle by Kenya’s bourgeoisie and highlights the urgent need for workers and youth to draw the lessons of that experience in the fight for socialism.

John Proctor Is the Villain: Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, an anti-McCarthyite play, hijacked by the new McCarthyism, #MeToo

Tue, 03 Dec 2024 02:18:30 GMT

Of three male characters in the play, one is evil, one is occasionally evil but stupid and the last is merely stupid.

Maggie Smith (1934-2024): “I don’t tolerate fools, but then they don’t tolerate me”

Thu, 03 Oct 2024 17:07:15 GMT

She had little time for celebrity, saying: “One went to school, one wanted to act, one started to act and one’s still acting.”

Stage version of Robert Harris’ Vaterland [Fatherland] in Dresden—a highly topical, but ambivalently directed play

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:27:21 GMT

Directed by Claudia Bauer, a rousing and highly topical play unfortunately goes adrift in a sea of unnecessary frivolity and gimmickry.

UK arts venue HOME bans performance of Palestinian poetry and writings, Voices of Resilience

Wed, 03 Apr 2024 19:52:41 GMT

The event was advertised by HOME on March 25 as “celebrating Palestinian voices”. These voices were cancelled within two days after a filthy campaign by Zionist backers of Israel’s genocide.

John Pring of Disability News Service on Museum of Austerity exhibition

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 19:44:23 GMT

WSWS reporter Dennis Moore interviewed Pring about the Museum of Austerity, his involvement in it and the issues it raises.

“Museum of Austerity” tells story of those killed due to punitive UK benefits system

Mon, 18 Dec 2023 19:43:15 GMT

The innovative installation utilises holographic/augmented technology creating life like images and recorded interviews with family members drawing together the terrible personal and social impact of over a decade of brutal austerity.

Israeli soldiers ransack West Bank theatre, beat and detain artists

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 00:06:51 GMT

The IDF reign of terror directed against the Palestinian population—including its leading cultural and intellectual figures—continues unabated.

Pushback against Zionist witch-hunt of Sydney Theatre Company performers

Wed, 06 Dec 2023 04:37:06 GMT

In attacking actors, whose only “crime” was to wear Arabic scarves during a curtain call, the proponents of Israel’s genocide have inadvertently pointed to the bogus character of their entire campaign.

A working class drama at the Theatre Factory in Istanbul: Ekrem the Communist

Wed, 25 Oct 2023 02:38:20 GMT

WSWS reporters recently conducted an interview with the artistic team at the Theatre Factory, which focuses on the class struggle and social issues.

Australian theatre company stages On the Beach, Nevil Shute’s nuclear-doomsday novel

Thu, 31 Aug 2023 22:47:38 GMT

The most successful moments of the Sydney Theatre Company production were those that unflinchingly dramatised the existential crisis facing humanity.

Russian soprano Anna Netrebko sues Metropolitan Opera for discrimination and defamation

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 03:39:14 GMT

Netrebko, following a favorable arbitration decision, is pursuing her claims that the Met has unfairly attacked her and jeopardized her career.

J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls: Class injustice and a muted, stifled cry of despair

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 03:05:53 GMT

The play is the best-known work by author J.B. Priestley. An Inspector Calls (written and first performed in 1945) has a certain enduring significance.

Trial of actor Kevin Spacey opens in London

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 22:51:25 GMT

Spacey has pleaded not guilty to three counts of indecent assault, three counts of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent between 2001 and 2013.

Australian Ballet dancers launch industrial action against attacks on pay

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 03:55:20 GMT

The industrial action, the first by this section of performers in more than forty years, shines a spotlight on the huge attacks carried out against entertainment workers in the first years of the pandemic.

Glenda Jackson (1936–2023): “The best theatre is about trying to find and tell the truth”

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 02:09:14 GMT

Her acting was self-critical and unsentimental, driven, director Charles Marowitz said, by a “loathing for lame and easy effects.”

Tens of thousands of jobs lost in film, performing arts in the US due to pandemic

Fri, 24 Mar 2023 00:17:38 GMT

Why should the US ruling elite blink at the permanent damage done to artists and cultural life?

Kenyan playwright Francis Imbuga’s Betrayal in the City returns: A drama of post-colonial violence

Thu, 16 Mar 2023 03:22:23 GMT

Betrayal in the City (1976) is one of Imbuga’s most popular plays, long required reading in Kenya’s secondary education system.

Fascists stage provocation at Broadway show Parade about 1915 lynching of Leo Frank

Mon, 27 Feb 2023 02:38:50 GMT

A group of neo-Nazis protested at a preview of Parade in New York City last week, a musical about the trial and 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish manager of a factory in Atlanta.

Interview with Michael Anderegg, author of Lincoln and Shakespeare and Orson Welles, Shakespeare and Popular Culture: “Shakespeare in the 19th century could be seen simultaneously as popular as well as elite”

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 00:46:47 GMT

As a whole, Voodoo Macbeth, Anderegg concluded in his comment, was unable “to reconcile the complexities and contradictions into a fully satisfactory, coherent drama.”

Oppose performance of plays to segregated audiences at the Canadian government-funded National Arts Centre!

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 22:29:38 GMT

The initial NAC news release said the Feb. 17 “Black Out” performance of Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is would be for “an all-black identifying audience” and the vendor Ticketmaster listed the event as “exclusively” for black people.

In Leopoldstadt, playwright Tom Stoppard looks to his past and the fate of Europe’s Jews

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 02:44:50 GMT

Stoppard’s latest play benefits from some of his customary charm, but also suffers from his typical limitations.

Arts Council England pits London against the regions in an assault on culture

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 18:13:01 GMT

Organisations needing support have been struggling with a long-term decline in government funding, compounded by a wilful negligence of culture and the arts at the onset of the COVID pandemic.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o and Ngugi wa Mirii’s I Will Marry When I Want: Kenya’s play of the year on the unresolved issues of independence

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 01:41:01 GMT

The current production marks the first time in 45 years since Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s play attacking Kenya’s post-independence capitalism, corruption and religious hypocrisy has been staged in Kenya. Its success among the audience is testament that many of its themes continue to resonate today.

Jews. In Their Own Words: A propaganda play on “left anti-Semitism”

Sat, 08 Oct 2022 02:08:47 GMT

The dramatis personae is a roll call of conspirators in the right-wing campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and any left movement within and outside the Labour Party.

Energy bill surge threatens UK arts/culture venue cuts and closures

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 17:51:05 GMT

Small businesses including arts venues do not even have a price cap safeguard. Rising energy costs have seen venues’ outgoings triple recently. Far steeper rises are forecast.

Why ancient drama speaks to our time: An interview with Joel Christensen and Paul O'Mahony of Reading Greek Tragedy Online

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 23:49:32 GMT

Reading Greek Tragedy Online brings together leading classical scholars and actors to discuss and perform excerpts from Greek drama.

Tick, Tick… Boom!: A struggling artist at a crossroads

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 23:32:38 GMT

The personal and professional difficulties of musical theater composer Jonathan Larson, who struggled to make a name for himself throughout the 1980s and 1990s before achieving major success with the 1996 musical Rent.

The theatrical quest: British director Peter Brook (1925-2022)

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 02:16:58 GMT

His artistic seriousness, which resulted in some hugely influential productions over seven decades, was informed by wide study and knowledge of international theatre history and technique.

Lucia di Lammermoor in a 21st century setting at the Metropolitan Opera

Thu, 09 Jun 2022 23:01:37 GMT

Donizetti’s great opera is somewhat flawed in a new production in New York.

Opera on the story of lynching victim Emmett Till comes under vicious attack

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 00:49:44 GMT

The musical dramatization of the 1955 lynching that helped to inspire the mass civil rights movement has been denounced by black nationalist fanatics because one of its creators is white.

The anti-democratic targeting of Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 04:10:10 GMT

The cancellations of concerts by Malofeev in Vancouver and Montreal are inexcusable and reactionary. They only encourage and deepen the anti-Russian frenzy gripping certain social layers.

A conversation with literary scholar and biographer Jonathan Bate about Shakespeare and “the empowering possibilities that I’ve always believed that literature has”

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 00:42:36 GMT

Jonathan Bate is a prominent British literary scholar, historian and biographer who has written extensively about Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, Romanticism, contemporary poetry and theatre history.

Verdi’s Macbeth at La Scala in Milan: The opera of the year—an inspirational experience for millions of viewers

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 02:20:20 GMT

The new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Macbeth at La Scala in Milan, which launched the country’s 2021-22 opera season on December 7, can justifiably be called the “opera of the year.”

Disrupt Texts’ assault on Shakespeare and other classics: Money, ignorance and social backwardness

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 00:58:02 GMT

The #Disrupt Texts website is a pernicious advocate of displacing Shakespeare and other significant figures and works, including F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

Fire Shut Up in My Bones inaugurates new season at Metropolitan Opera in New York

Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:44:22 GMT

Terence Blanchard’s new work is operatic, accessible and distinctive, suggesting a possible future for American opera.

Old Vic cancels Terry Gilliam and Into the Woods: An attack on free speech and artistic freedom

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 23:15:19 GMT

Last week’s decision has no precedent on London’s West End, with an entire production effectively “disappeared” in retribution for Gilliam’s public criticism of the #MeToo movement.

Harvard’s American Repertory Theater designates performance of Macbeth In Stride for “Black-identifying” only

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 02:24:17 GMT

This act of racial segregation is deeply reactionary. Prior to the event, the Bay State Banner approvingly described the October 29 performance as “a safe space for Black-identifying audience members to attend.”

BBC rejects David Hare’s play about COVID: Ensuring there is nothing to see here

Sun, 31 Oct 2021 19:56:33 GMT

The BBC’s refusal to take Beat the Devil confirms that the failure to address the pandemic is not only an artistic failure, but a refusal to challenge an undeclared policy of the major producers and broadcasters.

Statements of support for composer Bright Sheng

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 22:25:26 GMT

The WSWS has received copies of many statements sent to the University of Michigan protesting actions taken against composer Bright Sheng for showing a film version of Shakespeare’s Othello.

Jefferson and Shakespeare: Miseducation and class struggle in America

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 21:04:51 GMT

Within one month, a University of Michigan professor has been removed from his course for screening a film version of Shakespeare’s Othello, and the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio has decreed that it will remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson.

University of Michigan drops investigation of composer Bright Sheng for screening Laurence Olivier’s Othello

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 19:25:10 GMT

While an investigation by the Equity, Civil Rights and Title IX office has been dropped, the university has not apologized to Sheng or repudiated the baseless charges of racism leveled against him.

Ticket-sellers’ dispute with concert venue forces Baltimore Symphony Orchestra to relocate performances

Sat, 09 Oct 2021 02:22:07 GMT

The dispute between the IATSE ticket-sellers union and the Music Center at Strathmore in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C. is part of a rising wave of working class struggle which has been building against the corporate efforts to force workers to bear the burden of the pandemic.