Judi Dench has won the Best Actress category in America's Golden Globe awards for her performance as Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown. The Golden Globe awards are often pointers towards possible Oscar winners.
Best Actor nomination for Pinter
Harold Pinter has been nominated as Best Supporting Actor in the Irish Times annual theatre awards in the Irish Republic. Martin McDonagh (whose A Skull in Connemara is also nominated for Best Comedy in the Olivier Awards) has received eight nominations for his The Leenane Trilogy.
Ayckbourn wins playwright award
This year's Playwright of the Year award, sponsored by Lloyds Private Banking, has been won by Alan Ayckbourn for Things We Do For Love. The prize is £25,000
Equity has had to face two setbacks in the last week: it has been warned by its legal advisers that it would be exceeding its legal powers by taking action against strike breakers (such as Steven Berkoff), and it has been forced to withdraw its instruction to members not to enter into new contracts with the TMA after 6th April. This instruction had been given before negotiations had begun and the TMA had refused to talk to the union while the instruction was in force.
Smoking has been banned throughout the Newcastle Playhouse, the first theatre in the UK to take such action. As the design of the theatre makes it impossible to create a no smoking area, it was all or nothing. The North East has one of the highest rates of smoking-related illness in the UK.
The Theatre Royal, Winchester, has received a second Lottery grant. It won £2.5m two years ago, and has just been awarded a further £645,000 for its £4m redevelopment plan.