The moon is down

Minneapolis's Theatre de la Jeune Lune is officially out of business. Those of us who suffered through their last productions at the A.R.T. are hardly surprised, since without an academic clique like the one at Harvard, there's just not a large enough audience to support their kind of boringly dated "avant" work. It turns out that for years the company had been quietly accumulating a seven-figure debt; last year they produced no new work, but filled out their season (and the ART's) with repeats of earlier productions. There were also the usual purges and internal feuds usually found in these kinds of troupes. The bad news is that Dominique Serrand and Steven Epp are still exploring "ways to reinvent an agile, nomadic, entrepreneurial theatre with a new name that will create essential and innovative art for today’s changing audience.” Yikes.