Comedians say that the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is becoming too expensive to perform in. “Venue charges, accommodation and promotional costs have prevented new acts from taking part, they claim.”
Month: April 2005
Christie’s Expands To Middle East
Christie’s is trying to tap into a wealthy Middle East market. “London-based Christie’s, which had auction sales of $2.5 billion last year, will open as many as four offices in the Middle East during the next five years, starting with Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.”
Public Broadcasting To Get In-House Critiques
Journalist Ken Bode and former Readers’ Digest editor William Schulz have been appointed to the positions of ombudsmen for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “Bode and Schultz periodically will review public radio and TV shows after the programs have aired and report on their journalistic balance and accuracy. The appointments come after a long history of conservative complaints about alleged bias on PBS and NPR.” Observers say that the appointments are a clear reaction to the firestorm of controversy over an episode of a PBS children’s show which featured a lesbian couple and their children.
Feds Displeased With Kennedy Center
Washington’s Kennedy Center is under fire from the federal government’s General Accounting Office for cost overruns on several construction projects, and for failing to install what the GAO considers adequate fire safety equipment. Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser has called the GAO report “misleading,” and argues that it is based on incorrect and outdated information.
How About Prosecuting Grandstanding Politicians, Too?
According to one congressman, the FCC crackdown on “indecency” hasn’t worked, not because it was wrongheaded and infantile, but because it simply didn’t go far enough. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) is proposing to scrap the current system, under which offending TV and radio stations are fined for airing objectionable material, and replace it with criminal prosecution of offenders.
Democracy Flops In New York
“It had great buzz from London. It had terrific reviews in New York. It had ‘snob hit’ written all over it. And it had $2 million in the bank before opening night. And yet Democracy — Michael Frayn’s political drama about the spy who brought down West German Chancellor Willie Brandt — has collapsed almost as fast as the Berlin Wall. Once touted as a sure-fire Tony Award contender, the production will close April 17 after only four months on Broadway. It will lose nearly all of its $2.5 million investment.”
Frank Conroy, 69
Frank Conroy, who “headed the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa for 18 years, published just five books, a relatively small number for a writer of his reputation. But one of them was the lucid and evocative 1967 memoir that has been a model for countless young writers – the sort of book that is passed along like a trade secret. But Mr. Conroy was a personal model as well, a sympathetic but exacting teacher who at Iowa helped shape the early careers” of scores of writers.
Illuminating An Annoying Snob
Nothing will turn the media against you faster than overexposure, and for novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, the tipping point seems fast approaching. His third novel is garnering some scathing reviews, and his particular brand of literary snobbery (think Dave Eggers with more gimmicks) is fast wearing thin within the book world. “Given Foer’s rock-star status, who can blame the rest of New York for being a bit sick of Brooklyn’s literary boy wonder?”
Levine: A Man Of Two Cities
Leading the Boston Symphony and the Metropolitan Opera are (at least) two full time jobs. But “those who doubted that James Levine could juggle two of the most demanding and prestigious music directorships in the United States have been proved wrong. Moreover, in Boston, the question of his physical health and stamina has been a nonissue. But what about his creative health and stamina?”
Book Busking
Hawking your self-published collection of poetry on the New York subway might not sound like a fun way to make a living. But for Brad Bathgate, aka Blue, it’s the only life he knows, and when you watch him work his magic on a subway car full of jaded, hostile New Yorkers, you start to believe that there just might be something to this unusual sales technique.