The 38-year-old National Theatre of the Deaf has lost a major grant and the theatre’s leaders fear the company might not be able to continue. “Without the $680,000 annual grant, administered by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Theatre of the Deaf slashed its annual budget from $1.2 million to $300,000.”
Month: March 2006
Curators Remove 12-Year-Old’s Gum From Frankenthaler
“The saga of the $1.5-million abstract Helen Frankenthaler painting defaced two weeks ago at the Detroit Institute of Arts by a 12-year-old boy who stuck gum on it during a school outing is heading for a happy ending. After intensive research, experimentation and surgical work with high-performance tweezers, hand-rolled Q-tips and a fast-evaporating solvent — plus some purposeful fooling around with gum — the quarter-sized residue on Helen Frankenthaler’s ‘The Bay’ is gone.”
Seattle’s Hammering Man Takes A Rest
The giant Jonathan Borofsky sculpture has had its swinging arm stilled. “Some ball bearings fell out of the arm’s mechanism Saturday and it was making ‘different noises.’ So a contractor turned off the motor that moves the arm in a hammering motion.”
Google’s New Book-selling Scheme
Google is offering to broker sales of books online for publishers. “The new offering would allow people to sign in and purchase immediate, browser-based access to books, Google said on its site. Purchasers would not, however, be allowed to save a copy of the book to their computer or to otherwise copy pages from the book. Google is marketing the new program as the first of several tools intended to help book publishers boost their revenues, though it was unclear Monday how many had signed up. Pricing would remain entirely at the book publisher’s discretion.”
Chart-Fixing Downloading Discovered, Disallowed
Over-eager fans of a band tried to promote the group by buying multiple downloads of the group’s new recording to boost them in the charts. But the buying was discovered and disqualified. “Due to over-enthusiastic members of the band’s fans and family, an unacceptable number of records were ordered per person online. Sadly, rather than these sales ending up supporting the band, this has resulted in The Modern’s chart position of number 13 being deemed invalid according to The Official Charts Company’s strict rules and regulations.”
Brown Testifies In Plagiarism Case
Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown started testifying in his plagiarism trial. “Mr Brown said Mr Baigent and Mr Leigh were just two of a number of authors who had written about the theory. ‘Yet I went out of my way to mention them for being the ones who brought the theory to mainstream attention. I would like to restate that I remain astounded by the claimants’ choice to file this plagiarism suit. For them to suggest, as I understand they do, that I have hijacked and exploited their work is simply untrue’.”
A Dance Movement Of Fractious Parts
Mark Morris is celebrating his company’s 25th anniversary this year. Tere O’Connor and Susan Marshall are celebrating 20th anniversaries. “Together with Morris, they possess the force of a movement. But with all the bickering, no one has noticed. And modern dance’s health depends on people noticing. Without an acknowledged history, an art form has little chance of a robust future.”
The Great Battle Of The DVDs
“A new war has broken out as two new generations of DVD players hit stores this year. Both are targeting owners of high-definition televisions, promising to maximize their set’s capacity for razor-sharp images. One is called HD-DVD. The other is called Blu-ray. North America gets its first real look at Sony’s Blu-ray player in Las Vegas this week, with the new format hitting stores May 23. HD-DVD players go on sale at the end of this month. And soon stores will stock movies on DVD specifically formatted for one player or the other.”
Another Play – The Success Burden
So you’ve produced a play and it’s been well received on Broadway. Now what? “Expectations rise along with the number of opportunities to disappoint fans, who tend to want what they’ve so memorably enjoyed before. Then, of course, there are the critics, a few of whom specialize in holding artists to the impossibly high standards of their best works. These dramatists (one almost feels inclined to label them ‘poor little rich’) are damned if they attempt to produce more of the award-winning same and damned if they don’t.”
The man Who Turned Scottish Ballet Around
Three years ago Scottish ballet was in disarray. The company was being moved forcibly from being a traditional company to going modern. Then Ashley Page came along. “The former Royal Ballet principal dancer and acclaimed postmodern choreographer took up the reins there just over three years ago. Since then, armed with the expertise gleaned over his 27 years with the Royal, and energy reserves worthy of Kazakhstan, he has not only created two full-length works for the company (Nutcracker and Cinderella, the latter of which he’s also taking south): he has turned it almost completely around.”