Author: Douglas McLennan

BLOWING UP SHAW

The genteel, well-mannered Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake is a picture postcard. So how did Neil Munro get to be its resident director? “Plays help to get a dialogue going so we have a sense of who we are as opposed to being so fucking middle-class that when tragedy comes stomping into your living room like Godzilla, you have absolutely nothing to refer back to. You’re surprised because you thought the middle-class concept of how the world works is how the world works.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

THE FUTURE OF MUSIC

“Within the music industry it is widely believed that much of the physical infrastructure of music – compact discs, automobile cassette-tape players, shopping-mall megastores – is rapidly being replaced by the Internet and a new generation of devices with no moving parts. By 2003, according to the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Investment Research Group, listeners will rarely if ever drive to Tower Records for their music. Instead they will tap into a vast cloud of music on the Net. This heavenly jukebox, as it is sometimes called, will hold the contents of every record store in the world, all of it instantly accessible from any desktop.” – The Atlantic

OPERA BOOM

The number of opera production in North America has doubled in the past decade, says a report by Opera America. “The 166 professional opera companies Opera America polled — including the Metropolitan Opera, the Canadian Opera Company and the San Francisco Opera — have increased their domestic productions from 31 in the 1990–91 season to 60 in the 1999–2000 season.” – Sonicnet

REAL-TIME REAL-PLACE TRAVIATA

Earlier this summer  a production of “La Traviata” was filmed in real time in various locations around Paris where the story might have happened. An all-star cast and a $25 million budget still don’t make for a satisfying experience. The telecast tries to “convince you this is a real-life parallel universe where people happen to sing rather than speak. That is dishonest. And in coping with Verdi’s sense of ‘opera time,’ which is a slower than normal TV time and even slower than real time, Griffi’s camera zooms in and out for tight close-ups in a show of virtuosity that alienates you from the story.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

TOP DOWN

Choreographer Jiri Kylian is in Australia to stage his work “Bela Figura” with the Australian Ballet. But he’s surprised that some dancers and the media are fretting over the fact that the female dancers are topless. “I know it is just that they are not used to it. But in Europe it is so natural that dancers don’t think anything of it.” – The Age (Melbourne)

POLITICS OF SCOOPING

Last week the Boston Herald reported that longtime American Repertory Theatre director Robert Brustein would be leaving the theatre after this season. The next day the Boston Globe printed a story wherein Brustein denied the Herald’s scoop. So did the Herald have it wrong? No, say its editors. – Boston Phoenix 08/24/00

CRITICAL INFLUENCE

In the fluid performance world that is the Edinburgh Festival, quotes from critics are hawked on the streets in attempts to lure an audience inside. Problem is, many of the quotes are distorted. “But journalists are fighting back. Some are insisting that the offending passages are removed… but only after bums have been successfully put on seats. Others have attempted to construct pieces without a single positive, quotable word. One irate hack was even said to have pounded the Edinburgh streets at night, tearing down ‘his’ quotes.” – The Guardian 08/24/00