“[W]hen I was a teenager and decided that I wanted to dance, I asked him if we could go, for the first time, to a ballet performance. … My father, at that moment in a cut-off sweatshirt covered with muffin crumbs, bacon grease, Flintstones Jelly and beer stains replied without dropping a beat–‘Yeah, I’d like to see something by Twyla Tharp, I understand she’s quite innovative’.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
The Return Of The Audio Drama
“Radio drama, ranging from ‘Captain Midnight’ to the high art of Orson Welles, thrived for 40 years in America. It was all but gone by the 1960s, killed off by television. Yet now that TV must contend with the Internet, the Internet has given radio drama a whisper of new life.”
What NBC’s Olympic Coverage Can Teach Us About Silence
“If the Olympics are a celebration of athletic excellence, of the human spirit triumphing over the limitations of the human body, why do we insist, like a bunch of preschoolers, on talking all the way through them?”
Getty, Disney To Study Deterioration Of Animation Cels
“Among the recognizable Disney characters headed for the microscope are Snow White, Pinocchio and at least one character from the movie ‘Fantasia.’ Some of the cels already examined by the Getty show that paint is starting to come away from parts of the plastic, while others show signs of warping and yellowing….”
UK Jurors Fought To Block Winning US Embassy Design
“Lord Rogers, the architect of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and Lord Palumbo, the property developer and art collector, felt so strongly about the inadequacies of the winning design, they submitted a ‘minority report’ setting out their case to the US state department in Washington, which commissioned the building.”
San Francisco Cracks Down On Academy Of Art University
The school is in trouble over “a host of code violations,” most stemming “from illegal signs on many of the for-profit university’s more than 30 properties across the city or from buying buildings and converting them into classrooms or group housing without proper permits.”
Is Lorin Maazel The Munich Phil’s Next Music Director?
Maazel “would succeed Christian Thielemann, who was unable to negotiate a contract to his liking and is leaving at the end of the 2011 season to take over the Dresden Staatskapelle. The orchestra has not officially announced the appointment, but Munich’s mayor, Christian Ude, and his press spokespeople appear to have spilled the beans.”
When Intellectual Property Enforcers Go Too Far
“Over the last half-millennium, measures to defend creative property have repeatedly proved counterproductive — not just because individual pirates themselves escaped, but because those measures triggered public reactions against their own proponents.”
NEA Taps Ralph Remington To Oversee Theatre
“The actor-turned-artistic-director-turned-politician has been named director of theater and musical theater at the National Endowment for the Arts.” Remington, a 47-year-old Philadelphia native, founded Minneapolis’ Pillsbury House Theatre and served on the Minneapolis City Council.
Virginia Grise Wins $10,000 Yale Playwriting Prize
David Hare, who chose Grise’s “blu” for the Yale Drama Series prize, “noted that this was a banner year for women, who have often complained that they are slighted by theaters when it comes to production. ‘Of the 12 plays on this year’s shortlist, nine were written by women[,]’ he said, adding that last year’s winner was also a woman.”