“Without immediate hope of conventional tenants, and with more shoppers going online or to out-of-town retail parks, landlords and local authorities are co-operating with arts organisations to draw people back into town centres, allowing everyone from the Royal Court … to tiny groups such as Write by Numbers to use the empty space.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
On DVD, Watching Leonard Bernstein Craft His Persona
“[B]esides composing and conducting, Bernstein was a champion talker about music, and these [1950s] ‘Omnibus’ appearances, which range from 33 to 76 minutes, were his first opportunities to try out his lecture style on television.”
400 Years On, Female Playwright To Be Produced At Globe
Nell “Leyshon is the first known woman to have her work performed at the Globe but, to be fair to the theatre, its operating years have not helped. It opened in 1599 … but it was closed by the Puritans in 1642 and demolished two years later.” It wasn’t until 1997 that “performances began once more at the reconstructed theatre.”
Of E-Readers And Eye Strain
“The act of reading is going through a number of radical transitions, but perhaps none is more fundamental than the shift from reading on paper to reading on screens. As consumers decide whether to make this jump and which technology to use, one key question is how reading on a screen affects the eyes.”
Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Becomes … A Snow Park?
“With a price tag of $450 million, the world’s largest steel structure has been called a potential white elephant, a big, expensive building that no longer serves a purpose.” Thus the snow park, “the latest effort to create a new life for the stadium.”
Time To Puncture A Few Myths About British Theatre
“The first is that, because Lucy Prebble’s Enron and Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem have transferred to the West End, we are witnessing a golden age for new writing. … Delighted though I am by the commercial success of Enron and Jerusalem, two swallows don’t make a theatrical summer.”
Google Yanks Music Blogs, Citing Copyright Violations
“‘Upon review of your account, we’ve noted that your blog has repeatedly violated Blogger’s Terms of Service … [and] we’ve been forced to remove your blog,'” Google wrote. “‘Thank you for your understanding.’ Jolly as Google may be, none of the bloggers who received these notices are ‘understanding’ in the least. “
In Dissent, Vancouver Poet Laureate Won’t Read At Games
Among his complaints: “a neglect of literary events in the Cultural Olympiad; deep cuts to arts funding in B.C.; [a] ‘muzzle clause'” for Cultural Olympiad artists; “the ‘grilling’ of U.S. journalist Amy Goodman at the Canadian border; and a Vancouver Public Library memo instructing staff to favour Olympic sponsors.”
Cut Off From Cuban Music, Americans Are Missing Out
“Cuban composers of both this century and the last tend to blur the boundaries of ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ and to assert Cuban identity through various traditional vocabularies. This melding and merging of genres is a theme, and a process that keeps Cuban musical life of all kinds infused with energy.” Not that Americans would know firsthand.
Maybe Marketers Should Market More Thriftily
“Take English National Opera, which is now presenting about a half of the number of performances it did twenty years ago…. Today you can hardly move round Central London without seeing ENO’s posters and publicity material,” much of which is lavish.