“The only thing that could keep me alert through three hours of Brecht – however good the production – on a Monday evening is the fact that I could topple 20 feet if I nodded off. Theatre demands effort from the audience, and by God, the West End makes us work.” But will audiences keep putting up with the toil the venues exact?
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
To Save Bookstore, French Townspeople Buy The Lease
“Poligny residents’ effort to preserve an old-fashioned Main Street bookstore may seem eccentric in an age of electronics, instantaneous communication and discount giants. But not in France, a country that is unusually fixated on its centuries-old traditions and is determined to safeguard its cultural heritage.”
Michael Feinstein To Direct A Jazz At Lincoln Center Series
The appointment “is the culmination of a three-year artistic courtship between Mr. Feinstein and Wynton Marsalis, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.” The singer and pianist will direct a new popular music series as “part of a larger plan to broaden programming.”
For US, NEA Opera Honors Were A Chance To Give Thanks
“The event was called to order by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, banging a gavel to quell the applause that greeted her appearance, and then provoking laughter with her witty (and knowledgeable) observations about the links between opera and the legal profession, citing all the operas that have courtroom or jail scenes.”
Glee‘s Musical Geekdom Is Catnip To Drama Nerds
“‘Glee,’ which chronicles the lives of members of a high school glee club, is attracting between 7 and 8 million viewers every week, and doing well among the valued 18- to 49-year-old market segment. But it is something of an obsession among theater denizens, teenage and otherwise.”
For Commercial Theatre In Britain, These Are Good Times
“Britain may remain in a recession that could still deepen, yet the mood in and out of the commercial theatre sector seems refreshingly upbeat.” Of course, “there are also problems and worries, especially in a subsidised sector that accounts for almost all our new and cutting-edge drama.”
In Rome, Hadid’s Maxxi Is Exhilarating (And Nearly Done)
“There have been at least six changes of national government in Italy since the [museum] was first announced in 1998, from left to centre to right, and the future of many such public projects has often seemed doubtful. But now here it stands … almost exactly as [Zaha] Hadid and her team first imagined it.”
Beneath Buzz Over Huge New Film Studio, A Financial Mess
A “former head of Paramount Motion Pictures certainly sounded like the right man to build a huge movie and TV studio in Massachusetts,” but his $650 million plan for “14 sound stages and a virtual entertainment city in the woods of Plymouth” has been “marred by over-the-top claims, broken promises, legal infighting, and the chronic lack of one crucial ingredient: money.”
Now European, Now American: Tracking LA Phil’s Violins
“Sometime after moving to Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003, Esa-Pekka Salonen decided to shake things up by placing the second violin section on the opposite side of the stage from the first violins, in what is known as European seating — and it has stayed that way for the most part ever since.” Then came Verdi’s Requiem this month….
LA-Area Cities Vie To Be Home Of Eli Broad’s Museum
Broad will “create a $200-million endowment that would generate $12 million a year to operate the privately run, nonprofit institution. The only bigger single cash donation to the arts in Southern California history would be J. Paul Getty’s initial $700-million 1976 bequest to establish the J. Paul Getty Trust — $2.65 billion in today’s dollars.”