“The Free Library of Philadelphia has posted notices at its branches and on its web site advising users that all libraries will close at the end of business on Oct. 2 if the state Legislature does not act on the city’s budget request. The notices also say that all material will now be due Oct. 1 and that nothing can be borrowed after Sept. 30.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Report: Broadway’s Summer Attendance, Box Office Fell
“Theater attendance plunged 9.3 percent to 3.3 million compared with last year,” while box-office grosses, despite higher ticket prices, “dropped 2.9 percent to just under $290.9 million for the period, which began in June, Crain’s New York Business reported.”
Urinetown Creators’ Follow-Up: A Musical About Yeast
“[A]fter achieving fame and a small measure of fortune from the unlikely success of a show about a dystopia where citizens are forced to pay to pee, the creators of ‘Urinetown’ are desperately trying to top themselves.” Thus the oddball topic of their new musical, “Yeast Nation.”
Dressing Up A Turkey At Atlantic Yards
“When [developer Bruce] Ratner first unveiled the Atlantic Yards project in 2003, it was to be a complex on a virtually Vatican scale … all of it designed by Gehry. Six years later, we’re left with a possible basketball court in a prairie of blight.”
NY Phil Gets $10 Million To Fund Composer, Prize
“The Philharmonic announced today it will receive a $10 million gift from Henry R. Kravis to endow its new composer-in-residence position, a major initiative of” incoming music director Alan Gilbert. “The Kravis gift will also fund a $250,000 prize for new music, one of the largest awards of its kind.”
Onstage, Technology Is A Double-Edged Sword
“There have been plenty of breakthroughs, such as the blending of media and genres to create new art forms or the use of virtual gaming to redefine ‘audience participation.’ There have been missteps too, especially when people have become overly enamored of new toys and tools.”
NYC’s Channel 13 Plagued By Financial Woes
“Former and current staffers talk of an air of crisis inside the nation’s largest public television station, which has been battered from several directions at once.” The troubles include a Department of Justice investigation, which is said to have “put a choke hold on key sources of funding.”
Avenue Q Not Closing — Just Moving Off-B’way
“At the final Broadway performance of the long-running tuner, producer Kevin McCollum took the stage following the curtain call and announced the show would transfer to New World Stages,” becoming one of the very few Broadway shows to migrate off-Broadway.
Grading West End Musicals’ Dance Moves
“Musicals aren’t just about stories and songs, they’re also about dance and movement – that’s what gets under the skin of audiences, who carry on moving afterwards to keep the feeling alive. But just how good is that dancing – and choreography – in the big West End shows?”
From Texas’ Death Row, Briton Makes Fourth-Plinth Plea
“A Scottish man who has taken an interest in [Linda] Carty’s case played her seven-minute recording over and over for an hour while standing atop one of Trafalgar Square’s large statue bases, or plinths. He held up placards with messages from Carty and stood in front of a life-size cardboard cutout of her.”