“Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb are unlikely to spend more than a few hours in custody even if they are sentenced to a prison term tomorrow by Ontario Superior Court Justice Mary Lou Benotto. The Crown is seeking eight to 10 years in prison for the founders of Livent Inc.,” while “Drabinsky and Gottlieb are asking for conditional sentences or house arrest. … The legal precedents suggest a term much closer to what the prosecution is seeking….”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Mid-Career Playwrights Trampled In Rush Toward Youth
“[U]nless you are Keats or Kane or Dunbar or Büchner, most young playwrights and theatre-makers eventually go on to become mid-level artists. But what sort of career support do they go on to have? Or are they simply forgotten in the endless rush for the new? … Ultimately, theatres must start seeing that they have a responsibility to really help playwrights to develop their careers and not just look to the next great find.”
Oxfam Bookshops Doing Well — Too Well, Competitors Say
“They are complaining that the charity sells donated stock, receives 80% business rate reductions – as do other charities – and largely employs volunteers. The smaller running costs, they argue, allow it to undercut rivals. They say it is no surprise that Oxfam, which now has 130 specialist bookshops across the country, has become the biggest retailer of second-hand books in Europe.”
Skylight Soap Opera Is Ready For Its Close-Up
Ever since June, when it eliminated the position of artistic director and got rid of the beloved figure who held that job, Milwaukee’s Skylight Opera Theatre “has suffered demonstrations, petitions, mass resignations of performers, subscriber revolt and Facebook vitriol interpreted by management as violent threats. Happy, um, 50th birthday, Skylight.”
Artists: Not So Crazy About Wall Street After All
“Before global finance crashed, Robert Jain, the head of Credit Suisse global proprietary trading, commissioned twelve artists through the private curator Kipton Cronkite to create works inspired by Wall Street terminology.” Bad timing, turns out. “There’s a painting of gathering clouds inspired by ‘hedge fund’ called Ominous … there’s a light-box of snarling red bulls….”
West End Theatres Up Security To Control Drunken Louts
“A number of London’s West End theatres are to boost their security to counter worsening audience behaviour, owners have said. It comes after reports of drunkenness and even fights during performances. … The deteriorating behaviour is being blamed on cheap tickets, attracting younger audiences, and a liberal attitude to alcohol in theatres.”
The Great Literary Con Of 2004 (Which No One Noticed)
Five years ago, Modernism/Modernity, “the quarterly of the Modernist Studies Association, ran a review essay of the writer David Foster Wallace’s story collection Oblivion. The essay was a put-on, a leg-pull, a sham, in ways that take some explaining for nonspecialists in recent American fiction. But no one publicly called attention to the con until last month.” In the meantime, some grad students mistook it for the real thing.
Twitter Is Not Inherently Bad For Classical Music
There are myriad right ways to listen to a concert, and reading tweets can be one of them. “Some people listen with their eyes closed, others follow a score (is that inherently less distracting than reading a Twitter screen? I sometimes feel I miss things about the performance when I focus on reading along in the printed music), others focus on the conductor. Some let their minds wander….”
Thinking About Merce, Minus The Philistines
Joan Acocella: “Merce Cunningham’s signal achievement is that he established modernism–abstraction, decentralization–in dance. In consequence, some people loathed his work, thought it was a prank. Which meant, of course, that others were required to like it. … Now, perhaps, audiences will be able to think about him more clearly.”
Spring Green Eco-Theatre Links Stage World, Surroundings
American Players Theatre, in Spring Green, Wis., “is a conservative operation that has long tended to operate under a dictum akin to first, do no harm. This irritates those of us who’d like to see this gorgeous and highly proficient, but demonstrably risk-averse, arts organization grow its national reputation…. But it’s a we-pay-our-bills philosophy that has allowed APT to build one of the very few new theaters in America constructed in the teeth of this recession.”