“Over the last five years, he has tackled the Iraq war, political party funding and railway privatisation. Now, David Hare is turning his attention to another weighty and pressing subject: the banking meltdown. The National Theatre’s director, Nicholas Hytner, approached the playwright in early April to write what the theatre calls ‘an urgent and immediate work’ investigating the cause and effect of the financial crisis.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
British Library Puts 19th-Century Newspapers Online
“Bad news is never new, but anyone overwhelmed by today’s political scandals, wars, financial disasters, soaring unemployment and drunken feral children can take refuge in the 19th century – and its wars, financial disasters, political scandals, soaring unemployment and drunken feral children. Over two million pages of 19th and early 20th century newspapers go online today, part of the vast British Library collection.”
Since When Does Prince Charles Not Have Right To Speak?
“Prince Charles can be incredibly irritating, and one can’t blame [architect Richard] Rogers for hating him; but it is hard to see what is unconstitutional about him expressing opinions, however misguided, on non-political matters. It would be unacceptable if he were already head of state, but he isn’t; and nobody is obliged to take any notice of what he says. Nor does anybody often do so.”
MOCA Gets $3 Million In Donations For Regular Operations
“The Museum of Contemporary Art says one of its trustees, real estate and investment executive Fred Sands, has given the museum $2 million, with an anonymous donor providing an additional $1 million. The donations are on top of $1 million and $5 million gifts from unnamed donors that the museum had made public last month, and bring the total raised since Jan. 30 to $10 million….”
In Guy Season At Multiplex, Some Studios Bet On Women
“The studios hold competing theories over whether a surfeit of male-oriented movies helps drum up even greater interest in films for women. One camp says good movies will work regardless of what the competitive landscape looks like, while the other maintains that moviegoers (like nature) abhor a vacuum, that too many macho movies make romance, comedy and sobbing even more desirable.”
Intiman Names Ruined Director Whoriskey Artistic Director
“Intiman Theatre has named New York stage director Kate Whoriskey as its next artistic director,” succeeding Bartlett Sher. “[I]n an unusual process, she will work with Sher as his co-artistic director through 2010. … The Intiman board hired her at Sher’s strong suggestion, without a customary national search for other candidates — another rare move.”
Richard Rogers Vs. The Prince Of Wales, Explained
“Prince Charles, a vehement antimodernist, is up to his old tricks again. The row has now escalated, with an English Baron — Lord Rogers of Riverside, better known as the architect Richard Rogers — calling for an official tribunal to examine the role of Prince Charles in state affairs. Mr. Rogers is incandescent with rage, and no wonder.” A world-famous architect and “a political animal,” Rogers “knows the ropes and I suspect he knows he has support.”
Japan Toughens Copyright Law (If Not Scofflaws’ Penalties)
“The Japanese parliament has passed an amendment to the existing Copyright Law that extends further protections to copyright holders and, for the first time, makes it illegal for private users to download copyrighted material that has been uploaded without the rights holders’ permission. The new statute will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2010[,] but contains several caveats that raise the question of how it will be enforced.” (Scroll down.)
LaBute, MCC Theater: There’s No Rift Between Us
“A perceived split between Off Broadway’s MCC Theater and the org’s longtime writer-in-residence Neil LaBute appears to amount to little more than a production delayed for scheduling reasons. A previously announced staging of LaBute’s play ‘The Break of Noon’ did not appear as part of MCC’s recent announcement of its 2009-10 season, spurring speculation in print that LaBute and MCC … were parting ways.”
Does Art Truly Represent The Culture That Creates It?
The recent 10-day Muslim Voices festival in New York aimed to expand understanding of Muslim culture. “Yet nothing in the festival could ultimately fulfill the organizers’ agenda, because they presented as examples of Muslim-culture artforms that mostly Western or Westernized Muslims consume. How many Americans will believe — and why should they? — that any of this reveals the prevailing culture of the vast majority of today’s practicing Muslims?”