“Daniel MacIvor, one of the most distinctive playwrights in Canada, was honoured for his unique voice yesterday when he was named winner of the 2008 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. … The $100,000 award, the richest in Canadian theatre, has been given out annually since 2001, with a director, designer and playwright winning in successive years.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Why Al Franken Isn’t Just Another Sonny Bono
“It’s understandable that people might, at first blush, think of [writer, comedian and U.S. Senate candidate Al] Franken as the equivalent of Sen. Carrot Top–or the next Jesse Ventura, a fellow Minnesotan to whom Franken is incessantly compared. … Actually, while Franken has done lots of straight comedy, he began his career as a political satirist–a very different thing. Satire is a form of political commentary.”
Getty To Give $2.8 Million For Shows On LA’s Postwar Art
“The J. Paul Getty Trust is stepping up its support of projects that tell the story of post-World War II art in Los Angeles. The Getty Foundation, the philanthropic branch of the trust … is expected to announce an additional $2.8 million in grants to 15 Southern California institutions for a batch of 2011 exhibitions exploring the development of the local art scene, sources close to the Getty say.”
The Part Of The Rat Will Be Played By …
“Well, the most positive spin we can put on this bit of theater news is that Pasadena Playhouse is diversifying its audience: During Friday night’s opening performance of ‘The Lady With All The Answers,’ starring Mimi Kennedy as Ann Landers, some audience members noticed that a rat was in the house. Yes, a rat. A Vermin-American. Tiny paws, whiskers and a hairless tail.”
Classical Music World Prepares For Tough Times Ahead
“As it has everywhere else these days, the economic crisis has hit classical music, a particularly fragile corner of the nonprofit world that depends as much on donations as on ticket sales. Most managers are only in the fretting stage, but the plunge in stock prices, the credit squeeze and feelings of diminished wealth among donors and ticket buyers have begun to have concrete effects in a few places.”
At NY’s Big Nonprofit Theatres, Execs Get Hefty Salaries
“Even as Broadway braces for the impact of the biggest U.S. financial crisis in decades, New York’s largest nonprofit theaters are hewing to ambitious expansion plans. As they’ve grown, so too has the pay of their leaders.” The heads of the Roundabout Theatre, Lincoln Center Theater, and Manhattan Theatre Club all earned north of $400,000 last year, while Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater paid its leader $682,229.
Henry David Thoreau, Climate Researcher
“Thoreau died in 1862, when the industrial revolution was just beginning to pump climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In 1851, when he started recording when and where plants flowered in Concord, he was making notes for a book on the seasons. Now, though, researchers at Boston University and Harvard are using those notes to discern patterns of plant abundance and decline in Concord — and by extension, New England — and to link those patterns to changing climate.”
Picasso’s Cubist Harlequin Withdrawn From Sotheby’s Sale
“A Picasso Cubist painting that was to have been a star of Sotheby’s Impressionist and Modern art sale on Nov. 3 has been abruptly withdrawn from the auction. … It had been rumored for weeks that the work would be taken off the market because of fears that art prices were heading the way of the world financial markets.”
Ian McEwan Writes A Libretto. Next Up? Musicals.
Novelist Ian McEwan has ventured into opera with the libretto of “For You,” composed by Michael Berkeley. McEwan isn’t a frequent operagoer, but only because he doesn’t usually like it. “Because of the terrible plots,” he explains. “The biggest problem with opera, for me, is the disjunction between the sublime quality of the music and the silliness, often, of the drama. “
Mark Ravenhill Begs: Playwrights, Don’t Read Aloud
“The skill of the playwright is that they can hear dialogue in their head and write it down. When they come to speak it aloud, they rarely do their own work justice. I’m sure audiences feel that somehow they are getting the authentic voice of the writer. But I would argue that the voice of the text is a very different thing from the way the author sounds: it’s best left to actors to track down and present it.”