“Running a daring, high-quality theater in this town is nearly impossible. Whether you head the tiny Vineyard Theatre on East 15th Street (120 seats and an annual budget of $2 million) or the elephantine Roundabout Theatre Company (two Broadway spaces, an Off Broadway house, an Off-Off studio, 44,000 subscribers and $43 million to burn), you’ve got divided loyalties. Are the artists happy? Are the funders happy? Is the board happy?” So who can save the city’s stages?
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Why Orchestral Movie Scores Aren’t Classical Music
“Can film music ever be construed as ‘classical’? According to the Classic FM Hall of Fame 2008 – which lists amongst its line-up of ‘Top Contemporary Composers’ the names Shore, Williams, Zimmer and someone called Badelt – it certainly can. … Whether a piece is classical or not has nothing to do with the forces involved, but with the way in which it is intended to be listened to. “
In Praise Of Producers (Really!)
“On a daily basis, creative producers are potentially artists’ best allies as they combine a highly developed aesthetic with the kind of resourceful, tenacious and innovative behaviour that theatre desperately needs if it is to thrive and flourish.”
Ailing Pavarotti Lip-Synched His Last Performance
“On a freezing February night in 2006, an ailing Luciano Pavarotti rose from his wheelchair at the opening of the Turin Winter Olympics to give a resounding rendition of the aria Nessun Dorma, his final public performance before he died of cancer last September.” But “the opera singer was unsure of his weakening voice and faked the live appearance in front of a TV audience of millions, using video trickery, careful lipsynching and a compliant orchestra that pre-recorded its backing days earlier.”
Hockney Gives Giant Landscape To Tate
“Renowned UK artist David Hockney has donated the biggest painting of his career to Tate Britain in London. The work, Bigger Trees Near Warter, is 4.6m by 12m (40ft by 15ft) and is made up of a grid of 50 small canvases. The portrait, of a typical Yorkshire landscape, was first exhibited last year at the Royal Academy. It will be displayed at Tate Britain in 2009.”
Orange Prize Panel Is Minus One Pop Star
“Pop star Lily Allen has withdrawn ‘by mutual consent’ from the judging panel of this year’s Orange Prize for Fiction, blaming ill health.”
Printed Thesaurus Meeting Death By Keyboard
“Happily, if the computer processing of words is killing reference books, it’s also making them better. In particular, word reference is morphing faster and smarter than any other kind of compendium out there. … The digitization of words in time allows us to see language as it really is–not so much an abstract code as a dynamic system.”
Left To Crumble, A Pop Art Map Is (Partly) Restored
“For the first time in decades, there appears to be a chance that a half-acre terrazzo road map of New York State from the 1964-65 World’s Fair — an exuberantly overstated mix of small-town parochialism, space-age optimism and Pop Art irony — will be conserved as the valuable artifact it is.”
Who Says TV Viewers Don’t Read?
“On Nov. 30, the glamorous, impetuous Kendall Hart — wife, mother, founder of a highly successful perfume company, woman in despair and one of the lead characters on the ABC soap ‘All My Children’ — decided to try a little creative writing as a distraction from the pain of her husband Zach’s sudden (and of course mysterious) disappearance.” The character’s novel, “an actual hardback with a list price of $21.95 … made its debut in February at No. 13 on the New York Times best-seller list.”
That Man Onstage Is Naked! (Giggle)
The tabloids have loads of fun writing about onstage nudity. “At first glance, it seems remarkable that any newspaper so rammed full of pictures of assorted near-naked models, pop stars and Z-list ‘celebs’ can still manage to generate any interest in an undressed actor. In fact, quite the reverse is true: this sort of coverage seeks to bring down to the level of smut something which is not remotely smutty….”