Why, Zaha Hadid, did no woman win the Pritzker Prize before you? “‘It’s not because of lack of talent: When I teach, the best students are women.’ Rather, ‘everything that has to do with this profession is male,’ she explains. The job requires ‘continuity’ and round- the-clock work, she says, and is tough to combine with motherhood. In the trade, ‘people don’t treat women well,’ Hadid says; she has only just ‘graduated from that prejudice.'”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Boston Globe Editorial: Citi Center President Must Go
“There needs to be a course correction at the Citi Performing Arts Center. The nonprofit center has suffered from financial troubles and made tin-eared decisions that have cut programming and raised questions about its operations. Center president Josiah Spaulding is at least part of the problem. Now it falls to the center’s board of directors to figure out how to move the organization toward greater transparency as well as prosperity.”
A Playwright Pens A Cycle In 20-Minute Pieces
After a severe epileptic seizure that erased some of his memory, playwright Mark Ravenhill was surprised to learn that he’d agreed to write a new play for each day of the Edinburgh Fringe. “Surely I should be pulling out of this insane undertaking? But then my doctor advised me it would take me several months before I could expect to be fully physically active. What was I going to do with my time? Watch Richard and Judy and eat lots of cakes? Or be a prolific dramatist?”
Is Brand-Name Comedy Harming Edinburgh Fringe?
“Once upon a time, the Edinburgh festival fringe was all about finding the next big thing in Hungarian experimental theatre. Now, its integrity has disappeared as commercialism reigns, personified by big-name performers familiar from TV, such as Jimmy Carr, Ricky Gervais and Frank Skinner. That, at least, is the complaint from those who believe that household name comedy is drowning out more pioneering art.”
Philip Larkin: Please Shoot Me In The Best Light
“The vanity of the late Philip Larkin has come to light in a previously unseen letter to a photographer. The witty correspondence with Fay Godwin from 1985 reveals how the womanising poet struggled to control his public image as he grew older. Half joking, half in deadly earnest, Larkin tries to prevent photographs being used that expose his baldness or girth. ‘I now have three conditions that photographers must promise to observe in what they print,’ he writes to Godwin….”
Cultural Olympiad Still Begging For Funding
“I have lost count of the meetings I have attended to discuss the Cultural Olympiad, the showcase of British arts and culture planned to run alongside the 2012 Olympic Games. … At the end of each meeting – and sometimes at the beginning – the inevitable question comes: ‘Is there a budget for the Cultural Olympiad?’ To date, the answer has been boringly predictable. … With just five years to go, with a year before London 2012 ‘owns’ the Olympic project, the arts world is still waiting for the Cultural Olympiad to be funded.”
This Building Just Screams Vivaldi. Or Maybe Coltrane?
“It seems every new condominium these days has its own tune, meant to convey its soul to potential buyers. … Developers and marketers have no clearly defined rules about what music belongs with which building. In general, though, buildings that are downtown or have modern designs seem to be willing to try newer musical genres like electronica. Buildings with long histories or those that are not specifically aiming at young buyers often use classical. Jazz, with its myriad styles, tends to cross geographical and architectural boundaries.”
Lost In Translation: “Drowsy Chaperone” In London
Why did the Broadway hit “The Drowsy Chaperone” flop in London, despite the enthusiasm of critics there? “With very few exceptions, London’s West End is a cultural wasteland. The heart and soul of contemporary London theatre is in the subsidized section and venues like the National Theatre, the Donmar Warehouse and the Royal Court. But, to me, Drowsy’s fate underlines the different meanings of camp and irony between Broadway and the West End – particularly as they apply to musicals.”
New Laureate Is A Different Kind of Poetic Ambassador
Charles Simic, the United States’ new poet laureate, is unlike his predecessors. “There is nothing of the Midwest or the Popular Front about his work, which is sponsored mainly by foreign literatures. He draws on the dark satire of Central Europe, the sensual rhapsody of Latin America, and the fraught juxtapositions of French Surrealism, to create a style like nothing else in American literature. Yet Mr. Simic’s verse remains recognizably American — not just in its grainy, hard-boiled textures, straight out of 1940s film noir, but in the very confidence of its eclecticism.”
Today’s Scarlet Letter Comes With A Search Engine
“Once upon a time, we thought that the Internet would usher in a new era of free human expression, interconnectedness and understanding. But increasingly we’re finding that it actually nurtures our baser instincts and enables social behaviors that date back to when we lived in caves. … Who needs a scarlet letter when I can embarrass you digitally on the Internet?”