“A play about the Iraq war that was banned from performance by officials at a Wilton, Conn., high school will enjoy a three-performance run at the Vineyard Theater…. ‘Voices in Conflict,’ created by theater students at Wilton High School and based on books and other material produced by American soldiers who have served in Iraq, was preempted from performance at the school by its principal. The production subsequently received single-evening runs at the Vineyard, the Public Theater, and the Culture Project.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
FBI Finds Pearl Buck’s Missing Manuscript
“The FBI’s Philadelphia office has recovered the ‘priceless’ lost manuscript of Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, the novel that won the Bucks County resident the Pulitzer Prize and was instrumental in her winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938.” The manuscript, which the FBI said had been “missing since at least 1966,” contains annotations in Buck’s hand.
Former Orsay Head: Free Admission Is Dangerous
“President Nicolas Sarkozy’s idea of abolishing entrance fees for French museums is dangerous, said Francoise Cachin, former head of the Musee d’Orsay and of the country’s state-run museums. ‘He has not weighed the consequences of free admission, and will regret it if he goes ahead,’ Cachin said in an interview in Paris. ‘There will be a huge gap that the state will either have to fill directly or by renting out works in exchange for cash.””
Mania For Austen Embraces Style, Not Her Substance
In books, film and television, Jane Austen is hot. “But this year’s wave of books and biopics is tinged with something different. Instead of acknowledging the enduring pleasures of Austen’s satire, or demonstrating how smoothly her centuries-old observations apply to contemporary society, this round of fanaticism is more interested in going back in time — or perhaps simply backward — to play dress-up in empire-waisted gowns with suitably dashing suitors to swoon over.”
Iraqi Poet Nazik al-Malaika, 83
“Nazik al-Malaika, one of the Arab world’s most famous poets, an early exponent of the free verse movement in Arabic, died last Wednesday in Cairo. … In a country riven by sectarian strife, her life and work as a poet and a literary critic were poignant reminders of Iraq’s cultural renaissance in the mid-20th century. Baghdad was then considered the Paris of the Middle East, and poets and artists flocked here to work.”
Feinstein To Smithsonian: Hire New Chief, Pronto
“Citing a harsh report on missteps at the Smithsonian Institution, Senator Dianne Feinstein declared at a hearing on Tuesday that the museum complex should move quickly to replace its ousted top executive rather than take an estimated six months to a year. … Responding to Ms. Feinstein, Roger W. Sant, the chairman of the Smithsonian Board of Regents executive committee, testified that choosing a new secretary was ‘the most important job that we have to do right now, and I believe we need to take the time to do it right.'”
What If “The Splasher” Is A Collective? (But Why?)
“Street artists have speculated for months about the identity of a mysterious figure who has become known as ‘the Splasher’ because he or she hurled colorful blobs of paint at prominent pieces of art on exterior walls in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. The only clues left behind in the paint assaults were bold manifestoes — phrases like ‘destroy the museums, in the streets and everywhere’ — that appeared to critique the commercialization of art. Now it appears that there may be more than one Splasher….”
Broadway: He’s Gotta Have It
“The first revival of ‘Stalag 17,’ the 1951 comedy-drama about American prisoners of war written by two former P.O.W.’s, Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, is scheduled to arrive on Broadway in late spring next year. And in one of the more surprising combinations in recent Broadway history, the director of the new production will be Spike Lee. Yes, that Spike Lee.”
Without Major-Label CDs, Conductors Fly Under Radar
“Time and again, European orchestral conductors roar into America’s side doors, virtually unknown but fully matured and ready to assume major appointments.” Their anonymity — which is not necessarily a bad thing — is due in part to changes in the recording industry, David Patrick Stearns says. “Recordings continue to be made, but coherent electronic calling cards have been replaced by scattershot appearances in a variety of labels, big, small, and so local as to be almost invisible.”
As Controversy Swirls, Rushdie Chooses Silence
“Salman Rushdie, whose British knighthood has led to worldwide protests from Muslims angered by his 1989 novel, The Satanic Verses, is not commenting on the uproar, for now. Rushdie responded Monday to an Associated Press query that asked if he had been urged by British authorities not to say anything because of security concerns or whether he had considered not accepting the honor. ‘The British authorities have not asked me to do or not do anything,’ Rushdie wrote in an e-mail.”