Well, the problem is understandable, really: “Broadway serves both a local market and a tourist one, theater snobs and theater newcomers. If you go to a Broadway show only once a year and your ticket likely costs upwards of $100, do you choose the intellectually engaging drama or the [musical] with the lights and back handsprings and sequins? … Why do a play on Broadway at all?” As Alexis Soloski explains, there are some good reasons.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Pub Theatre In Britain Faces An Identity Crisis, Even As It Grows
For a start, there are growing pains (though “pains” isn’t really the right word): really successful pub ventures morph into actual theatres, even as established theatres (including subsidized ones) open their own pubs with separate stages. Even so, writes Matt Trueman, there’s still a lot of vitality in the movement.
Conan O’Brien Sued For Theft Of Jokes (And The Case Is Going To Trial)
“The plaintiff, Alex Kaseberg, claimed in a lawsuit filed in July 2015 that writers from Conan … lifted five monologue jokes from his blog over the course of more than a year. … Judge Janis Sammartino on Friday dismissed the claims for two of the jokes, but said Mr. O’Brien must face the allegations for the other three.”
‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ At 50: Concept Album Or Identity Crisis?
For one thing, what is a concept album, anyway? For another, here’s what Paul told a biographer about the Beatles’ mindset when making it: “We really hated that fucking four little mop-top boys approach. We were not boys, we were men. It was all gone, all that boy shit, all that screaming, we didn’t want any more. Plus, we’d now got turned on to pot and thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers.”
Using X-Rays To Find The Palimpsests Of A Young French Impressionist
At the National Gallery of Art in D.C., senior conservator Ann Hoenigswald has used the imaging technology to discover early works (including a major one thought lost) by Frédéric Bazille which, it turns out, he subsequently painted over.
Enough With The Violence-Against-Women Scenes In Contemporary Ballet!
After seeing New York City Ballet this weekend, Siobhan Burke posted a photo of her annoyed self on Instagram with the caption, “No more gang rape scenes in ballets, please.” Among the first responses she got: “Did you see Odessa?” As a matter of fact, she did – and, she argues, that new work by Alexei Ratmansky is but one part of a long pattern in contemporary ballet choreography.
Elizabeth Streb On Fear (Which Is Something Her Dancers Would Know About)
“[Fear] is a messaging system that we have more work to do before we try something. … You can’t hedge your bets.” She also says, “Failure of flight is the most exciting moment.” Wow. (video)
Maybe It’s Time To Quit Talking On And On About ‘Audience Engagement’ – There Are Already Engaged Audiences Out There
In an editorial that concentrates in the dance scene in Philadelphia but could apply to any of the performing arts, Steven Weisz argues that there are plenty of smaller companies and organizations “already firmly entrenched in the communities they service … [and] tend to attract younger and more diverse audiences as a result” – and that, instead of throwing grant money at large organizations for “engagement” programs, funders should send that money their way instead.
What Deborah Borda Told Curtis’s Graduating Class: Be ‘Soldiers For Music’
“Orchestras can no longer rely on old-fashioned subscription models. Music education is not guaranteed in public schools, and in a positive sense the entire history of classical music can all be streamed online for free. So the world I knew, and have worked in, and will continue to work in will not be the one you move through in your careers. … Together we have to forge a more profound and timely connection between our music, the music that we love, and the rest of the world.”
Disembodied Head Sells For $57.4 Million At Christie’s
Okay, the head was a Brancusi – specifically, La Muse endormie. The second-highest price at this auction, which raised $289.2 million in total, was $45 million, for Picasso’s Femme assise, robe bleue.