“With a new entrance on Spruce Street,” the SEI Innovation Studio “is readied to play host to a rotating installation of fine art (care of the West Collection) and studio space that will cultivate new talent and performance pieces.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Surprise Winner Of National Book Award For Fiction
“James McBride won the National Book Award on Wednesday night for The Good Lord Bird, an irreverent, sharp-eyed novel narrated by an escaped slave. … In nonfiction, George Packer won for The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America.”
Harlem’s National Black Theatre Struggling To Survive
The company, which just opened its 45th season and “catapulted local actors such as Samuel L. Jackson and Michael K. Williams (12 Years a Slave) to Hollywood fame, is facing a real-life drama of its own, from financial struggles, dwindling grants, and constant costs from maintaining its aging building on Fifth Ave.”
The Big Challenge Facing African-American Theater Companies
“Michael Dinwiddie, president of the Black Theatre Network, proclaimed black theater to be in a state of emergency ‘because of the perverse notion we have in this country that people are being reverse racist by creating their own cultural institutions.’ He went on to explain that ‘funders would rather give money to a white theater doing a black play than a black theater doing a multiracial play’.”
Four Lessons To Learn From Spider-Man
“How did a production with so much commercial potential” – a score by rock stars, direction by the genius behind The Lion King, a well-known title character with a ready-made fan base – “fail so spectacularly? … As Broadway buzzards circle, here are lessons learned from the Spider-Man musical.”
Dior To Fund Restoration Of Marie Antionette’s Pretend Milkmaid Cottage
“The fashion house Dior is to sponsor the restoration of the Queen’s House in Versailles. … The house was Marie Antoinette’s rustic hideaway, where Louis XVI’s queen played out a fantasy life as a simple milkmaid until the revolution of 1789 imposed a sterner reality. The house was abandoned after the revolution.”
Björk Explains Television (As Only Björk Could)
“So all that’s on TV, it just goes directly into your brain and you stop judging it’s right or not. You just swallow and swallow. This is what an Icelandic poet told me. And I became so scared to television that I always got headaches when I watched it. Then, later on, when I got my Danish book on television, I stopped being afraid because I read the truth, the scientifical truth and it was much better.”
The First “Headphone Opera” Has Left One Train Station, Soon To Arrive In Others
Christopher Cerrone’s Invisible Cities just completed an acclaimed run amidst the crowds at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, and the creators say several other cities, starting with Bordeaux, want the production staged in their railroad depots.
Trial Over Funding For Stalled Lucerne Opera House Underway In Bermuda
In 2007, philanthropist Christof Engelhorn pledged, through a Bermuda-based trust fund, 120 million Swiss francs (roughly $131 million) for the construction of a new adjustable opera/concert venue called the Salle Modulable for the Lucerne Festival. Since Engelhorn’s death in 2010, the trust has refused to honor the pledge, maintaining that it was not formally contracted. The Lucerners sued, and the case has now gone to trial in a Bermuda court.
Joy Womack Describes Backstage Conditions That Led Her To Quit Bolshoi Ballet
“I felt I was forgotten and unimportant to them. I begged to be put in corps de ballet just to be able to dance on the stage. ‘No’, they would say. ‘You are sticking out, you are too different, you raise your leg too high, you do it way too emotionally.’ … They even forgot to pay my salary on time and would sporadically pay me something in cash when they realized I was there.”