“Saratoga Performing Arts Center does not yet have an agreement with New York City Ballet for the company to return next summer. … Because the company still is negotiating union contracts, it cannot estimate costs for 2014 or commit to two weeks .”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Düsseldorf Cancels Nazi-Themed Tannhäuser After Audience Rebellion
“Burkhard C Kosminski’s production of Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser that generated a furore of criticism for its use of Nazi imagery has been officially cancelled. … Some patrons have apparently sought medical treatment for ‘psychological and physical stress’.”
Opera Australia Furloughs Some Singers To Make Way For Musical
“According to the actor’s union, Equity, about 20 singers who are now on 12-month contracts will be rested without pay for six to 12 weeks in 2014. The union claims that the move is in order to accommodate another musical, The King and I, planned for next year.”
WTF Is Up With Marc Maron Anyway?
“Prior to starting his podcast, WTF, [the comedian] resembled no one so much as he did a Sam Lipsyte character. Like many Lipsyte protagonists, he was a middle-aged guy with artistic aspirations who, despite some notable successes, considered himself, on some level, a failure.”
Harold Pinter’s ‘Buried Masterpiece’? A Vaudeville Madhouse
“Set in a state-run sanatorium where the so-called ‘patients’ are actually political dissidents undergoing various excruciating corrective treatments, The Hothouse shows the casual inhumanity … with a broad, over-the-top comedy. Several scenes have the rat-a-tat patter of old-school vaudeville and there’s even an exploding cigar.”
It’s Hard-Wired: Humans Need Stories
“It is in our nature to need stories. They are our earliest sciences, a kind of people-physics. Their logic is how we naturally think. They configure our biology, and how we feel, in ways long essential for our survival. Like our language instinct, a story drive – an inborn hunger for story hearing and story making – emerges untutored universally in healthy children.”
Comic-Book Characters Conquer The Culture
“In 2012, comic-book-based movies accounted for a whopping 14 percent of U.S. box office revenue. … They represent a huge chunk of our cultural imagination. … But on the road from Tony Stark’s (pretty racist) origin fighting a bunch of commies to a world where graphic novels can be just as artful as stories without drawings, something remarkable happened. The nerds won.”
Remember The Whole Earth Catalog?
“Though it wasn’t exactly a book, it was a how-to manual, a compendium, an enyclopedia, a literary review, an opinionated life guide, and a collection of readers’ recommendations and reviews of everything from computational physics to goat husbandry. … [It] came to be the magnum opus of the entire counterculture.”
Performing Beckett’s Play For Mouth
“Samuel Beckett left strict instructions for his ‘one-mouth’ play,” Not I. “Don’t act. And you can never go fast enough. Easier said than done, writes actor Lisa Dwan.”
‘My Psychic Garburator’ – Margaret Atwood On Dreams
“Last night’s dream: ‘The Forest of Misplaced Inventory,’ said the dream voice. ‘That shouldn’t take much description!’ The visual was a stack of shrink-wrapped red plastic garbage-can lids in a stand of green spruce trees.” (Note: “garburator” is Canadian for kitchen garbage disposal.)