“I wanted there to be something on the Internet, not just in Twitter form, that fleshes out a bit the importance that Jim Oestreich’s 24 years at the Times has meant to classical music” – which is more than you might think.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Forget Novels – Bret Easton Ellis’s Real Art Form Is the Tweet
Twitter mixes literature (of an admittedly minimal sort) with performance, and it’s perfect for Ellis, who has always been, when you think about it, more of a conceptual artist than an author. … In this new métier, each part of his persona is on view: satirist, nihilist, glamour guy, exhibitionist, knee-jerk contrarian, self-pitying cokehead, and a few other things.”
Julie Taymor Returns To Stage Directing With Midsummer Night’s Dream
For her first new staging since her involvement with the Broadway Spider-Man degenerated into litigious acrimony, Taymor will direct the Shakespeare comedy this fall to inaugurate the new Brooklyn headquarters of the company Theater for a New Audience.
Spider-Man Producers And Taymor Close To Settlement (Again)
“The producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark and Julie Taymor, the musical’s ousted director, are once again ready to settle their long-running court case. … The letter comes less than two weeks after the parties resumed litigation after failing to reach a final settlement of Taymor’s copyright infringement lawsuit.”
England Gives Millions In Lottery Funds To Refurbish Arts Venues
“In a rare piece of good news for the country’s art groups, millions of pounds of lottery money has been given out to to help refurbish run-down theatres, galleries and cinemas. Arts Council England (ACE) gave out small capital grants, between £100,000 and £500,000, … [for a] total of £11.6 million.”
Irina Dvorovenko To Retire From American Ballet Theater
The 39-year-old will give her final performance as an ABT principal (dancing Tatiana in John Cranko’s Onegin) at the Metropolitan Opera House on May 18. (She will continue to perform as a guest with various companies.)
Ai Weiwei Can Turn Even Mourning Into A Subversive Act
“How do we honor the dead? How do we commit them to memory? And how do we come to terms with the way they died?” Especially when they died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that Chinese authorities tried to cover up.
Glenda Jackson Says Her Fellow MPs Could Never Hack It In The Theatre
“The kind of behaviour you saw in parliament would not be tolerated for 30 seconds in a professional theatre. Essentially, there’s a lack of professionalism, very poor timekeeping, a great deal of wasting time, and egos the size of which I’ve never seen in my life before.”
How To Create An Entire Musical In One Day
A new documentary titled One-Night Stand “goes behind the scenes of ‘The 24-Hour Musicals,’ a fundraising event in which teams of playwrights, composers, actors and directors write, rehearse and finally perform a 15-minute show over the course of a single, sleep-deprived day.”
Ripe Prose: Cheesemongers And Their Creamy Product Descriptions
“They can tell you about torment. They can describe long, frustrating hours sitting in dark, stinky basements and caves, pen in hand, trying to get the flow of the words just right. … In case you haven’t noticed, some of the most amusing and captivating writing in the city is being produced in the service of cheese.”