“With security improving throughout Iraq, once-ubiquitous theater groups are starting to reappear. The National Theater led the way in October when it staged a series of evening performances for the first time since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Custom Publisher Author Solutions Buys Xlibris
“Author Solutions, a publisher of print-on-demand books based in Bloomington, Ind., has acquired Xlibris, a rival self-publisher, expanding its footprint in one of the fastest-growing segments of publishing.”
Pasadena’s Problems Went Beyond The Weak Economy
“Years of lax management, and not just the current economic meltdown, got the Pasadena Symphony and Pasadena Pops into their $3 million shortfall, says their new chief executive.”
PBS Censors Ian McKellen’s Nude Body
Trevor Nunn’s celebrated Royal Shakespeare Company staging of King Lear has been taped for public television. But the director and the network decided to only “suggest” McKellen’s nudity in the storm scene. “If it’s a distraction of that sort, it’s not worth the candle,” says the actor.
New Orleans’ Mahalia Jackson Theater Rises From Katrina’s Mud
“While other theaters and arts organizations around the country are downsizing or closing due to the stormy economy, New Orleans’ storm-damaged Mahalia Jackson Theater for the Performing Arts will reopen this week after a $22 million renovation, the first of the city’s three major theaters to reopen since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.”
Soprano Deborah Riedel, 50
“[She] was a schoolteacher before successfully auditioning for a place in the Australian Opera chorus in 1983. Her career included many of the great parts in the repertoire, including Violetta in La Traviata, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni and Tosca… at such leading theatres as the Bastille in Paris, the Metropolitan in New York and the Vienna State Opera.”
Is The West End Cheating The Solo Theatregoer?
“Internet forums have been up in arms for weeks now at a sneaky policy to shunt singletons into the circles where possible, leaving those lucrative stalls seats to tidy pairs.”
Alfred Shaheen, Maestro Of The Hawaiian Shirt, 86
“Shaheen’s patterns generally featured three to five colors applied by hand to silk screens by professional artists who had more than 1,000 colors to work with. Seamstresses then stitched the cotton, rayon or silk fabrics into final products… Such Shaheen originals now fetch $1,000 or more.”
Whither The Tutu?
Sylvie Guillem says dancing in one is “like wearing a big plate.” They’re difficult and expensive to make. They can give partners a rash. And they positively reek of wispy 19th-century clichés; abstract modern ballet tends to avoid them. Are tutus over? Maybe not…
An Autistic Savant Explains How He Thinks
Danniel Tammet, who knows pi to more than 22,000 digits and learned Icelandic in a week, tells how he connects numbers the way most people connect words, why the number 37 is “lumpy, like porridge,” and more generally how his mind works and what the rest of us might learn from it.