“A violent pacifist, a charming bruiser – and the greatest playwright of his generation. Five actors remember what it was like to be in a rehearsal room with Harold Pinter.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Brooklyn Phil To Move To Former Firehouse
“Plans were unveiled Wednesday for what will eventually be the new home of the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Architectural firm HOK is redesigning the former firehouse at 299 Degraw St. in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill section to serve as the BP Music Center.”
Paris Etoile To Lead Vienna State Opera Ballet
“The Vienna State Opera announced Thursday that French star dancer Manuel Legris was chosen to direct its ballet from 2010. Legris, 44, will take over from the current ballet chief, the Hungarian Gyula Harangozó, at the same time that Dominique Meyer leaves the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris to head Austria’s leading opera house.”
Mervon Mehta Moves On From Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center
“Yesterday the Kimmel announced that Mehta’s eighth season of importing symphony orchestras, dance companies, jazz bands and world music groups, plus staging the center’s signature all-night Summer Solstice festivities, will be his last… [he] will be replaced by Tom Warner, who was among the Kimmel’s earliest hires, starting there in 1999, two years before the center opened.”
Character Actor Pat Hingle, 84
“He wasn’t a household name, but his solid, broad, hang-dog screen face became a household image.” In addition to considerable theater and television work, Hingle played crucial roles in films from On the Waterfront and Splendor in the Grass to Norma Rae and The Grifters; he was best known as Commissioner Gordon in the first four Batman films.
Doctor Who Star Returns To RSC Hamlet
David Tennant, star of the popular TV series, “was forced to pull out of the show in December just as it transferred to the West End’s Novello Theatre, due to a recurring back injury. Thousands of fans were left fearing that he would sit out the entire run.” Now he’s back in the title role for the production’s final week.
Pathbreaking Publisher Richard Seaver, 82
“Richard Seaver, an editor, translator and publisher who defied censorship, societal prudishness and conventional literary standards to bring works by rabble-rousing authors like Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, William Burroughs and the Marquis de Sade to American readers, died Tuesday at his home in Manhattan.”
Architecture in 2008: Doing The Right Thing
Thanks to the success of such buildings as Renzo Piano’s California Academy of Sciences, “2008 just may be the year in which doing the right thing, or at least thinking about how one might go about doing the right thing, became cool.”
Spoleto Festival USA Shrinks Program For 2009
“This year’s festival has a budget of $6.2 million – down from last year’s $8.4 million, said festival spokeswoman Paula Edwards. Last year’s festival was staged just as the national economy soured and ended the season $372,000 in the red – the first deficit for the festival in 13 years.”
Writer Inger Christensen, 73
“The Danish writer who built experimental poems, essays and novels around systematized and mathematical structures has died at age 73.”