“For half the Doctor Who fans who queued overnight, crashed booking websites and jammed ticket hotlines to see David Tennant play Hamlet, it is sadly not to be. The [Royal Shakespeare Company] confirmed yesterday that the actor would not be returning to the Novello Theatre stage in the West End before Christmas. He has a prolapsed disc and will undergo surgery today.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Baltimore Opera’s Debt At Least $1.2 Million
“The Baltimore Opera Company’s petition for Chapter 11 protection, filed yesterday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Maryland, revealed $1.2 million owed to creditors holding the largest unsecured claims. Seventy other creditors were listed, without a dollar value.”
Spike Lee Finally Makes It To Sundance
“More than 20 years after making his first splash with She’s Gotta Have It, Spike Lee is finally going to make it to Sundance. His belated debut – in the 25th year of the Sundance Film Festival – comes as director and co-producer of the film version of [Tony-winning musical] Passing Strange.”
Christmas Comes But Once A Year (About Six Months Off)
A team of astronomers has “found that a bright star which appeared over Bethlehem 2,000 years ago pinpointed the date of Christ’s birth as June 17 rather than December 25.” (Some of us always suspected that Jesus was really a Gemini.)
We Will, We Will Rock You Until You Surrender
The use of rock’n’roll (played very loudly) as a military instrument of coercion is at least 20 years old. (Remember Manuel Noriega holed up in the Vatican Embassy in Panama?) Now, in the wake of Guantánamo, a group of prominent musicians is demanding an end to the practice.
Pierre Boulez: ‘Certainly I Was A Bully. I’m Not Ashamed Of It At All”
Says music’s éminence grise of former enfants terribles: “The hostility of the establishment to what you were able to do in the Forties and Fifties was very strong. Sometimes you have to fight against your society.” And he still has plenty of opinions – about Cage, Adams, Carter, Messiaen, C major…
Bangladesh Gets Its Own Copy Of Taj Mahal
Filmmaker Ahsanullah Moni has built a life-size replica of the world’s favorite mausoleum in a small town about an hour from Dhaka, the country’s capital. Moni “said he wanted his countrymen to experience the beauty of the Indian monument even if they were too poor to travel to see the original.”
Canadian Doc On Assisted Suicide Causes Major Row In UK
John Zaritsky’s film The Suicide Tourist, retitled Right to Die? for its broadcast this week on British television, “chronicles the stories of two people who visit the Dignitas organization in Zurich, which organizes assisted suicides in Switzerland, where the practice is legal.” The death of one of the subjects is shown on camera.
Why Documentary Subject Wanted The World To See Him Die
Mary Ewert, the widow of the man whose assisted suicide was shown in the controversial documentary The Suicide Tourist (or Right to Die?) writes that her husband “wanted to remove a veil so that people could see how comfortably someone could die who – without this option of assisted suicide – maybe would have had a very painful death.”
Flimm To Leave Salzburg Festival After 2011
Jürgen Flimm, artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, “told a meeting of the supervisory board on Tuesday that ‘he will no longer be available for further talks after 2011,’… Flimm’s decision to throw in the towel came after a bitter dispute with the festival’s drama chief, Thomas Oberender, over the standing of spoken theatre within the month-long festival of music, opera and theatre.”