“Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, a work that Zadie Smith called ‘the best book — in any medium — I have read about our current moment,’ is the surprise name among the 13 finalists announced today. It appears alongside Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room, Sally Rooney’s much-hyped Normal People and Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
28 Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Students Injured In Bus Crash
The students, aged 12 to 21, were being transported from the dorms for the company’s summer instructional program to a Sunday evening recreational event when one of their buses rear-ended the other.
Florida Orchestra President Michael Pastreich Steps Down After 11 Years
“In his time at the helm, the orchestra has achieved record concert attendance, become more involved in the community and grown its endowment from $8 million to $21 million. A major growth factor entailed reducing ticket prices in 2011 to a range of $15 to $45. Paid attendance has since increased by 49 percent and eliminated the orchestra’s debt.”
Troubled Arts Center Loses Chairman And Trustee In Conflict-Of-Interest Scandal
The latest round of difficulties at Firstsite, an arts center in the English city of Colchester with a headquarters building by starchitect Rafael Viñoly, began this past spring with the revelation that the organization had paid roughly $120,000 to a consulting firm, two of whose directors were the chairman and a member of Firstsite’s board of trustees.
Frishberg On The Half Note, Revisited
Something brought to mind a contribution by Dave Frishberg early in the blog’s history. Here it is, exactly as it appeared in the summer of 2007, except that ,,,
When Mr. Balanchine Taught His Dancers The Proper Way To Drink Tea
Jacques d’Amboise told the story – with mime – at an opening gala for this summer’s Dance on Camera festival at Lincoln Center, and filmmaker Maia Wechsler recorded it for the rest of us. (video)
A Composer With Migraines Sees St. Hildegard Of Bingen As A Model
Jenny Giering: “In a theological work, Scivias, she described an experience strikingly similar to my own: ‘When I was 42 years and 7 months old, Heaven was opened and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came and permeated my whole brain, and inflamed my whole heart and my whole breast.’ Hildegard is best known, though, for her music — a powerful body of mystical religious chants that are listened to more widely today than the music of any other single composer of her time. I want to talk to her.”
Playwright Young Jean Lee Loves To Watch Her Audiences – And Herself – Squirm
“Lee’s work is about wrongness: about being the wrong kind of man, woman, Asian; about saying the wrong thing; about getting other people wrong. Her characters are ill at ease in their bodies and in the world and, sometimes, in the very play they’re starring in. … With each production, she begins by asking herself, ‘What’s the last play in the world you would ever want to write?’ Then she casts actors and builds a play for them and with them, incorporating their feedback.”
What 2018 America Could Learn From Patsy Cline
“In the decades following her death [in 1963], Patsy’s people were ascendant: Winchester’s white laborers and cleaners, people who proudly traced their family land to the [impoverished] hilly folds of the surrounding valley, became homeowners, businesspeople, parents to first-generation college students, even mayor. And through it all, Patsy was their North Star, their proof that a Kent Street girl could be globally recognized.”
The Danger Of Adjusting Classic Plays To Current Values
Producer Richard Jordan, citing Bartlett Sher’s current Lincoln Center Theater production of My Fair Lady: “While critics enthused over Sher’s new ending, referencing it back to the issues of today, watching it play before a regular audience you felt a sense that the musical no longer gave them a pay-off. Instead, it felt as though they had been waiting more than three hours for the ‘I love you’ moment only to then be denied it – it’s not how Lerner intended this scene to play and it was surprising his estate allowed it. We should be concerned about a growing attitude that classics can be ‘fixed’ to match today’s agenda – one risks changing the very essence of the work itself.”