Guthrie Theatre artistic director Joseph Haj: “I really wanted to make a production where we could believe the difficulty of these young people’s lives a bit more than we’re typically given to when we see this musical. … It’s really the choreography where we thought, this is where we can shorten the distance between then and now, and this is where we can create a movement world that is rawer, harder in some places, tougher than what the Robbins choreography was.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Finding Measurable, Quantifiable Benefits Of Funding The Arts Is Becoming Easier
“With more funders looking for metrics — and effective altruists asking ‘how many lives does the opera save?’ — how can arts nonprofits best make their case, especially right now, with so many urgent causes vying for donors’ attention?” Mike Scutari looks at a couple of organizations who have answers to that question.
AMC Theatres Chain Launches Rival To MoviePass
“As the largest theater chain in the US, AMC positioned itself early as MoviePass’ harshest critic, deriding its cut-rate model as catastrophically unsustainable. But on Wednesday, AMC announced that it would offer a subscription plan of its own: AMC Stubs A-List.”
Disney Overbids Comcast With $71.3B Offer For 21st Century Fox
“Disney has boosted its offer for 21st Century Fox … to $71.3bn – from $52.4bn – trumping Comcast’s $65bn all-cash hostile offer tabled last week. Disney has also moved from its original tactic of an all-stock deal for Fox, … and a 39% stake in Sky, to a 50/50 mix of cash and shares.”
Joffrey Ballet’s Winning Works Gives New Opportunities To Nonwhite Choreographers
“This choreographic competition gives emerging ALAANA (African, Latino(a), Asian, Arab and Native American) choreographers the opportunity to hone their skills creating on the Joffrey Studio Company and Academy Trainees. … The program was originally funded for just one year by the Sara Lee Corporation in 2011. Yet the artistic staff at Joffrey was committed to the cause, and not only decided to continue the program but expanded it.”
Don’t Dig Up The Streets Looking For The Missing Ghent Altarpiece Fragment, Mayor Tells Public
“A panel of the 15th century painting Adoration of the Mystic Lamb disappeared from Ghent in 1934, and only a few clues were left behind. But on Friday, an engineer claimed that he had solved the riddle left behind after the disappearance. Gino Marchal, co-author of The Fourteenth Letter, claimed that the panel is hidden under a square in the Kalandeberg area of the city centre — where the mayor is now urging treasure hunters not to dig.”
In A Small Belgian City, A Director Aims To Shake Up The Entire European State-Funded Theatre System
“Maverick director Milo Rau has relaunched NTGent as no less than the ‘City Theatre of the Future’, sealed with the Ghent Manifesto, 10 commandments for making new theatre, Dogme 95-style, covering everything from authorship and language to casting and touring. Given Rau’s track record, this is no glitzy euro-branding hashtag exercise. He means business in changing the way we think about theatre. But there’s already a lot of flak coming his way.”
Philly Pops Replaces Its Music Director
Michael Krajewski, who replaced founding music director Peter Nero in 2013, will depart at the end of next season, a decision described by a Pops spokesperson as “totally mutual.” (Krajewski declined to comment.) Taking over the podium will be Broadway and Radio City Music Hall conductor Todd Ellison.
‘I Write To Shame The Dominant Class’: Edouard Louis Uses His Books As Weapons In The Great Struggle
Says the 25-year-old author of the autobiographical novels The End of Eddy (about his violent upbringing as a gay kid in an impoverished French town) and History of Violence (about his rape and near-murder shortly after he arrived in Paris as a student), “I think that the more you talk and write about violence the more goodness you can create in the world.”
The 25 Great American Symphonies
Sudip Bose: “For the sake of a nice, neat number, I am identifying 25 great works — hardly a comprehensive tally, and somewhat arbitrary. Looking over the finalists, I began second-guessing at once: Why no Virgil Thomson or David Diamond? Why Bernstein’s First and not his Second? Why not Ives’s Third? I have not, moreover, included symphonic works that do not bear the title Symphony; therefore, I have left out Samuel Barber’s Essays and Joan Tower’s Concerto for Orchestra. What do you think I ought to have included?”