Big plans are in the works for the Victoria Dance Series Society since receiving a major financial boost last week.
Blog
What Happened To The Promise Of Black British Theatre?
“Today’s theatre houses several outstanding, award-winning young black playwrights, such as Roy Williams, Kwame Kwei-Armah and Debbie Tucker-Green. But two decades since I was first inspired by British theatre, the black presence is little more than marginal.”
The End Of London’s Theatre Museum?
“The proposals on the table are hopeless. Either the museum is to stay in its current premises until its 22-year lease expires, bolstered by some undefined partnership with neighbours such as the Royal Opera House. Or the Covent Garden premises will be vacated, and exhibition space for the collection shoe-horned into the V&A’s South Kensington site. Such blinkered thinking has dogged the Theatre Museum ever since it was first mooted in the 1950s.”
David Robertson Revives St. Louis Symphony
“The nation’s second-oldest orchestra had been demoralized by contract talks and artistically adrift by the coming and going of dozens of guest conductors after illness forced Hans Vonk’s retirement in 2002, two years before he died. Robertson’s inaugural season, which wrapped up last weekend, featured eclectic, imaginative programs that juxtaposed classical and contemporary music by international and American composers.”
Arts Council England: Where Are Books By Asians, Blacks?
Why don’t UK publishers publish more black and Asian poets? Arts Council England wants to know. “The move comes after research indicated that 8% get work into print despite their popularity at poetry readings.”
Hot 97 A Little Too Hot For Its Landlord
A New York building owner is trying to evict popular hip-hop radio station Hot 97 from its Manhattan studios, saying that the station encourages violence and has been the site of multiple shootings tied to various gangsta rappers and their entourages. The carpenters’ union that owns the building says it is just trying to protect its other tenants, and is also seeking to bar entourages from accompanying rappers to the station for appearances.
But The Posters For Saw II Were Fine, Huh?
“The Motion Picture Association of America has censored a poster advertising a film about the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The image that ran afoul of the MPAA is tame by the standards set by the amateur photographers of Abu Ghraib. It shows a man hanging by his handcuffed wrists, with a burlap sack over his head and a blindfold tied around the hood.” The MPAA says the picture depicts torture, and is therefore not appropriate for general viewing. But Philip Kennicott points out that the U.S. government has officially approved the use of the techniques depicted in the poster, and that brings up an interesting side debate concerning what constitutes torture, and what Americans are willing to turn away from.
NAC Drops Gag Order
“The public row between [Canada’s] National Arts Centre and its employees over a controversial confidentiality policy ended yesterday when the NAC dropped its demand that staff sign a document some considered a gag order… To ease union worries, the NAC at first agreed to soften the letter, but eventually decided to drop it altogether. The policy will now be covered under Canadian common law, which specifies that employees cannot disclose their employers’ secrets even if they haven’t signed a confidentiality agreement.”
Snubbing Julia
The most notable snub among yesterday’s Tony nominations was Julia Roberts, who was shut out of the best actress category. But how you view that snub likely depends on who you are. “If you’re, say, a muckety-muck at Creative Artists Agency, which represents Roberts, you’re in a foul mood these days, ranting about ‘out of touch’ nominators and ‘pathetic’ critics who are making Broadway inhospitable to movie stars. On the other hand, if you’re a member of the American Theater Wing, the nonprofit organization that holds the Tony copyright, you point to the snub as evidence that the nomination process has integrity and doesn’t bend to industry pressure to celebrate stars.”
Critic: DaVinci Not All That Controversial, After All
As worldwide protests by devout Catholics continue unabated, The DaVinci Code got its first screening at Cannes last night, and Simon Houpt says that all the hand-wringing isn’t necessary. Opus Dei, the secretive Catholic sect depicted as murderous in Dan Brown’s novel, “is granted some slack in the big-screen version, which opens across the world on Friday. Furthermore, theories about the life of Jesus Christ that have caused consternation in the Catholic world, brought condemnation from the Vatican, and provoked calls for boycotts across the globe, are presented with a measure of skepticism on film that the book does not possess.”