Wendy “Wasserstein’s humor contributed to feminist discourse in the theatre in numerous ways. Her plays are simply funny, and tweak the stereotype of feminists as humorless and strident. She wrote bright, comic plays with a twinge of sadness, melancholy that became more evident and more cutting as her career went on.”
Blog
Andante.com Goes Dark
Five years after launching an ambitious mix of online music news, cultural coverage, and digital audio, the web site Andante.com has closed up shop. “The site’s mission was to be no less than the leading classical music site on the Internet—and the leading source for digital classical recordings, a position that was up for grabs in the pre-iTunes era.” Andante was bought by a French record label in 2003, and its demise followed an announcement from the label that it could no longer afford to support the site.
Teachout: Wasserstein, A Dissenting View
Terry teachout wasn’t a fan: “In fact, I didn’t think much of any of Wasserstein’s plays, and I dreaded having to say so in print, since she was an exceedingly nice lady. I fudged the point in my review, calling her “one of our best theatrical journalists, a keen-eared social observer with a knack for summing up cultural watershed moments like the coming of age of the baby boomers and putting them on stage to memorable effect.” All true, and none of it incompatible with the fact that I considered her to be a glib, punch-pulling lightweight, a kind of feminist Neil Simon who never cut too close to the knuckle.”
Frey Releases “Readers’ Note”
Not an apology, the note is James Frey’s “explanation for making up incidents in his memoir. “I wanted the stories in the book to ebb and flow, to have dramatic arcs, to have the tension that all great stories require,” Mr. Frey said, explaining the reason for the changes. “I altered events all the way through the book.”
Welsh Assembly To Clash Over Arts Funding
The Culture Minister of Wales has proposed to change the way the Welsh Assembly funds the arts, taking the task of funding of the six largest arts organizations away from the Welsh Arts Council and letting the assembly fund them directly. “But opposition parties claim this breaches the principle of ‘arms-length’ funding of the arts – separating the politicians who hold the purse strings from the artists who receive the money – and could lead to political interference. They plan to use Wednesday’s assembly debate to vote through an amendment which would force a public review and consultation process.”
Lost In Translation
JM Coetzee has had his work translated into many languages. “The necessary imperfection of translation – brought about in the first place by the incapacity of any given target language to supply for each single word in the source language a corresponding single word that would cover, precisely and without overlap, the denotation of the original and its major connotations to boot – is so widely accepted that the translator becomes accustomed to aiming for the best possible translation rather than a hypothetical perfect one. But there are occasions where less than perfect translation of a key word can have serious consequences.”
Crafts Council On The Precipice Of Disaster
England’s Crafts Council “is in crisis, victim of a miasma of resignations, rows and inertia that swirls round one of the worst policy mistakes made by the arts establishment since Labour took power in 1997. Where did it all go wrong?”
KC PAC Falls Short Again
An interim fundraising campaign for Kansas City’s proposed new performing arts center has fallen well short of its $45 million goal, and backers aren’t sure whether they will have enough cash on hand to begin construction in the fall as originally planned. The center has been a long time in the planning process, and debates have sprung up over everything from its cost (somewhere north of $330 million) to its proposed downtown location.
Oakland Ballet Shuts Down
“The Oakland Ballet said Tuesday that it is closing after four decades because of an ongoing ticket slump and the loss of its venue.”
Google – Promise Or Threat?
“On the one hand, Google is cool. On the other hand, Google has the potential to destroy the publishing industry, the newspaper business, high street retailing and our privacy. Not that it will necessarily do any of these things, but for the first time, considered soberly, these things are technologically possible.”