It was only eight months ago that Chicago’s new $9 million Drury Lane Theatre at the Watertower Place opened in a blaze of publicity. Now the theatre is quitting making original theatre, admitting its mistakes and failure. “It’s an astonishingly rapid turnaround and indicative of eight months on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile that have not gone well at all. There are no current plans for the theater to produce its own shows again.”
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Hey CBC Workers – Welcome Back! (Sorta)
CBC boss Tony Burman welcomed his troops back last week after a prolonged lockout. He kindly sent all employees a note. But what was he really thinking, behind all the bonhomie? “Have a great week. It’s wonderful you are back where you belong. (At least until the next strike.)
Actors On The Other Side Of The Lens
A perhaps not surprising number of actors have aspirations to make their own movies. And some of them do. “These filmmakers may be actors with longtime careers and considerable name recognition, but that’s not much help within the blockbuster mentality that dominates the film industry, where even stars with high wattage have had difficultly getting pet projects made. So how did these just-regular thespians pull off making their movies?”
Oooooh – A Flop In The Making?
After a two-year gestation involving several much-discussed readings and workshops, ‘In My Life’ is widely expected to be one of the weirdest productions to reach Broadway in years. There was, for one thing, the plot involving a singer-songwriter with Tourette’s syndrome, a song about a tumor and a swishy dead accountant who dances with God. There was the dare-the-critics poster art featuring large, Magritte-like lemons. And then there was the creative team, in particular the composer, lyricist, book writer and director, none of whom had worked on Broadway before and all of whom were in fact the same man: a 67-year-old former jingle writer and Hollywood anomaly named Joe Brooks.”
When Copyrighters Own The Space Around You
“Today, anyone armed with a video camera and movie-editing software can make a documentary. But can everyone afford to make it legally? Clearance costs – licensing fees paid to copyright holders for permission to use material like music, archival photographs and film and news clips – can send expenses for filmmakers soaring into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Dance – Looking Historical
“Dance revivals come in many forms and get sketchier the further one recedes in time. Music has a long-accepted system of notation; theater has texts. Dance has the memories of the choreographer (if still alive) and his or her disciples, who fan across the country and the world recreating works in which, often, they once danced. So why do them at all? In dance, we live in a time, or so many people fret, of diminished choreography: there just aren’t that many great dance-makers out there, especially in classical ballet. Hence the desire to freshen the repertory by mining the past…”
Lifetime – A Force To Be Lobbied With
The Lifetime Channel is the most-watched network among women. “In recent years Lifetime has promoted its issue-oriented programming by tying it to direct appeals to viewers to improve their lives. In April, for instance, after the broadcast of “Terror at Home,” a documentary about domestic abuse, the National Domestic Violence Hotline had a 7,000 percent increase in calls. But Lifetime’s most surprising experiment has taken place off screen. Through its public affairs office, it has become a political lobbying force – and quite an effective one at that – rallying its audience to back laws about a broad slate of women’s issues.”
Pinter – Master Of The Pause
“Words are the dialectical battleground of Pinter’s works, sometimes treasured and hoarded like irreplaceable gems, sometimes scattered heedlessly like junk in a looted dime store. His people live by them, betray them, bicker over them, flay one another with them.”
Today’s Music: What Sells In Concert Doesn’t Sell On Disc
Oldies bands are big on the road, selling out arenas and fairs. “The concert box office continues to be dominated by white guys old enough to be grandfathers. With all those seats filled, you’d think that all these wizened rockers must be moving boatloads of CDs, too. But the sales figures tell a different story.”
Art Vandal Attacks Florence Again
Italy’s most notorious art vandal has struck again. “Piero Cannata, who earned worldwide notoriety by taking a hammer to Michelangelo’s David, confessed to local newspapers in Tuscany that he had struck again in the very centre of Florence. It was discovered that somebody had sprayed a thick black “x” on a plaque, set into the paving of Piazza della Signoria, commemorating the burning to death of the 15th-century preacher and reformer Girolamo Savonarola.”