The Sydney Theatre Company posts a small surplus. But it’s not enough says the company’s director. “When you make a profit of $12,000 on a turnover of $22 million, you are landing a jumbo jet not so much on a tennis court but a card table. The fine line between survival and the awful alternatives is becoming finer, and to be only able to do that when we have, in fact, played through our highest ever box office and raised our largest ever amount from private support is a worrying trend.”
Blog
Two New Names On Broadway
The Shuberts rename two of its Broadway theatres for two longtime lawyers for the company. “In an industry in which having one’s name placed on a marquee is considered the highest of honors – usually reserved for playwrights, impresarios, owners and composers – the decision to rename the theaters was met with skepticism from the Broadway community, a tough crowd if ever there was one.”
The Mystery Of Hollywood’s Missing Audiences
Hollywood is starting to wonder what happened to its audience. It’s been “11 weeks in a row of declining movie attendance and revenue compared with last year, adding up to the longest slump since 2000 and raising an uncomfortable question: Are people turning away from lackluster movies, or turning their backs on the whole business of going to theaters?”
Play Factor – Competing For the West End
A new British TV reality series aims to find a young playwright and get his or her work in the West End. “The programme, called The Play’s The Thing, will be in the spirit of Operatunity and Musicality, previous reality arts shows from Channel 4. Novice playwrights are invited to submit scripts, which will be whittled down by Sonia Friedman, an agent and a director. The series will follow the winning writer as he or she develops the play, and go behind the scenes as the production is prepared from raising the investment to opening night.”
Can Australians Save Hollywood?
“Can Australia save Hollywood? Hollywood studios are suffering their longest box office slump in five years with attendance at American cinemas diving eight per cent and revenues down almost five per cent so far in 2005. Tinseltown has its fingers crossed that Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Heath Ledger, Julian McMahon, Miranda Otto, Simon Baker, Richard Roxburgh and director Robert Luketic can help stop the rot.”
Curiouser And Curiouser (And That’s Good For The Arts)
Curiosity, says Robyn Archer, is the key to healthy arts audiences. “Anyone who approaches art, or virtually anything, only wishing to defend their own tastes, anyone who won’t look at something because they fear it won’t be to their liking, anyone who bags something before they’ve seen it, might as well be dead already. They’ve lost their sense of curiosity. They’re winding down.”
Book Smart? Or Video Game Smart?
Are we getting smarter? A popular new book tries to make the case, but Malcom Gladwell wonders what kind of “smart” we’re talking about. “Being “smart” involves facility in both kinds of thinking—the kind of fluid problem solving that matters in things like video games and I.Q. tests, but also the kind of crystallized knowledge that comes from explicit learning. The real question is what the right balance of these two forms of intelligence might look like.”
Regulator: Airing Springer On TV Was OK
The UK’s media regulator says the BBC’s airing of Jerry Springer the Opera did not violate broadcast standards. “More than 7,940 people complained to Ofcom before the hit stage show was broadcast on BBC Two in January, followed by a further 8,860 afterwards. ‘Ofcom recognises that a large number of people were deeply offended by the transmission.’ But it said the show was ‘an important work and commentary on modern TV.”
Producer: UK Film Industry Needs Help
A prominent British film producer says the UK’s film industry is in dire shape. “He said that many of the established routes for getting funding were disappearing or were dependent on tax regimes, leaving less available equity for film-makers. ‘So the hour is dark. Darker I think than most years in my lifetime’.”
This Year’s PEN Winners
This year’s PEN award winners have been announced. Winners include Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith,” for best nonfiction debut, and “Forms of Gone,” by Yerra Sugarman, for best poetry.