Following Avenue Q’s booking in Vegas, a number of other Broadway shows are eying the gambling Mecca as a potential market. “It makes perfect sense that the hotels in Las Vegas, which need to differentiate themselves on a basis other than gambling, should turn to the biggest live entertainment pastime there is [behind] Major League Baseball. The more exposure Broadway shows get, the better it is for the industry as a whole.”
Blog
Be This – New Role-Play Park
A new theme park opens in Florida. The park enlists visitors in role-playing – players assume the identities of firefighters or cops or… and play out a scenario. “The $40 million entertainment complex is billed as the first indoor role-playing theme park in the United States for kids and the beginning of a national rollout for the concept. It’s modeled after a similar park in Mexico.”
Fixing The Scottish Portrait Gallery
“The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, conceived by the 19th-century writer and historian Thomas Carlyle, is said by its friends to be in urgent need of a facelift. Supporters say the gallery is closer to the search for Scottish identity than any other.” So now a proposal for a fix-up.
Ex-Billboard Mag Editors Sue Magazine
Two of Billboard Magazine’s former top editors are suing the magazine. “The suit alleges, among other things, that they had faced a hostile working environment tainted by sexual harassment, internal office sabotage, and the sacrificing of “editorial integrity for the sake of financial interests.”
Leon Golub, 82
Leon Golub, an “American painter of expressionistic, heroic-scale figures that reflect dire modern political conditions,” died Sunday in New York
Edinburgh – Too Big To Be Good?
The Edinburgh Festival is huge. Enormous. Gigantic. So it’s a big success right? Maybe not, writes David Benedict. “We’re talking art, not merchandise, so why are we so hung up on size? Shouldn’t we be vaunting quality over quantity? Not at Edinburgh. Less is no longer more. This is the festival most easily mistaken for a marathon, and every year some schmuck attempts to beat the record for the number of events crammed into 24 hours.”
Where Graffiti Went Wrong
So Tony Blair’s government is mounting a clumsy attack on graffiti. “The natural liberal response to this is to defend the richness and wildness of graffiti, the layers of rotting posters, scrawled secret language and spray-can calligraphy that makes dull walls speak hidden dreams in fat lurid lettering. To deny any connection between graffiti and art is not tenable, given the fascination it has exerted on serious painters since the second world war. In the 1980s the intellectualism of Twombly and Dubuffet spawned a far coarser appropriation of street painting by art dealers who fell over themselves to represent the graffitists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. And that’s when it all went wrong for graffiti.”
In The UK – Subscription TV Revenues Exceed Advertising Income
For the first time in Britain, subscription revenue from viewers has exceeded advertising revenue. More Britons are paying to watch TV – subscription revenue is up 63 percent since 1999. “There are fundamental economic shifts in the landscape with long-term significance.”
Philly Orchestra Musicians Enlist Muti’s Help
Musicians of the Philadelphia orchestra, currently negotiating a new contract, have asked conductor Riccasrdo Muti to come and conduct them in a benefit concert to help bridge the gap between what the orchestra is offering in a new contract, and what the musicians want. “Muti, the orchestra’s fifth music director, has returned to lead his former musicians only once since stepping down – and has never appeared at the Kimmel Center.”
Anime Through The Underground
“Anime is everywhere. The global sales of Japanese animation and character goods, an astonishing 9 trillion yen ($80 billion) has grown to 10 times what it was a decade ago. Much of that growth has occurred in North America and Western Europe, where young people have embraced this distinctive style of popular culture, one which extends well beyond the wide-eyed beauties, cute animals, and giant robot battles anime represents for the most casual consumers.”