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In Edinburgh: The Fringe That Needs A Fringe

Maybe the Edinburgh Fringe Festival isn’t as cool as it once was? Some artists seem to think so. “As a booming fringe kicks off this weekend and finally threatens to overtake completely the official annual arts festival, there are signs of a dangerous split. Prompted by a dislike of the slick public relations operations, bureaucracy and high admission prices, many influential performers are striking out to create a radical, cool ‘fringe of the fringe’.”

Theatre Of The New West

The first Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region opens this week in Denver. “It will be by far the largest and most significant gathering of playwrights ever held in this part of the country. The three-day, nine-session festival represents 18 states – virtually the entire country west of the Mississippi. Despite a paltry budget and little marketing support,” the event will feature some of the American West’s biggest names in theatre.

Scottish Opera Chorus Wins (Partial) Reprieve

The plan to fire the entire 34-member chorus of Scottish Opera has been revised after the chorus members’ union struck a deal with the company under which twenty singers will be able to keep their positions for at least nine months. The cost-cutting plan imposed on the company by the Scottish Executive has faced fierce opposition from all sides, but the new labor agreement represents the first direct backpedaling by those in charge.

Crossing Over (For Better Or Worse)

Look at the classical music charts these days, and you aren’t likely to find Bach. Crossover rules now. “It’s easy to see all this as merely a matter of marketing or cynical exploitation. But there seems to be something deeper involved, a breaking down of barriers that has classical musicians moving into what used to be pop territory and pop musicians nibbling around the edges of the classical pie. The world of music is changing, and the result may be something the Three Bs would hardly recognize.”

Norman Lebrecht’s Guide To Incompetence

“Here is how to build a concert hall in London. First, locate a site and allocate a reasonable amount of time – between one decade and three, on average – to secure the necessary consents and cash from the appropriate authorities, elected and self-appointed. Then go ahead and build, knowing that the outcome will have been disabled from the start by all the pen-pushers and do-gooders who had their say before a sod was turned. When the finished hall turns out to be a camel designed by committee, acoustically opaque and incurably malodorous, dedicate the next decade or three to getting consents and cash for its improvement which, you may be sure, will be impaired by the selfsame meddlers who undermined it in the first place, or by their descendants.”

A Museum Of Natives, By Natives, For North America

“When the new National Museum of the American Indian opens [in Washington, D.C.] on Sept. 21 amid a flurry of drumming, chanting, eagle feathers and sweetgrass ceremonies, it will mark the culmination of a debate that began in Canada in the 1980s over who gets to tell the aboriginal story… Most of the museum’s staff boast native ancestry and the story the museum tells is in the first person.”

Maybe Not The Best Metaphor To Use, Though

The National Museum of the American Indian may be an architectural and societal triumph, but the man who designed it is so upset that he isn’t even attending the opening. “[Architect Douglas] Cardinal was picked, along with the firm of GBQC in Philadelphia, to design it in 1993 but the museum’s board wanted him to work under James Stuart Polshek, former dean of the Columbia School of Architecture, who is well connected in Washington… ‘Polshek wanted me to be Tonto to his Lone Ranger — his sidekick,’ says Cardinal. ‘I told them I wouldn’t work with that individual. He called me racist.'”