What do the arts need more than anything else? Playwright David Edgar says artists need to provoke and outrage arts institutions. “He argued that the arts in this country had been at their most successful when the spirit of provocation was most alive – as in the late 1960s and early 70s.”
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Broadway’s Post-Tony Bounce
Broadway saw a little bounce at the box office in the week after the Tony awards. “Paid-attendance numbers came to 239,489, which was one of Broadway’s better mid-June perfs — down only 5,000 from 2000.”
Why The TV Schedule Had To Change
TV “networks have a lot to gain by switching away from traditional seasons, and viewers do, too, since new shows are easier to check out when they come in small doses. It’s impossible for a normal person who has any kind of life to see all the shows that début in the fall, and within a couple of weeks it can be too late, since shows not infrequently get cancelled after just two or three episodes. But something has happened to summer in the process. Reruns are disappearing from the landscape; soon you’ll no longer have the chance to see that episode of your favorite show which you missed because your tango class interfered, and you won’t happen to catch a show that you ignored during the regular season, and that turns out to be good.”
Higher Ed – The Moral Choice?
Should universities teach you how to be moral? Nope. “The university also makes little effort to provide you with moral guidance. Indeed, it is a remarkably amoral institution. Today, elite universities operate on the belief that there is a clear separation between intellectual and moral purpose, and they pursue the former while largely ignoring the latter.”
Study: Arts More Than Sports
A study on arts participation released at the National Performing Arts Convention in Pittsburgh echoes previous reports. “Once again, as in studies past, more people reported attending a live performing arts event at least once in the past year than reported attending a professional sporting event. Eight out of 10 acknowledging that the performing arts improve the quality of life in their communities. More than that, between 58 and 71 per cent of those interviewed agreed that attending live arts events encouraged them to be more creative. This has traditionally been an argument used to support arts education in schools. It was interesting to find, in this era of diminished arts education, that so many people still subscribe to the belief.”
Reinventing The TV Schedule, Part I
“This fall, for the first time, three of the big networks and one of the lesser broadcast networks will offer viewers regularly scheduled repeats as part of their fall prime-time lineups.”
The Theatre That Came To Town (And Never Went Away)
The Adirondack Theatre in upstate New York began as a summer operation renting space in an old Woolworth’s store (the owners of the store were trying to lease it as a mini-mall). The theatre kept coming back to town for the next several summers until the town realized a theatre was just what it needed.
Reinventing The TV Schedule, Part II
American TV networks are changing their schedules in fundamental ways. “Giving new meaning to mind-numbing, phony “reality” and other unscripted shows occupy 20 percent of the lineup. This season, five new phonality shows are on the card. Last year, there were zero. An addict will be able to watch cow-eyed love seekers; rapacious, amoral yuppies; and psychologically damaged females seven days a week, in 13 of the 15 prime-time hours before 10 p.m. It’s part of a youth-crazed, bottom-line mentality that also finds reruns written into the start of the schedule for the first time, helping to bump every trace of first-run scripted series TV from Saturday nights.”
Who Was Mona Lisa? (Now We Know?)
Who was the woman known to the world as Leonardo’s Mona Lisa? “Seventeen years of research, beginning in Germany, have led the Adelaide historian Maike Vogt- Luerssen to believe that the Mona Lisa is the lovesick former Duchess of Milan, Isabella of Aragon, and not the wife of a florentine silk merchant, as has been believed.”
Arts as Essential Service
Why is the city of Philadelphia cutting its arts funding, when investment in the arts has returned major benefits? “Why, given all of the studies showing how much the arts contribute to a city and region’s health, have we not figured out how to fund the arts in a way that they don’t have to go begging every year for mere survival. Why is it that we can support transit, education, health and human services, recreation and other line items with the understanding that they are necessary to our existence, but still treat dance, music, theater and art as if they are luxury items – nice if you can find the money, but not essential?”