The Walden Family Playhouse suddenly closed in Denver. “Walden handled the news of its exit surreptitiously and disingenuously, prompting many to suspect that its recent one-year anniversary was tied to a planned exit strategy. But that would mean Walden had a strategy in the first place, which it apparently did not. By pulling the plug on the development of new work here and hitting the road where Walden can recycle everything it created here in cities across America, Walden proved it couldn’t care less about the many broken promises made to the people of Denver.”
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Poll: King Kong Is Scariest Movie Monster Ever
The film magazine Empire polled film experts as to what they thought thr scariest movie monsters ever were, and King Kong leads the list. “The poll comes right up to the present day with in sixth position the spider queen Shelob, who entangled actor Elijah Wood in last year’s Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.”
Seattle’s ACT Theatre – A Year After The Crisis
Just a year ago, Seattle’s ACT Theatre was “fighting for its life after a severe financial meltdown threatened to end the company’s nearly 40-year tenure as one of Seattle’s major professional theaters. Given the relative suddenness of ACT’s fiscal emergency and its need to raise $1.5 million fast to keep its Union Street operation going, survival was no sure thing. But along with restraint and realism, there’s the breezy scent of hope circulating through ACT’s staff offices and rehearsal halls.”
Colorado’s Next Conductor?
Who will succeed Marin Alsop as music director of the Colorado Symphony? “The search apparently has been whittled down to a quartet. Nothing official, but we’re banking on Roberto Minczuk, Jeffrey Kahane, Miguel Harth-Bedoya and David Lockington.”
Tiny Theatre, Tiny Town
The tiny Opera House in the small town of Reedley, California has a stage that’s only 14 feet wide. The 1903 theatre has been restored and a local theatre company has taken up residence. “Whether Reedley can get used to a year-round theater company in a town that isn’t big enough to support a movie theater is the question. Think of it this way: To sell out a season, almost 10% of Reedley’s population (pegged in the 2000 census as 20,700) would have to attend each show.”
The New Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum will soon reopen after a $63 million overhaul. “The project includes a new lobby, a multistoried new front entrance pavilion and a breathtaking public plaza with dancing-water fountains, cherry trees and a “front stoop” of public seating, all of it extending a common-people-friendly welcome mat to the borough of Brooklyn.”
Music For Mind And Body
A new study says that you can improve your health (mental and physical) by working out to certain kinds of music. “According to the journal Heart & Lung, a team of Ohio State University researchers has found that exercising to music — at least to Antonio Vivaldi — not only improves physical conditioning, it also improves mental conditioning. People get smarter if they work out while listening to certain music.”
Utah Museum Returns Looted Painting
The Utah Museum of Fine Arts has returned a small painting – “Les Jeunes Amoureux” by François Boucher to the son of the man it was looted from in Paris. It was “part of a collection of hundreds that disappeared after a Jewish art dealer, Andre Jean Seligmann, fled with his family to the United States. The painting was donated to the Utah Museum of Fine Arts by a collector in 1993.”
Fleisher: Of Pianos, Hands And Botox
Leon Fleisher is back playing the piano two hands. And how did he cure his famous hand malady? “His worldwide search for a cure ended in the mid-1990s when an injection of Botox, of all things, relaxed his fingers, allowing him to play two-handed piano for the first time in decades. (Botox, a toxin that causes botulism, is better known for its cosmetic use as a muscle relaxant that smoothes the wrinkles of aging celebrities, among others.) Now in the middle of a worldwide tour, Fleisher has just signed with Vanguard Classics to record his first two-handed album in 40 years.”
Shakespeare To The Masses
The National Endowment for the Arts’ Shakespeare tour is the largest tour of Shakespeare in American history. Since September, seven professional companies have been presenting five plays around the county, and will have been seen by audiences in 100 cities and towns, as well as on 16 military bases. “Later this month, the NEA will announce the addition of 21 professional nonprofit theater companies to the tour as part of Phase II. They will do a range of the Bard’s plays. By the time both phases are complete, at the end of next year, ‘We hope to have introduced 1 million children to Shakespeare’.”