Blog

Twenty Years Of TV Infotainment

The infomercial is 20 years old this year – what a landmark. “Infomercials were born out of a Reagan administration ruling in the mid-1980s that lifted restrictions on how much commercial time stations could air. As a result, struggling cable networks took hold of the concept and sold large chunks of time to the highest bidder.”

A Gay Broadway

A new wave of gay theatre is hitting Broadway. “We’re not talking the odd little play here and there. No, we’re talking mainstream hits, the hottest tickets on and off Broadway, what American audiences are cheering in a burst of spring fever even as the culture wars gear up for ugly battle in the presidential election next fall. Queer theater is everywhere, from opulent musicals to profound meditations on truth and beauty to outrageously funny comedies.

Art Of The Home Theatre

There are too many faceless movie-plexes out there. So many homeowners are commissioning their own home theatres, and some of them are pretty ambitious. “Theaters are not about slapping nice-looking fabrics on walls. You need to make the environment come alive with the architecture. It is the whole definition of the space, the aisles, the stairs to the mezzanine, the kind of memories of old movie palaces that have become part our architectural vocabulary. That’s what I try to instill in my work, the echo of the grand spaces that were meant to dazzle the senses before the movie began.”

Getting The Arts Right On TV

Drama may be dying on Canadian TV, “but we’re very good at producing performing-arts TV. In fact, we’re brilliant at it, and Canadian productions in the genre regularly awe international audiences. There are complicated reasons for this, partly rooted in the CBC’s role in the Canadian culture. So many performers depend on the CBC for employment that the arts have become interwoven with the TV world. Thus, in Canada we make arts productions uniquely sensitive to television’s needs and nuances. We don’t just film arts performances for TV. We make and create television art…”

In RoadTrip: A Quick Stop In Scotland

Sam Bergman on tour with the Minnesota Orchestra: The orchestra swings into its last two stops, beginning with Glasgow. “Musicians, particularly orchestra musicians, tend to be competitive by nature. The process by which we audition for our jobs is far too harsh an difficult for anyone without at least a trace of competitive fire to make it through. Even after we have our jobs secured, we tend to constantly look over our shoulders, wondering how other bands are doing, and how we stack up against them. Playing in the home of another orchestra, with the conductor a familiar commodity, we have a lot on the line, and the desire to measure up to expectations is ridiculously high.”

The Uncommon Editor

“During her 46 years in the publishing business, Judith Jones has become the mouse that roared. If any single human being possesses unerring taste, it is possible that she is that person. Her publishing “finds” include a manuscript by an unknown teen-ager named Anne Frank, a cookbook by an unknown chef named Julia Child and a book of poetry by an unknown scribe named Sylvia Plath.”

America Gets Its National Opera Company

The US Congress has marked the changing of the name of the Washington Opera to the “National Opera.” Congress decided in June 2000 that the 48-year-old company whould be renamed. “According to Placido Domingo, the company’s general director, the new name is a reflection of “the fact that it is in the nation’s capital and therefore touches a wide national audience.”