Critics act like teenagers are completely at the mercy of the mass culture, that they’re empty vessels that can be filled up and manipulated by whatever base, nasty thing that comes along. But teens have a lot more going for them than they’re given credit for, and this is actually not the case…
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America’s Closing Borders (Artists Too)
“According to organisations connected with film, theatre, music, opera and dance, new American immigration and visa policies are making it extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, for foreign artists of all sorts to come to the US to perform and show their work. No one, it seems, is exempt.”
Fashionable – What Plays, Why And When
How is it that plays come in and out of fashion? “If consistent themes emerge in new plays, it must be for an underlying social reason. And if classic texts emerge in strange clusters or pairs, it can’t be on purely pragmatic grounds.”
An Alternate Reality
“Reality TV is entering a chilling new phase. The old format of shows based on voluntary participation isn’t producing the kind of spontaneous, voyeuristic thrills it once did. All traces of naturalism are gone; nowadays people play up to the camera, so that producers have to go further and further in pursuit of the “real.” The only way to find unselfconscious reactions today is to catch people unawares.”
The All-Important Essay Question – Would You Pass?
The SAT’s are making a change. A short essay will be required, and said essay will be graded by readers who will spend about a minute reading and considering its quality. All of which got the Atlantic and the Princeton Review wondering what the graders would have made of writing by several famous writers…
Playwrights: What’s Wrong With Broadway
Broadway is seriously broken, say a trio of playwrights. The business is hostile to new work, and the expense of production is out of hand. Terrence McNally: Today’s Broadway is “a circus identified with smash hits, as opposed to plays that examine the human condition. The message is all wrong.”
Ambitious Plans For An American National Theatre
“Today, no one doubts that Lincoln Center Theater is one of the most vital not-for-profit companies in the nation, but its status as a national theatre – indeed, the question of what a national theatre is – is open to debate. So at the dawn of the 21st century, and in the painful, soul-searching aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, a new national-theatre movement is underway.”
Powerhouse Aussie Lit
Time was that Australian literature was considered lesser than the Englis variety. But “in the last 50 years, Australian literature has become a force to be reckoned with; now it is the motherland’s turn to feel insecure. Australian novelists are outwriting us, they tweak the Booker prize out of our hands (Peter Carey has won it twice, Thomas Keneally once, Tim Winton has been shortlisted twice and 2003’s winner, DBC Pierre, is Australian by birth). And there is a flotilla of younger Antipodean writers coming on stream.”
Music Industry Sues More Downloaders
The biig music industry companies sued 531 more music downloaders. “Like the 532 people it sued last month, the RIAA identified its targets by the ‘John Doe’ process, where the identities of these alleged file swappers are unknown. The defendants are listed by their Internet Protocol address. Those identified had shared an average of 800 copyright files, the RIAA said.”
Looking At Art Since 9/11
What kind of art has been made since 9/11? Can any conclusions about it yet be made? “Writers, musicians, filmmakers and theater artists have struggled to create art in its shadow — art inspired not only by anger and disbelief but also by the bedrock American values that the terrorists were unsuccessful at toppling. Indeed, what art in the post-9-11 era seems to have in common is a commitment to making sense of an experience that epitomized senselessness.”