Dubravka Ugresic laments the evolution of publishing into a marketplace that doesn’t have much attachment to the concept of culture. “In the contemporary media market, literature has acquired an aura of glamour. How has it come to be that all sorts of people —like, say, Madonna— are now rushing into the places formerly reserved for outsiders, bookworms, romantics, and losers?”
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Could Online Music Expand Choices?
Could competitive new music downloading stores end up expanding the kinds of music available? “As music labels and retailers compete more aggressively online, they will offer more obscure titles and recordings of live performances that could find a paying audience through downloads but make no financial sense to distribute on CD’s.”
Boyd: Saving The RSC
Michael Boyd has a tough job trying to re-energize the Royal Shakespeare Company. The RSC is full of problems, logistical, artistic, and perceptual. Yet Boyd has a plan. “It is based on the very old-fashioned belief that sustained collaborative work can produce theater of more lasting value, of more profound values, than any other way of working. I believe that with a core ensemble of around 40, I can provide rigorous, exciting training for everybody, including the old lags who still want to learn.”
Probing The Middle Mind
Curtis White’s new book on what ails our cultural life is a sharply aimed critique. He writes that “our films, our news media, even the academic world of which he’s a part, have all conspired to eliminate the space for imagination and thought, the space in which people could envision a better life or any alternative to the status quo. The creations of Spielberg, Disney, and their ilk, “are pre-emptive efforts to saturate the field in which the imagination might do its work. This is the televisual deluge. This is communication as domination. We drown at the bottom of Hollywood’s ocean, and all we ever wanted was a single glass of pure water.”
Inspiration By Design
“Ever since the Romantics, we have thought of artists as following their muses and of designers as chasing the market. An artist preoccupied with sales will risk being written off as a mercenary, while a designer neglectful of his audience will soon be out of work. In reality, designers and artists aren’t separated by so sharp a line. When a designer sets out to improve an existing product, or to create a product that fills a newly perceived (or fabricated) need, she does not usually call in a focus group. She thinks, she tinkers, she reassesses – much like an artist.”
Seattle And New York – Fringe Problems
The New York and Seattle Fringe Festivals are facing crises of money. They won’t survive without an infusion of support.
Miller: Can great Plays Be Produced Any More?
“Arthur Miller believes that if a young playwright wrote “Death of a Salesman” today, it wouldn’t have a chance of getting produced. Not that there isn’t an audience for it. But the producers would not be interested, largely because of the finances involved.”
Rambert On Track
The Rambert Dance Company looks better than it has in years. “Rambert’s dancers, always good, are taking possession of their repertoire in a way they haven’t dared for years. A spirit of inquiry has replaced their iron discipline, freeing each one to be a soloist. Even when they dance en masse they’re thinking for themselves. A company for choreographers to love.”
Nutcracker’s Rocky Start
Nutcracker might be one of the most popular ballets, but when it was first presented, it didn’t fare well. “The reviews that stuck to it are the really bad reviews. That’s because the really bad reviews say, “This is not even a ballet,” and “If the Imperial theater keeps doing shows like this it will go downhill.” We will all go to hell in a handcart, in other words. And also that Tchaikovsky’s music was not danceable – they said that about it.”
“Angels” On TV In A New Context
Getting “Angeles in America” from the stage to the TV screen puts it in a different context. “The arrival of “Angels” on television now puts this work into new frames of reference and understanding. First and primarily, because this adaptation preserves so much of the play’s thematic complexity, bracing intellect and ravishing language, both its panoramic sweep and visionary intensity come through. That was by no means a given.”