Ontario’s Shaw Festival had a terrible year. “From a creative point of view, it was not a season without high points, but from a financial perspective, this was the kind of year in which everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The result: after 10 consecutive years of budget surpluses, the once invincible Shaw Festival will be looking at about $2 million of red ink. The bottom line: A big chunk of the regular audience failed to show up — especially Americans. SARS was one big factor, but not the only one. There was also the war in Iraq, the power blackout and the declining value of the U.S. dollar.”
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Gay Art And The Margins
What kind of art outrages people today? “It’s not just obscene art that gets people riled; art with any suggestion of same-sex affection or eroticism will do almost as well. In a more closeted era, gay artists would speak in a subtle and complex code to gay audiences, a code that usually went over the head of the general populace. Today, the general populace is quite good at discerning even the sliest feints in the homophile direction.”
Getting Angels From Stage To Screen
“Too often, big stage deals have hit the screen, large or small, with an audible thud, making viewers wonder what was so special about the originals anyway. For some of us, “Angels in America” is a happier story. Building on his astute and graceful 2001 HBO adaptation of the Margaret Edson play “Wit,” director Mike Nichols has taken the hospital bed so prominent in that drama, about a cancer patient, and wheeled it over to another, more expansive wing.”
St. Louis New Contemporary Gem
St. Louis’ new Contemporary Art Museum is an $8 million gem. “The museum’s architect, Brad Cloepfil, eschewed such gestures in a simple but sophisticated design that consists of interlocking concrete planes, not unlike a house of cards. But this house of cards is anything but flimsy. It’s at once solid and permeable, a skillful geometric exercise that blurs the divisions between inside and outside, creating a serene but dynamic environment without the benefit of grand stairs, towering atriums or flapping wings.”
Better CD’s, Better Sound
If regular CD’s aren’t selling so well now, how about super enhanced sound CD’s? “Introduced four years ago, SACD boasts superior fidelity and surround-sound capability when played on an SACD player. Though the format is not widely established, a renewed interest in rock classics and a considerable uptick in SACD sales have given its supporters reason to be optimistic.”
Mandela’s Concert Against AIDS
Nelson Mandela was host to a five-hour pop concert in Cape Town in a benefit to fight AIDS. “Mr Mandela, 85, who watched the show alongside his wife Graca Machel and US TV presenter Oprah Winfrey, has said Aids is a bigger challenge than apartheid. In South Africa there are more people living with HIV/Aids than anywhere else in the world, and globally the number of those infected is now more than 42 million.”
Insta-Recording – The Ultimate Concert Souvenir
Fans record concerts. How to make them quit? Offer better instant recodings and sell them. “Those enthralled by a performance will seek mementos and there are few more appealing than a recording of the event, an audible aide de memoire. The way to persuade them to leave their Minidiscs at home and to shun those who peddle noisy, distorted, unbalanced piracies is to offer them that memento as they leave — under terms which reward not only the audience but the artists and the company.”
Venice’s La Fenice Finally To Reopen
After years of delay La Fenice, the famous Venetian opera house destroyed by fire in 1996, reopens next month after a seven-year multi-million-euro restoration.
Ex-Stedeljk Museum Director Cleared Of Fraud
“The investigation into alleged fraud by Rudi Fuchs, the recently departed director of the Stedeljk Museum in Amsterdam, and the artist Karel Appel has been concluded, and there is no evidence of criminal activity by them.”
Ten-Minute Art
“Twenty years after this all began in Mexico City, spray-paint art has an international client base, even though few people in the established art trade have noticed it. Most large cities, in North and South America and in some parts of Europe, have at least one spray-paint artist. Fort Worth has one. Dallas has one. Las Vegas supports two. Club crawlers are prime customers for the $20-$30 pieces of art. And vacationers buy the work as a keepsake of their travels.”