Baltimore is revitalizing an old 2,300-seat theatre, hoping to book some of the touring shows that bypass the city. The city’s leaders are hoping that “the Hippodrome will do for Baltimore what Harborplace and Oriole Park did in the 1980s and ’90s: catalyze economic development and attract thousands of people to the city, thus literally setting the stage for renewal of Baltimore’s once bustling retail district. So far, the city’s cultural gambit appears to be paying off.”
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Atlanta’s Cash-Flow Backup
Arts organizations often find themselves in cash-flow difficulty, only to find banks reluctant to loan them money. “Low-budget arts companies in metro Atlanta can now apply to borrow from a new pool of money supplied by the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund. The fund, which makes annual grants to nonprofit groups in a 23-county area, has announced that it is making $200,000 of its $6.5 million endowment available for an Arts Loan Fund.”
Privacy Fears May Doom Amnesty Plan
Will downloaders take up the music industry’s offer of amnesty? Not likely. “I would think that many of the people who have downloaded music would be concerned about their privacy rights. To put identifying information into a database that the RIAA owns will turn people off, and therefore the program will not succeed.”
The Killing Of Classical Music Radio
Programming gets less interesting, audiences fall off, and classical music exits the radio dial. “Public radio, following the commercial lead, adopted similar ‘lite’ strategies to attract daytime audiences. But there’s an obvious paradox. ‘The more it sounds like background, the less people will be committed to your station. After all, you’re encouraging them to not pay attention to it; then you ask them to pay for it at fund-raising time. It’s a Catch-22. If your strategy is to be as uninteresting as possible, how can you ask for support?”
Atlanta Black Theatre Closes
A week before its scheduled opening, the New Jomandi theatre in Atlanta announced that it was canceling its entire 25th anniversary season. “Saying it had been unable to raise enough money for its four-show 2003-2004 program, the theater said it would spend the year in ‘redevelopment,’ then start up again in 2004. Since 2000, Jomandi, one of the few remaining major black theaters in the country, has suffered financial difficulties, canceled shows, and changed its name.”
Why Opera Australia Is Pulling Back
Why is Opera Australia retrenching? And why is opera in Melbourne such a tough go? “We know that our performances need to be 40 per cent underwritten in Melbourne for us to break even, but in Sydney it only needs to be 28 per cent funded. We sell 25 per cent to tourists in Sydney but in Melbourne the tourism sales are negligible.”
Aussie Movies – A Bump In The Road?
Some Australian movies have been struggling at the box office. “The poor box-office performance of several recent Australian releases is causing yet another round of soul-searching within the Australian film industry. This, in itself, is a wearyingly predictable, if necessary, response to what is essentially a cyclical predicament. So too is the retort that characterising the local screen business as an “industry in crisis” is unhelpful and even dangerous.”
The Lester Bangs Cult
Lester Bangs “died in 1982 at 33, the victim of an accidental Darvon overdose. In the generation since, he has come to occupy his own corner of the pop-culture pantheon, been mentioned in songs by R.E.M. and the Ramones, and even portrayed, in a bit of fact-meets-fiction reinvention, by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film Almost Famous. The more iconified he’s become, the greater the distance between his image and his writing, between the myth of Bangs as gonzo genius and the reality of what he had to say.”
Where Are The Blockbusters?
Big museum shows seem to be in short supply this season. “At this time last year, the museum world looked as though it was doing some retrenching. Few blockbusters were on the roster; fewer shows of any kind had been announced than was the norm throughout the 1990s. If last year looked like a retreat, this year may be a rout. There’s hardly a single true blockbuster built around a famous name.”
Naming Harry
Looking for clues as to the next Harry Potter installments? “Harry Potter and the Chariots of Light, Harry Potter and the Mudblood Revolt, Harry Potter and the Alchemist’s Cell and Harry Potter and the Quest of the Centaur have all been registered as trademarks with the UK Patent Office.”