A national gathering of theater critics took place in Minnesota recently, and Celia Baker came away from her week in the Land of 10,000 Lakes wondering why more American metropolises can’t be like the Twin Cities. “More than 2 million seats were sold by Twin City theaters in 2000, equal to the combined season attendance of the Minnesota Twins, Vikings and Timberwolves. More theater tickets per capita are sold in the Twin Cities than any other place in the United States outside of New York City… The area’s cultural life helps lure business to the area, and many large corporations with headquarters in the Twin Cities are generous in funding arts programs and the buildings that house them.”
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Hopefully, He’s A Better Singer Than He Was A GM
Over the years, fans of the Boston Red Sox have become accustomed to watching their players bolt Beantown, and take up a bat for the hated New York Yankees. But former team general manager Dan Duquette may be the first Red Sox to land on a stage with the Bronx Bombers. Duquette (who was fired by the Red Sox last year during an ownership shuffle,) is scheduled to appear in a Western Massachusetts production of the Broadway musical, Damn Yankees, portraying the manager of the Washington Senators. The show will go on in an actual ballpark in Pittsfield, and yes, Duquette will be singing.
Docs Get Their Due
The documentary is suddenly big business in the film industry, and filmmakers specializing in the form, who couldn’t even get a meeting in Hollywood a decade ago, are enjoying unprecedented success. Part of the reason for the new popularity of the form is financial, of course – documentaries are much cheaper to make than feature films – but it is also true that there are simply a lot of great docs getting made these days. “It would be easier to put together a list of 10 good documentaries for the year than it would be to come up with a list of 10 good fictional movies.”
It Just Ain’t Culturally Significant Until It’s In The Dictionary
“Artistic expression has a special meaning for lexicographers at Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Every decade or so as they prepare an overhauled edition, they decide which new words from the world of culture, among other domains, are suitable for inclusion.” Among the words making the cut in this year’s revision: ‘burn,’ as in burning a song onto a CD; ‘gangsta,’ being the preferred hip-hop pronunciation of an already-common word; ‘zine,’ a homemade magazine; and ‘soukous,’ which you’ll just have to look up.
If The Emmys Didn’t Suck
What if the Emmys were handed out based on the quality of the nominated shows, rather than (apparently) based on what was really popular two years ago? Well, then, they’d be the Television Critics Association Awards, which were dispensed this past weekend. The big winners were NBC’s Boomtown, which didn’t rate a nomination from the Emmy folks, and Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart, host of the satirical Daily Show, which has been frequently cited by critics as virtually the only “news” outlet willing to be openly critical of American foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks.
All Music Is Local, And It May Just Be Ethnic, Too
One of the biggest challenges of programming an orchestra’s season is finding a reliable way to gauge the interest’s of a local audience. Even in an industry so dominated by a “standard repertoire,” the tastes of concertgoers vary widely from city to city, and what goes over brilliantly in New York may well flop 100 miles down the road in Philadelphia. “Theories abound about what formulates and maintains local taste – theories nearly as disputable as they are defendable. The collective consciousness of any community isn’t all that collective and is constantly shifting. The theory that seems to carry the most weight is ethnicity.”
TV and ADD: A Match Made in… Well, Hollywood, Probably
At a recent industry gathering on the future of television, the president of TiVo declared that “Attention Deficit Disorder is not just a disease, it’s a lifestyle.” And if Americans – particularly young Americans – are determined to watch what they want, when they want it, and to surf the ‘net for ‘extras’ and discuss what they’re watching in a chat room while the program is still on the air, who is anyone to stand in their way? Joanne Ostrow doesn’t particularly like the way this type of thinking points: “Judging by the panel, those in charge of capturing our attention in coming years are blind to any unpleasant sociological fallout.”
Everything But The Cash
The city of Orlando wants to build a new performing arts center, and everything has been falling into place lately. The mayor is on board, and a prime plot of land in the downtown district has been acquired and earmarked for the project. There’s just one thing missing: $200 million. So far, not a single donor has come forward to offer assistance for the project, and one official has suggested that “presenting a community such as Orlando with a fund-raising goal as large as $200 million can be overwhelming.”
Gambling With A National Treasure
“The National Gallery has taken a giant gamble in its battle to keep Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks in Britain, slashing by a third the amount it will offer to stop the picture going to the Getty Museum in California. Heritage lottery fund trustees must decide on the issue tomorrow… The gallery had become convinced that the heritage lottery fund would never meet its original bid for £20m. However, the gulf between the National Gallery’s potential £21m [with other funding sources included] and the Getty’s £29m still seems ludicrously wide.”
And We Thought They Just Liked Art!
Regardless of the decison the heritage lottery fund makes in the Raphael case, the larger problem will remain: at the moment, there is nothing to prevent wealthy citizens who happen to own artworks with ‘national import’ from selling them to foreigners. For several decades, the high levels of inheritance tax, from which such art is exempt, forced the aristocrats not to sell simply as a matter of investment strategy. But in the last 25 years, “all tax rates have come down, and the dukes have changed their tune. It is once again worth their while to sell, so they want to sell.”