The competition really wasn’t all that fierce. “Hairspray” faced Twyla Tharp’s “Movin’ Out,” a dance-musical based on the music of Billy Joel. The other two entrants in this category were hardly prepossessing.
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The Tonys’ Regional Theatre Contribution
The Tonys were heavy with contributions by regional theatres from around America.
Honors All Around
“Broadway found a way to honor everything from a Eugene O’Neill masterpiece to a play about a baseball player’s coming out; from hip-hop poetry and opera to a dance-driven show and movie-inspired musical based on a John Waters cult hit and a Federico Fellini film.”
Tonys In A Cross-Generational Year
“The ceremony, which annually honors the best of Broadway, combined a new generation of shows and stars with the traditions and talents that go back to ‘The Impossible Dream’ and Mama Rose in ‘Gypsy’.”
Breathy Promotion And Men In Dresses
The Tonys celebrated themselves. “More than ever this year, the Tonys broadcast served as apt reminder of how much the liberal and gay-friendly Broadway universe proudly marches to its own contrary drumbeat in these conservative times.”
Hartford Stage Takes Foot Off Accelerator
After six years of deficits, Hartford Stage is downsizing in an attempt to grab control of its budget. “It’s like the last scene in the movie `Thelma and Louise.’ But instead of pressing on the accelerator, as many organizations are doing, we are taking our foot off the gas and putting on the brake. And then we’re going to turn the car away from the cliff.”
Business Noose Tightens Around University Presses
University presses are in trouble. They’ve been pushed into a commercial marketplace in which they’re ill-equipped to function. And the returns are killing them. “Because of returns, success can fail. If a book looks promising, stores will order most or all of a first printing; and the publisher will reprint. But there are always more promises made than kept, and not all books fulfill their promise. Then come the returns, and the publisher has all the copies from the new printing and piles from the first one. Last year, an Ivy League press had one month with more than a million dollars in returns. In some months, some presses had more returns than sales. Why are we so involved with returns? How did university presses move so far into the trade marketplace, ever further from their universities?”
Australia Bans American Film From Sydney Festival
The Australian government has banned the American film “Ken Park” from the Sydney Film Festival. The film, which has been screened at several film festivals internationally, “includes scenes of explicit sex, suicide and auto-erotic asphyxiation, is about four teenagers struggling with uncertain futures in suburban California.” The Sydney Festival’s director protests: “It seems ironic that in the festival’s 50th year, we are still fighting censorship battles.”
Aussie Actors Protest Free Trade Deal
Prominent Australian movie and TV actors get together to protest a proposed free trade agreement between Australia and the United States. If the deal goes ahead, they fear, “the local screen industry will be consumed by American content.”
Foundations Protest Proposed New Giving Rules
American charitable foundations are protesting a proposal in Congress to force them to give away more money each year. “U.S. giving by foundations, corporations, and individuals will fall this year from $212 billion to $165 billion, a 22% drop. For arts organizations in particular, Charity Navigator predicts even worse news: Giving may decline by as much as one-third, from $12 billion in 2002 to $8 billion in 2003.”