A production of Shakespeare’s “As You Line It” in New York’s Central Park involves a workout for the audience. “When you enter in at 97th Street and Central Park West and you will be led into Central Park where the play will begin. As you watch the show, the next scene that is about to happen, happens about 50 ft away, and then they are off. The whole audience runs to where the scene is taking place! Every 5-7 minutes. The play moves between 97th St & 100th Street using trees, rocks, benches and even the audience as scenery.”
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The Most Popular Music Right Now?
“Right now, the Billboard Top 10 includes six straight hip hop records (as well as a further two that could be described as strongly hip hop-influenced). Furthermore, hip hop is currently the best-selling musical genre worldwide, outstripping pop, country, rock and any other you can think of. Amazing, eh?”
7000 Spaniards Strip Naked For Spencer
Seven thousand Spaniards strip for photographer Spencer Tunick in Barcelona, the most people he’s used for one of his photos. “There was a festival-like atmosphere among the crowd even though many of the models became quite cold from standing around naked for 90 minutes in temperatures of 15 degrees Celsius.”
City Lights Burns Bright
San Francisco’s iconic bookstore City Lights turns 50. “Since emerging as a center for the Beat movement, it has become a purveyor of poetry, alternative political views, hard-to-find novels and literature by Third World writers. In a retail landscape dominated by Borders, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, City Lights remains an independent bastion of literary possibility. The soft-spoken, grandfatherly Ferlinghetti, 84, is uneasy with words like icon, even though City Lights helped launch the Beat movement by publishing Allen Ginsburg’s `Howl’ in 1956. The spry, bearded poet and publisher can only guess why the store, which he founded with Peter D. Martin, has endured. ‘We survived by creating an intellectual center, a literary meeting place’.”
US: Most Iraqi Artifacts Now Accounted For
US officials say that estimates of Iraqi artifacts stolen from the Iraq Museum were grossly overestimated and that most of the art has been recovered. “Initial estimates after the war ended in April suggested that as many as 170,000 pieces, including the Nimrud treasures, were lost or stolen during the sacking of the museum, according to U.S. officials. They now say 3,000 pieces remain unaccounted for and may have disappeared into the shadowy world of black market antiquities trading.”
Lincoln Center’s New Opportunity
So what will become of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall after the New York Philharmonic leaves? Lincoln Center says there’s a big opportunity and management envisions “new uses sweeping and small, including hosting the world’s top orchestras, staging festivals, introducing interactive technology to audiences and emphasizing youth education programs. The hall ‘is now a blank canvas, and we have a palette of musical colors that we’re going to paint on that canvas’.”
Domingo Shells Out $2 Million To Make Good On Vilar Pledges
As New York’s Metropolitan Opera removes Alberto Vilar’s name off its building for failing to make good on pledges, Placido Domingo, director of Washington Opera and Los Angeles Opera, reveals that he has loaned Vilar $2 million to make good on his pledges to those two companies.
The Yentob Effect
Alan Yentob is a rarity – a famous TV exec. “He chalks up his 35th year at the BBC this year. He has risen relentlessly. He has made celebrated films for Omnibus, created Arena, run Music and Arts, BBC2 and BBC1. Then in 1997, when he stopped controlling BBC1, it was as if the Corporation didn’t know what to do with him. They gave him a job called director of programmes in production, which had you genuinely scratching your head. Now his title is director of drama, entertainment and CBBC, which, in his translation, ‘is essentially the creative director of the BBC’.”
Controversy Over Cleaning David
“Italy’s art world is in a flap as experts quarrel over how to preserve the priceless cultural icon. In 2004, it will be 500 years since the 4-metre-high statue depicting the courageous, naked young biblical hero was unveiled in Piazza della Signoria, the square that remains Florence’s lifeblood. The block of marble itself is even older. Now, one of Italy’s leading restorers has thrown down her tools — chamois cloth, silky soft brush, cotton swabs and an eraser — in a spat with other experts over how to clean David.”
Gehry – Man Of Many Projects
“At the age of 74, architect Frank Gehry shows absolutely no sign of slowing down. At any given moment, there are perhaps 30 projects at various stages of development being worked on by the 103 people in the Gehry office. Two major events dominate the life of the white-haired genius who started life as Frank Goldberg in Toronto in 1929 and moved to Los Angeles 18 years later.”