Seattle’s ACT Theatre, which declared an emergency and said it would close if it wasn’t able to raise $1.5 million, says it has raised half the money. “The theater has received pledges of $750,000 out of the $1.5 million needed to keep the organization going. That amount includes gifts of $5,000 to $100,000 from 15 individual donors, all Seattle-area residents. “We’re cautiously optimistic about making our goal of raising the full $1.5 million by April 15. We’ve approached people in a very targeted way and have actually heard only one ‘no.’ Everybody else has said yes’.”
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Radio Industry Survey: Americans Happy With Radio Programming
The American radio industry, working to get Congress to relax rules on ownership even more, releases a study that says most Americans like the radio they get now, proving, the industry says, that ownership consolidation hasn’t harmed programming. “Among 1,203 surveyed adults, says Zogby, 81% are satisfied with their local radio. A third of poll respondents reportedly said there is more diversity now than there was five years ago, while 40% said they hear about the same and 17% said there is less.”
The Danger That Is McSweeney’s
“The ‘New Yorker short story’ is no longer the hegemon it may once have been. In fact, this collection of ‘thrilling tales’ actually serves as a more effective counterbalance to an entirely new phenomenon. Call it the ‘McSweeney’s short story’ — younger and hipper and more experimental, but no less influential. In some ways, McSweeney’s has been a useful counterpoint to the mainstream publishing scene. Regardless of whether its self-referential play is to your taste, it’s the first bona fide literary movement in decades—with all the old-fashioned energy that such a term implies. But the quality of the work inside McSweeney’s has yet to live up to the promise of the magazine’s gloriously designed packaging.”
LA’s Uber-Underground
“L.A.’s notoriously fragmented underground nightlife is coagulating more often lately, producing a new category, an über-category, if you will, of event where everyone – the Punks, the Desert People, the Anthropologists, the Beat Junkies and the Hip-Hop Kids and Artists – can find something.”
Tharp On The Move
Twyla Tharp is busy these days with several projects at once. But, she tells Frank Rizzo, “Multi-tasking is not healthy. Nor is it ultimately productive. I don’t look at [what I do] as multi-tasking. I look at it as quick shifts of gear.” Does she miss having a home base to work out of? “What is this word `home’ you keep using?” It would be a lovely thing, but I never had a home. I’m basically still moving from studio to studio…”
Ticket Sales Down In Denver
Sales of tickets for Colorado Ballet are down so much since the war began that the company has cancelled fiver performances. Elsewhere in Denver the impact is mixed…
TV – More Choice Leads To Shorter Attention Spans
“Today’s teens are growing up in a far more varied and alluring entertainment environment than previous generations – a world offering endless video games, the Internet and hundreds of cable channels. They’re used to getting what they want when they want it. So they’re impatient. They move around a lot. They have short attention spans.”
Gioia’s Plan For The NEA
New NEA chairman Dana Gioia is out talking about how he intends to strengthen the National Endowment for the Arts. “I go back to the original vision, which was to foster excellence in the arts and to bring art to all Americans. This doesn’t seem to me a controversial mission. The average American wants art in their communities and their schools. It’s not a program of the left or the right. It’s mainstream American opinion. One of the major needs is to build a public consensus for the support of art and arts education, and we’re going to do that by building a kind of inclusive coalition, by refusing to polarize.”
Boston Theatre Box Office Down Since War
War is not good for Boston theatre. “Since the fighting started, business is bad, as bad as it was after Sept. 11. People are afraid. They just want to go home now. Indeed, there is a palpable sense of malaise at Greater Boston theaters and concert halls this spring, say local presenters, producers, and performers. ‘It’s very hard to get people out of the house to see anything but light entertainment at this time, and I can’t say I entirely blame them’.”
Only In LA – Underground Parking Lot Art
Three Los Angeles artists are “using military GPS technology to create a new kind of art form – the urban story space.” They’ve staked out a patch of land in the city and “visitors to the site are given headphones, a handheld global positioning system (GPS) device, and a tablet PC with special software to help guide them around the industrial landscape, which was a vital area during the early to mid-20th century.The equipment works much like the headphones with wands that museums supply visitors for tours, but here, the GPS shows people the ‘hot spots’ of information on a digital map. When visitors stand near a hot spot, the software triggers a story about that site.”