When the UK’s repertory theatre system collapsed in the 1970s “visionary artists ran to the fringe and reinvented their art form from scratch.” But how did those artists support themselves? They went on the dole. And some of today’s best-known artists got their starts that way. Today the dole has been replaced by a system that requires full-time availability for paid work. “To bend the rules and do creative work while ‘signing on’, as we all did in the mad years of early Thatcherism, is no longer possible.”
Blog
The Royal Shakespeare’s London Misadventures
Part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s plan to reinvent includes being a major player in London’s West End. But that plan is faltering after the company’s last five plays there have taken in only 20 percent of what they needed to at the box office. “The plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries have been rapturously received by critics, and sold out when they were premiered at Stratford-upon-Avon, but London audiences have been staying away.”
BBC Chairman Renews Commitment To Arts Programming
The BBC has been under attack for some time for shorting the arts in its schedule. Now BBC chairman Gavyn Davies says the critics are right: “We have accepted that the critics have a point and that we should do something to bring the arts back into the centre of the schedule.”
279 Movies Eligible for Academy Awards
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that 279 movies are eligible for this year’s Academy Award nominations. “We will next week mail a complete list of those films along with nominations ballots to academy voters, allowing them to nominate these movies or their actors, actresses and directors for awards this year.”
Movie Locations As Tourism (And Branding) Opportunities
“Movie tourism is perhaps as old as the movies themselves, but with the recent phenomenon of individual films bestriding the globe, it has intensified.” All over the globe tourists are flocking to the “actual places” where this or that scene from their favorite movies were filmed. Some places are rushing to take advantage as a “rebranding” opportunity.
Computer-assisted Art
How is the computer changing the ways artists make art? We don’t mean digital artists, but those traditional artists who have begun using the computer as a tool in their artmaking…
Curiously Refreshing – A Small Theatre’s Fight For Rights
In 1999 Denver’s fledgling Curious Theatre tried to get rights to a Paula Vogel play it wanted. But the big Denver Center had first-refusal rights. So as consolation the rights-administrator granted Curious rights to another Vogel play – “How I Learned to Drive,” which the DCTC had passed on, and which then won a Pulitzer Prize. Now Vogel is working with Curious again: “To me, that’s why we are doing theater, to disturb the air; to offend people. There is such a need for these smaller companies that will take risks, that will read new plays.”
Examining The Face Of Evil
We like to think of evil as an aberration. That’s why it upsets some to examine the face of evil up close, as something more than an abstract. “Barely a year removed from the grisly, televised details of mass murder in the middle of New York City, evil has become tougher to pass off as a metaphysical bogeyman or a freakish glitch. And films including Max, The Pianist and Blind Spot are here to remind us that the Holocaust was suffered, perpetrated and even exploited by flesh-and-blood entities, not mythical embodiments of cruelty.”
Critic Society Chooses “The Pianist” As Top Film
Critics of the 55-member National Society of Film Critics have named “The Pianist,” the biography of a Polish-Jewish pianist and Holocaust survivor, as best picture of 2002. The movie also won best director, actor and screenplay awards from the society Saturday.
Book Your Blockbuster Early
Lead times for getting big movies into theatres are getting longer. “The familiar proclamation ‘Coming soon!’ no longer means what it once did. Indeed, the film biz is a long way from the comfortable days of picking a release date with a finished film in the can. The studios’ battered parent companies, desperate for predictable revenue, find plenty of virtue in long lead times, but it isn’t an easy adjustment for film execs accustomed to procrastination.”