“As a new award seeks to give casting directors overdue recognition for their key role in shaping productions – not to mention actors’ careers – leading practitioners in the job tell Nick Clark what they believe makes a good casting director, how they started their careers, and what actors can do at auditions to impress them.”
Blog
You’ve Seen Nude Shakespeare In Central Park, Now See Nude Aphra Behn In Brooklyn
Director Pitr Strait and Torn Out Theater, who made headlines with a nude all-female Tempest in 2016 and a nude all-male Hamlet last year, will unveil a mixed-gender cast in The Rover by 17th-century English playwright Aphra Behn, one of the first women to make a living in that profession.
Charles Hamlen, Beloved Classical Music Manager Who Founded AIDS Charity Classical Action, Dead At 75
“[His] rise to the zenith of the classical music world — as a co-founder of IMG Artists, which represented many of the biggest stars in the field — was improbable, as he was the first to admit. He was a high school French teacher and playing piano on the side when he moved to New York in 1977 to try to make it as an artists’ manager.”
Little-Known Hemingway Short Story Published For First Time
“Not seen by many beyond scholars and academics over the last six decades, the story” – “A Room on the Garden Side”, written in 1956 – “takes place in Paris’s Ritz hotel and is narrated by a character called Robert, who shares the author’s own nickname, Papa. Robert and his entourage of soldiers, who are all due to leave the city the next day, drink, quote Baudelaire and debate ‘the dirty trade of war’.”
Nicole Eisenman Wins $200K (Or Is It $800K?) Booth/FLAG Art Prize
“The Contemporary Austin has named artist [and MacArthur fellow] Nicole Eisenman as winner of the 2020 Suzanne Deal Booth/FLAG Art Foundation Prize. … [The award] is now valued at $800,000, including $200,000 in cash, plus twinned exhibitions here and in New York, as well as publications and travel.”
ABT Begins Four-Year Partnership With Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre
“The institutions’ collaborative engagements will be staged each spring through 2022. [American Ballet Theatre] first appeared at the Auditorium in 1969. … The ABT partnership follows the Joffrey Ballet’s announced move from the Auditorium to [Lyric Opera of Chicago], a shift slated for 2020.”
Eiffel Tower Reopened After Two-Day Strike Over Long Lines
“The iconic monument [had] been closed since Wednesday afternoon as unions argued with management over the lopsided lines stemming from a decision to reserve certain elevators for visitors with pre-booked tickets while those who buy them upon arrival languish in long queues.”
Jacques Wirtz, 93, Renowned Landscape Architect
“Mr. Wirtz, whose career began when he opened a flower nursery in 1946, would decades later be compared to André Le Nôtre, the French landscape architect who designed the magnificent gardens of Versailles. … [He] designed gardens for private residences, large estates, public parks, museums, college campuses and corporate headquarters.”
No More Free Sundays At Colosseum, Uffizi, Etc., Says Italy’s New Government
“The new culture minister of Italy’s populist coalition government, Alberto Bonisoli, has [announced] that a monthly free-entry initiative at the country’s museums and monuments is coming to an end. Since July 2014, more than 480 state-run cultural sites, including Pompeii, the Uffizi and the Colosseum, have been free to visit on the first Sunday of every month. Known as Domenica al museo (Sunday at the museum), the policy was one of many culture reforms introduced by Bonisoli’s centre-left predecessor, Dario Franceschini.”
Washington Bach Consort Names Dana Marsh Artistic Director
One of the standard-bearers for period-instrument performance in DC, the Consort chose Marsh, currently director of Indiana University’s historical performance program, to succeed founding director J. Reilly Lewis, who died suddenly in June of 2016.