Blog

Surveying The State Of Russian Theatre At The Country’s National Performing Arts Festival/Competition

“That fearlessness on the part of Russian theatre artists has led to an increase in audiences, including that most coveted of demographics: the under-40 set. One had only to look at the audience at Gogol Center, where I saw Kafka on a Saturday night.” Diep Tran visits the Golden Mask Festival, where Russia’s top companies present their best work of the season over two months, at the end of which a jury awards a Russian national equivalent of the Tonys or Oliviers.

A Rejuvenated Salzburg Festival?

“In recent years, this most sumptuous of classical-music gatherings has reverted to its default identity as a parade of musical celebrities with no clear artistic destination in sight. Last year, though, the progressive-minded Austrian pianist and impresario Markus Hinterhäuser took over as Salzburg’s artistic director, and he is stirring memories of the festival’s most vital period—that of the nineteen-nineties, when Gerard Mortier presided over a superb array of provocations.”

Meeting The Real-Life Diplomat At The Heart Of The ‘M. Butterfly’ Story

Stage director Vincent Lancisi and his wife were vacationing in France a couple months before he was to begin work on a revival of David Henry Hwang’s Pulitzer-Prize winning play. One day, their guide/driver casually said, “I was a driver for a famous man. There is a movie about him with Jeremy Irons, called M. Butterfly.” Within an hour, Lancisi was on the phone with Bernard Boursicot; within a month, he and his lead actor were visiting Boursicot at his nursing home in Brittany.”

Shonda Rhimes Departure From ABC Illustrates Bleak Prospects For Traditional Network TV

Shonda Rhimes’s just-announced decision to sign with Netflix and leave ABC/Disney points to a bleak new reality for old-school broadcasters trying to hold on to big names. For some Hollywood creatives, particularly those at the peak of their careers, offers of big bucks and promises of creative autonomy aren’t enough to overcome the view that network television is now the least attractive medium in which to work. Rhimes didn’t leave just leave ABC. She left network TV.

Here’s The World’s Blackest Pigment That Working Artists Can Actually Buy And Use

Singularity Black absorbs just a bit less light than Vantablack, whose creation was announced last year. But the makers of Vantablack (notoriously) sold exclusive rights to its use to sculptor Anish Kapoor, and it’s not even in a fully usable form yet, while Singularity Black is already available for purchase by any interested customer.

Philadelphia’s Most Problematic Major Performance Venue To Get Major Revamp (With 32-Story Tower On Top)

The century-old Merriam Theater, which the Kimmel Center acquired last fall, has a handsome old interior – as well as painfully cramped seats (which some patrons have to walk through offices to reach), poor acoustics, outdated sound and light equipment, and dressing rooms that literally used to be stables. The new plan is for the Kimmel to partner with a developer to tear down the seven-story building currently housing the Merriam and completely revamp the place (saving the auditorium’s architectural details) while building a skyscraper above it.

London’s Garden Bridge Officially Killed

More than £37 million of public money has already been spent on what was supposed to be a privately funded £200 million project, which was conceived by the actress Joanna Lumley and designed by Thomas Heatherwick. Private fundraising for the bridge stalled last year after London’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, joined many city residents in opposing it and refused to commit any funding for its maintenance.