A group of Dallas actresses in their 30s and 40s got tired of sitting around complaining that there were no roles for them anymore. So they started their own theatre, found an old church to renovate, and Contemporary Theatre of Dallas was born…
Tag: 02.04.03
New Jersey Governor Proposes Elimination Of All State Arts Funding
New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey has proposed elimination of the state’s entire spending on the arts – $31.7 million in cultural funding in next year’s budget. Cuts include “all $18 million from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts budget, as well as $3.7 million from the historical commission and the next $10 million installment for the New Jersey Cultural Trust, a public-private partnership meant to stabilize struggling cultural groups.” Cultural groups are stunned: “We went to our own funeral today. We understand the fiscal crisis facing New Jersey. What we don’t understand or accept is why we are being singled out (and) … eliminated.”
Do Art And Opinion And Politics Mix?
LA Times art critic Christopher Knight recently began a review with the sentence: “The imbecilic plan for war with Iraq currently on offer from the Bush administration has yet to register much support from the American public.” Predictably, letters protesting Knight’s expression of a political opinion landed at the newspaper. Should a critic mix his political point of view with his judgment of art? Does it weaken the criticism?
In Zimbabwe – A Crackdown On Artists
“The arts in Zimbabwe are struggling for air in an even more repressive atmosphere than anything experienced in South Africa. ‘It’s well past censorship. It’s rule of fear. It’s total control’.”
Bush Delivers Arts Budget Proposals
President George Bush delivers his funding requests for the arts to Congress. “The president followed through on his support for improving Americans’ knowledge of the country’s history by proposing $25 million for a humanities endowment initiative called “We the People.” The president is concerned about our lack of understanding ourselves, our historical amnesia. By contrast, funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that would help television and radio stations make the transition to digital transmission, supported in the past by President Bush, were eliminated in the new budget request.”
Coming Home – Folk Music Takes To People’s Houses
Folk music has its roots in small intimate places. But now, “with few venues willing to hire folk acts and few middle-class suburbanites willing to make the schlep downtown, search out parking and elbow other patrons to get the bartender’s attention, folk house concerts are quietly spreading like wildfire with the help of e-mail and Internet advertising.”
Lou Harrison, 85
American composer Lou Harrison, died Sunday in a Denny’s in Indiana on his way to a festival of his music at Ohio State University. “Mr. Harrison’s primary contribution to Western music, aside from the sheer beauty of his works, was his wide-ranging, deeply felt connection to the musics of non-Western cultures, Asian especially. He studied in Taiwan and South Korea and was deeply immersed in Javanese music. He built several gamelans, or Indonesian percussion orchestras, spawning a movement that spread through North America (there are some 200 ensembles built in direct emulation of Mr. Harrison’s).”
Goodbye Lou
Harrison “grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, studied music at San Francisco State College, composition with Henry Cowell and Arnold Schoenberg, and pioneered with John Cage in creating and performing works for percussion ensemble. ‘Lou’s passing is so symbolic of the end of an era. His deep connections to Schoenberg, Ives, Cowell, and Cage made him a real icon, even beyond his own compositional career’.”
Culture Minister As Uninspired Artist
UK culture minister Kim Howells has big ideas about art. He wants boldness. He wants imagination. He wants something new. So you might think the art he made himself might be all (or even some) of these things. You’d be wrong. “It turns out that his idea of art, as manifested in the example of his own work sold at a charity auction (to the organiser, a friend) for £60 is disappointingly, or gratifyingly if you want to put the boot in, dull. Dull isn’t the word. This laborious, insipid excuse for a drawing is a piece of middle-class kitsch so lacking in life that it could win the Daily Mail’s competition for ‘real’ art. Howells’ drawing is nerveless and oddly lacking in warmth – the very opposite of his public persona.”
Spacey To Join Old Vic
Kevin Spacey has agreed to take an active role in the management of London’s Old Vic Theatre. “The actor, who is already on the board of trustees, is understood to have agreed to spearhead the theatre’s artistic and commercial endeavours. Despite playing host to some of the most celebrated actors, including Laurence Olivier, Sybil Thorndike and Vivien Leigh, the theatre’s rich history has been overshadowed for some time by its lack of funds and desperate need for refurbishment.”