Disney will stage a full production of The Lion King in China. The show will take up residence in Shanghai. The show will be performed in English at the Shanghai Grand Theater, a city-owned operation. “It will require three Boeing 747s to move the set from its current home in Melbourne, and a team of 136 people to stage each show. ‘We expect over 150,000 people will see this live show in China. … We hope to sell out’.”
Tag: 02.21.06
Brits Queue For Spamalot
Fears about whether there would be interest in “Spamalot” when it opens in London have been quelled after lines formed around the block to buy tickets as soon as they went on sale.
Doctorow Wins Pen/Faulkner
E.L. Doctorow has won this year’s PEN/Faulkner Foundation fiction award for his novel “The March.” “It is the second PEN/Faulkner award for the much-honored Doctorow, who won in 1990 for “Billy Bathgate” and whose 1975 novel “Ragtime” established him as a writer capable of combining literary ambition and commercial success.”
Ray Baretto, 76
Barretto, a percussionist and bandleader who was a pioneer of the Latin jazz and salsa movements, has died. “Known as ‘King of the Hard Hands,’ Barretto recorded at least 50 albums in a career spanning more than 40 years. Collaborating with singer Celia Cruz, Barretto won a Grammy in 1990 with the album Ritmo en el Corazon.”
More Woes For Virginia Performing Arts Center Project
Budget proposals pending before the House of Delegates and the state Senate would strip $4.5 million of the $8.5 million appropriated last year for the planned performing-arts center in downtown Richmond.
Romance Novels – The New Erotica
The big thing in romance novels these days? Not so much with the wooing and courtship. What do readers want? Erotica, and today’s romance novels are spicing it up as the genre grows by double digits. “Publishing goes in cycles. Erotica now seems to be the new hot thing.”
CBC’s New Programmer: All About The Numbers
CBC-TV has a new chief programmer, and she has a theory about programming: read the metrics right and you can choose the shows. ” ‘If a show scored 7.6 out of 10 and that ended up bringing in an audience of x-hundred thousand, I can build models on that that I couldn’t with qualitative research.’ Which is great if you want the trains to run on time backwards but not very useful if you’re trying to engage viewers forwards.
Dutoit Sails As Montreal Struggles
Charles Dutoit turned the Montreal Symphony into an exceptional instrument. But he made an abrupt departure four years ago. “Since Dutoit’s abrupt exit, the OSM has endured a series of setbacks: The organization has struggled with persistent deficits and a crippling players’ strike that lasted for five months. There have been no new discs in the last four years, and the orchestra won’t be making its annual pilgrimage to Carnegie Hall next season. Dutoit, on the other hand, hasn’t missed a beat.”
South African Writer Accused Of Plagiarism
Stephen Watson, a poet and the head of the University of Cape Town’s English department has accused Antjie Krog, the Afrikaner author of Country of My Skull, of “lifting material from a range of writers, including the late British poet laureate Ted Hughes and two 19th-century European linguists. He said Country of My Skull, an award-winning account of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was recently turned into a Hollywood film, used words and phrases from Hughes’s 1976 essay Myth and Education.”
Quarry Plans For Prehistoric Site Shelved
Plans to quarry gravel from the UK’s biggest prehistoric site have been rejected. The site has been “ranked the complex as a “northern Stonehenge”. Although short of dramatic stone relics, the area is rich in burial mounds, traces of settlements and an formal avenue which may have been used for ceremonial funerals.”