Hunter S. Thompson’s suicide is sparking a noticable resurgence of interest in his work. The author’s best-known book, “Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, was No. 15 on Amazon.com as of Wednesday and publisher Vintage Books has ordered a ‘significant’ reprinting.”
Tag: 02.24.05
It’s Tough All Over
The Buffalo Philharmonic is consolidating several 2005 performances to balance its budget after losing more than $700,000 in anticipated public funding. The money was to have come from New York’s Erie County, which includes Buffalo, but a budget crunch forced the county to trim its own expenses, leaving the Philharmonic several hundred thousand dollars short of a balanced season.
And The Award For Best Minor League Arts Town Goes To…
Naples, Florida, according to a new book purporting to rank the top 100 arts metros in the country. Naples is tops in the category of cities with a population of less than 30,000. The city’s beautiful Philharmonic Center for the Arts appears to have been the major factor in the strong ranking…
What’s In A Name? A Lot Of Cash For The Arts.
Philadelphia Mayor John Street is urging state officials to sell off the naming rights for the city’s convention center to generate a sizable new revenue stream. The mayor’s plan is for the estimated $3-$5 million per year to be earmarked for specific arts groups serving the metro area.
Bad News? Really? Quick, Hide It!
It was nearly three years ago that the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera merged their operations, supposedly in order to pool their resources and make both groups more financially secure. But last summer, during contract negotiations, the merged organization’s musicians became suspicious about ballooning deficits, and requested an independent audit of the Symphony/Opera’s finances. The results of that audit are now in, but the company is refusing to share the information with its full board, despite indications that the audit placed the organization near bankruptcy.
The Awards Shows – Does Anybody Care?
Awards shows are becoming big TV ratings losers. “The Grammys, broadcast this month on CBS, attracted roughly 19 million viewers, a 28 percent decline from last year. Even the Oscars have been steadily dropping in viewership. The 1998 telecast, when “Titanic” won 11 awards, was the last big success, with more than 87 million viewers in the United States. Last year about 43.5 million watched.”
Dressing Room Magic
Every theatrical performance begins and ends in the dressing room, with the dresser as the only truth-teller in a profession grounded in fantasy and illusion. The dressing room is a place that can set the tone for a production…
A Pol Pot Story. In Dance.
Good art can illuminate the human condition. But can dance do justice to the killings fields of Pol Pot’s horrible regime? “There were 300 musicians and dancers in the royal palace and only 30 came back. They survived by hiding their identities – they told Pol Pot’s cadres that they were seamstresses or pedicab drivers.”
Scratch This – A “Safe” Place For New Work?
BAC’s Scratch nights offer new experimental productions. Jerry Spring the Opera went the Scratch route. But “the defining cliche of Scratch culture is that, in it, artists are offered “a safe space to fail”. But a safe space isn’t the kind of “risk-taking” environment that Scratch proponents espouse, of course: it’s the reverse, a neutralised zone in which (necessarily) risk-averse organisations can release beta-versions of new products without exposing themselves commercially.”