A Minnesota Theatre Legend Changes Shape

Minneapolis’ Theatre de le Jeune Lune is changing the way it operates. “The changes for Theatre de le Jeune Lune include returning to the troupe’s original way of staging productions project by project instead of planning for a season of shows, as is the custom. St. Paul Pioneer Press theater critic Dominic Papatola says this is a risky move for a theater that has grown into one of the larger companies in the Twin Cities.”

From Novelist To Library, A No-Strings $100K

“Count best-selling novelist James Patterson among the admirers of the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library. Count him an admirer to the sweet tune of $100,000. That’s the amount that the Florida writer will contribute to Center for the Book over the next four years, as it is the top winner of Patterson’s second annual PageTurner Awards.”

ACT Head Turns Fundraiser; Replacement Is A Novice

“Longtime ACT Theatre managing director Susan Trapnell is stepping aside to make room for a new top administrator: Jolanne Stanton. The widely respected Trapnell is not leaving ACT but will take on a newly created position as executive director of endowment funding. … Stanton, who will run the day-to-day business at ACT, is a Seattle resident who joined ACT’s board of directors in 2006 and has worked on its strategic planning as a volunteer.”

Influential, Unacknowledged, Feminist Art Gets Its Due

“As we head into a month full of exhibitions devoted to feminist art — including the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and a major exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles — a reasonable question might be: Why now? Why, 30 years after the heyday of the feminist art movement, are we putting this work under the lens?”

Staging Woolf’s ‘Lighthouse’: Bad Idea. Here’s Why.

“There may be more difficult novels to adapt to the stage … but Virginia Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’ is right up there with the most intractable. Scant of dialogue and old-fashioned plot, this classic of modernism defies anyone to spin a play out of its flowing stream of consciousness. Berkeley Repertory deserves credit for undertaking the project, though the solutions it advances … confirm the obvious: Some art — the greatest perhaps — can only be fully appreciated on its own inflexible terms.”

Development Goddess Helps LA MOCA To Flourish

“As MOCA’s development events manager, coordinating an average of 35 events a year, [Vanessa] Gonzalez is more rock ‘n’ roll chick than art geek, with her platinum hair, platform shoes, high-gloss lips and vanity plates that say ‘GR*UPIE.’ Over the past five years, she’s produced events that have made MOCA one of the hottest social tickets in town…. With the growing L.A. art scene, the museum’s membership has also shot up….”