After years of politely ignoring them, British theatre has woken up to the audience, and the role they play in any piece of work. As Connected on-line curator, Andy Field, writes on the website and forum (which is well worth checking out) interactive performance “is not a genre. This is not a niche.”
Tag: 03.03.10
Photography, Paris And The Genesis Of Surrealism
“Looking out at the madness of modern life in the early 20th century, Surrealism said, ‘Bring it on.’ … There was so much going on. The chaos of traffic and lights and humanity was constantly producing jarring images. Reality seemed to blur into a dream state and then back again. … By grabbing a moment from the flow of experience, [photography] gives it individual meaning. The throbbing life of Paris in the 1920s gets broken down into its bits, its isolated incidents.”
San Francisco Ballet Gives Its Building A Name
“[T]he company is honoring someone who’s not only its emeritus board of trustees chair but also a former dancer herself who has never lost her passion for the art. As the wife of billionaire Warren Hellman, to be sure, Chris Hellman has opened her checkbook over the years.”
Survey: New York Nonprofits Getting Ready To Hire
“Roughly 60% of the nonprofits said they plan to hire staffers in 2010, and more than half expected salaries to increase, according to the survey.”
Theatre Raises $10M For New Home — Ahead Of Schedule
A Noise Within, a classical repertory company, had aimed to hit that mark “in time for a planned April groundbreaking” in Pasadena. “One key to its success was an agreement by its board of directors to match every dollar donated between Nov. 1 and Feb. 28. More than $700,000 was collected during that period….”
Where Is This Year’s Oscar Bounce?
This season, “there have been deflated basketballs with more bounce than awards movies. Blockbusters like ‘Avatar’ didn’t need (or get) one. The dark dramas needed one, but couldn’t come up with the goods,” whether for lack of cash or because they were already out of theatres. The single exception is the older-skewing “Crazy Heart.”
Equity Survey: Mice, Rats, Fleas Infest West End Theatres
“Perhaps the most shuddery response was from an anonymous actor who left makeup on her dressing table after a show: ‘I had tiny bite marks on my lipstick recently when I left the lid off.'”
Haitian Dancer Loses Leg In Earthquake, Hopes To Dance Again
Fabienne Jean, a member of the country’s national theater, “is quite famous in Haiti … [appearing] in some big shows and in television commercials for the mobile-phone company Voila. We found her stretched out on a mattress on the concrete floor of a primary school classroom that was serving as an overflow ward for the city hospitals.”
BC Arts Funding Partly Restored (But It’s Not Enough)
“This year’s budget allocates $46.1-million [Cdn] for the arts, which includes $10-million in funding from a new 2010 Sports and Arts Legacy Fund. According to the budget, this marks a spending increase for arts and culture of just over $4-million from last year. But arts groups are upset that funding wasn’t restored to 2008-09 levels.”
China’s Only Independent Dance Company Led By Country’s First Transsexual
Jin Xing was born male, and as a male he rose to the rank of colonel in the People’s Liberation Army (in the military’s performing arts company). At age 27, she became the first person in China to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Now, as a famous dancer and choreographer, she is founder and director of the nation’s only company with no state funding.