Earlier this month, playwright Roy Close sent a missive to the Playwrights Center and several of its funders, severing his ties to the organization and complaining that the Minneapolis-based writer’s haven has become an elitist autocracy, more concerned with its own glory and hosting America’s hottest playwrights than with helping locals build and develop their skills as playwrights. Director Polly Carl is attempting to mold the center, founded as a glorified support group for stage writers, into an organization with national membership and outreach. The conflict has stirred conversation among playwrights, theater practitioners and philanthropic organizations.”
Tag: 03.20.05
Who Writers Write For…
“A sign of the times; it is now quite common for an ambitious writer to announce that they will prepare their new proposal and/or sample chapter in time for Frankfurt or London. Nothing here about the inspiration of the jealous muse, but everything about the expectation of a quick sale in the feverish atmosphere of the literary marketplace. In the past, one of the perils facing the success ful novelist was the risk that he or she would make the mistake of writing to satisfy the public, ‘dishing things up like short-order cooks’, as Graham Greene observed towards the end of his life. In today’s marketplace, there is more pressure than ever to come up with the literary equivalent of the Big Mac.”
Portland In The Passing Lane
“But for a long time, Portland [Oregon] has deferred to its larger Northwest cousin Seattle in the size and repute of the city’s major performing-arts institutions — its professional theaters, opera and ballet companies and venues. Could this be about to change? With recent infusions of arts talent and leadership, funding support and new construction projects, the City of Roses is indeed making a bid for the bigger time.”
Edinburgh Festivals Get Together
Edinburgh’s various summer festivals are finally getting together. “The plan is for the festivals to meet every two months and discuss a wide range of issues from creating a unified box office to a strategy to promote the Festivals overseas and improve the city’s infrastructure. Its development comes after years of public squabbling as competition from events in other British cities has grown.”
A Link Between Intelligence And Suicide?
“In one of the largest studies on suicide ever conducted, researchers found that men with especially low scores on intelligence tests are two to three times more likely than others to kill themselves. Men with low IQ scores and only a primary education were no more likely to kill themselves than men with high IQ scores and a higher level of education. But men with low IQ scores and higher education were at a greater risk of suicide. And men with low IQ scores and highly educated parents were at the highest risk of all.”
Good ‘n Evil Gets Back In The Arts
“Good and evil are back on the table again as serious issues requiring serious contemplation by all of us — not just theologians, philosophers, essayists, politicians and talk-show hosts. Not just “experts” such as President Bush or Bono or Elie Wiesel or Dr. Phil, to whom we outsourced some of our thorniest moral dilemmas. These people were only too happy to do a lot of the heavy moral lifting for us. (And God bless ’em for it.) But it’s time to shoulder the load ourselves. This latest surge of terrible events reminds us that, in the end, we’re all on the hot seat to decide: What is evil? What is good? What constitutes justice?”
Canada’s Oscars – Does Anybody Care?
The Genie Awards, Canada’s film-industry equivalent of the Oscars, are held this week. “But is, as some would suggest, the “brightest and best in Canadian filmmaking” an oxymoron? Should we just engrave beer steins and hand them out at a Frick & Friar pub? Or should we just not bother? After a quarter of a century in business, the Genies still have a branding problem.”
Charitably Speaking – Theatre Drama Of The Year
Will “Sweet Charity” be a hit? It’s currently in try-outs on the road, and it’s probably too early to tell. But one thing is already clear: “A so-so revival of a 1966 musical, doing fairly good business at the box office in its first two tryout cities (Minneapolis and Chicago), has now become the backstage drama of the year.”
Regions Of Dance
John Rockwell takes a tour of four American regional dance companies. “To be sure, brief stops at the San Francisco Ballet, the Boston Ballet, the Pennsylvania Ballet and the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago don’t provide enough evidence with which to pronounce on the state of dance in this country. Nor to make sweeping judgments about the companies’ current quality. My visits were partly serendipitous – accidents of travel, not an attempt to set up some spurious battle of the bands. Still, in this sampling, Philadelphia and Chicago came out handily on top of Boston and San Francisco. And all four programs attested to the paradox that everything old can be new again.”
The Non-Dance Choreographer
Is Jérôme Bel a choreographer or a threatre artist? Bel, who has “become an international cult figure in the dance world by challenging its conventions” like working in the cracks of movement. “The question became, always, ‘How do I produce a show without dance?’ In France, we call my work conceptual, where the idea is more important than the realization. I’m not producing dance. I’m working at the borderline of dance.”