For a decade now, Rent has been a Broadway producer’s dream – a cult hit beloved by critics that outgrows its initial status to become a bona fide phenomenon, with a movie adaptation and everything. (Plenty of people despise the show, too, and as anyone in PR will tell you, that kind of animosity only makes your fan base more devoted.) Now, the original cast has reassembled for a semistaged tenth anniversary performance that raised $2 million for AIDS care and New York theatre groups, and while all the hoopla may have been more than creator Jonathan Larson could have imagined (he died shortly before the show opened,) it seems a fitting tribute to one of Broadway’s truly original thinkers.
Tag: 04.26.06
National Advancement In The What Now? How Many Thousands?
For a quarter of a century, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts has toiled quietly away in Miami, encouraging and supporting young performers, writers, and artists to the tune of more than $500,000 per year in grants alone. Now, the NFAA is making a stab at true national recognition, mounting a star-studded gala in New York and a continuing push for attention, all designed to secure the organization’s long-term future and make it a household name among arts types.
Roanoke Orchestra CEO Quits; Musicians Cheer
The chief executive of the Roanoke Symphony in Virginia has resigned after running $480,000 in deficits and clashing with the orchestra’s musicians over cuts in the concert schedule. Paul Chambers had also faced criticism for contracting the orchestra’s marketing work out to his wife. The musicians are openly celebrating Chambers’ resignation, saying that “There wasn’t any aspect of Paul’s tenure that [we] felt really good about.” Chambers had come to the Roanoke Symphony after running the Savannah Symphony in Georgia, which went bankrupt on his watch.
San Antonio Lyric To Get Name Change And A New Home
The eight-year-old Lyric Opera of San Antonio (which has already been through one name change since it launched as San Antonio Pocket Opera) will become San Antonio Opera next season, in conjunction with a move to a smaller theater more conducive to opera. The move will likely mean more than the name change to local audiences, who were in near revolt this season after the company began presenting its performances in the massive Municipal Auditorium, which reportedly does not sport the finest acoustics. Mike Greenberg reports that, while the company has made significant progress since its 1998 debut, it is still being run on a skeleton staff, and will have to continue searching for a more permanent venue.
Phil Orch Fills Diaz Vacancy From Within
It isn’t often that principal positions come open in a major orchestra, so when the Philadelphia Orchestra’s principal violist, Roberto Diaz, announced that he was leaving to accept a position as head of the prestigious Curtis Institute, there was no shortage of interest in succeeding him. Auditions for the plum spot were held this week, and when the dust cleared, the Philadelphians promoted longtime associate principal Choong-Jin Chang to the top chair.
TV Turnoff Week: Now More Than Ever?
TV is such a huge part of most lives these days that the notion of “TV Turnoff Week” (yes, it’s this week) might seem a bit antiquated. Some critics clearly feel that there’s enough good available on the set today to make the anti-tube forces seem out of step. But at least one UK writer wonders when exactly we all began building our lives around the infernal thing, anyway. “I’m sure there are good things to see on TV. I’m simply not convinced that it’s something you need to watch every single day… We have become a slovenly nation of living, breathing, wan-faced sponge fingers, entranced by some blinking, bawling machine.”
Orange Prize Shortlist Released
American author Nicole Krauss, first-time Australian novelist Carrie Tiffany, and UK writers Zadie Smith, Sarah Waters, and Ali Smith have been named as the finalists for Britain’s Orange Prize for Fiction. The winner of the £30,000 prize will be announced in early June.
Of African Dictators & Experimental Electronica
Did the world really need an opera about Libyan dictator Muammar Gadafy? Perhaps not, but English National Opera is preparing to stage one anyway. “The opera is a huge gamble for [ENO] – not just because of its incendiary subject matter, but also because of the experimental nature of the music. It’s not often the venerable opera house plays host to an alternative electronica collective like Asian Dub Foundation, who specialise in breakbeat, dub, bangla and ragga. More challengingly, the opera will feature Egyptian and Libyan musicians alongside the ENO orchestra”