“Non-fiction is finally triumphing over its traditionally sexier cousin, fiction, evident yesterday when non-fiction books swept the Trillium Book Awards, Ontario’s pre-eminent literary honours. In the English-language category, Thomas King’s series of Massey Lectures, The Truth About Stories, beat fiction favourites such as M. G. Vassanji’s Giller Prize-winner The In-Between World of Vikram Lall and Barbara Gowdy’s The Romantic, which made the long-list for last year’s Man Booker Prize.”
Tag: 05.05.04
NY Times Kills “Ideas” Section
“The problem may be that the section seemed blithely uninterested in wooing the kind of readers who seemed most likely to want to devour it every week.” Editor Patricia Cohen: ‘From the beginning, I didn’t want to approach the stories with an agenda. The point was not to publish my idea or your idea about a subject, but to cover the intellectual world with the same sophistication and detail that the paper covers other subjects.”
Shakespeare on the Lake
“ShakespeareWorks, an organization that has brought the Bard’s work to Toronto schools for several years, is raising $1.5-million to build a tent theatre at Ashbridge’s Bay, in the east end of the city.” The project is modeled on Vancouver’s successful summer Shakespeare series, and the company’s inaugural season kicks off in June. But concerns remain about promised federal funding which has yet to materialize, and the season will likely launch with barely enough cash on hand to meet expenses.
Chappelle’s World
It seems a bit much to call Dave Chappelle’s comedy “ground-breaking.” After all, Chappelle is no Lenny Bruce or Richard Pryor, and he lives and a works in an era when comedy has busted out of the world of grimy basement clubs and onto TV screens worldwide. Still, what Chappelle is doing with his profane and ridiculous show on Comedy Central is changing the face of the network, and for the first time, bringing black viewers to a channel usually considered the province of white college students, Jon Stewart fans, and aging stoners.
Chicago Theater’s Amateur Night
“For the first time ever, Victory Gardens Theater’s Chicago Stories benefit is sold out. A swank annual gala attended by some of the city’s biggest power brokers, it has become immensely popular among philanthropists and drama mavens alike.” The event features semi-autobiographical one-act plays by such local celebrities as basketball coach Phil Jackson and food writer/”Queer Eye” star Ted Allen. The results can range from embarrassing to hilarious, and the performances are now a bona fide hot ticket.
A Week’s Worth of Picasso
A complete sketchbook, containing 26 separate works from a 1970 album of watercolors by Pablo Picasso, is going on display in New York this week. “The full book from the collection of art dealer Heinz Berggruen was carefully unbound for framing, and will be reassembled for sale at $3.5 million. Such sketchbooks are very rare, as most belong to the Picasso family.” The entire album was created in a single week, and reveals a deeply personal side of Picasso’s late work.
Dodging The Glass Ceiling
Marin Alsop is getting a bit tired of talking about the whole “female conductor” thing. After all, the 47-year-old outgoing music director of the Colorado Symphony is in great demand worldwide as a guest conductor for some of the world’s greatest orchestras, and she’s achieved bona fide stardom in the UK. And besides, isn’t the classical music world too enlightened to still engage in petty sexism when a clearly talented conductor is on the podium? Maybe. But the fact that Alsop’s name still hasn’t made the short list for any of the major US openings in recent years suggests that there may still be some misogyny lurking in the wings.
Valkyries at Glastonbury
The Glastonbury Festival is not where you would generally expect to find fans of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, but the UK rock fest is giving Brunhilde a chance anyway. This June, the English National Opera will travel to Glastonbury with 91 musicians and 11 soloists to perform the third act of Wagner’s “The Valkyries” before an audience of better than 100,000 fans, most of whom likely do not fit the standard profile of the opera enthusiast. For the ENO, it’s a chance to reach out to an untapped (and young) audience; for the festival, it’s just one more way to maintain its reputation as quirky and daring.
Anything For A Buck
With legal music downloading services like iTunes being judged as unqualified successes in the digital marketplace, you would think that the recording industry might finally be coming around to the notion that offering consumers a good deal on pop music is an effective way to build customer loyalty and increase revenue. But industry executives apparently aren’t satisfied with the existing model: not only have they consistently resisted efforts to introduce creative pricing into the download business, they seem determined to raise the standard per-song download cost as quickly as possible.
Broadway Aida To Close
After almost four and a half years the Disney musical “Aida” is closing on Broadway. It’s the first Disney musical on Broadway to close. “The Lion King,” which has been running for more than six years, remains one of Broadway’s biggest sellers. And “Beauty and the Beast” still draws sizable crowds after more than a decade.