Ron Rosenbaum: “You have to read the whole play to understand how truly, madly, deeply bad it is, but let me exhibit some snippets of evidence. The play’s flaws lie not just in the language but in the laughable plotting.”
Tag: 05.13.10
Priceless Musical Instruments Are Victim Of Nashville Flood
Soundcheck Nashville is “something of the Fort Knox to the city’s music community, one that just spent six days submerged under nine feet of water, damaging millions of dollars’ worth of equipment used by musicians on thousands of recordings over the past half-century.”
What Can We Expect From Britain’s New Culture Secretary?
Charlotte Higgins: “First of all, [Jeremy Hunt is] a nice man. Bright, thoughtful. Extremely personable. Amiable, in the way that those entitlement-complex-afflicted Etonian colleagues of his are often not. … He also ‘gets’ the arts – as in, he appreciates they are not some piece of luxurious add-on to British public life, but are essential to the lifeblood of the country … But what we can expect is blood on the floor.”
The First Blood On The Floor: UK’s New Culture Sec’y Asks For £66M In Cuts
“Newly appointed culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has asked civil servants at the Department for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport to investigate how the department can make savings to cover £66 million of cuts.”
Sculptor Dustin Shuler, 61, Who Made Public Art Out Of Mashed-Up Cars
He was “known for impaling things, flattening things and putting things on top of other things – resulting in works of public art made all the more striking by the fact that the things in question were often full-size automobiles.”
New York Tries Some One-On-One Theater, Too – In Times Square, No Less
“[Christine] Jones’s theater is a movable box nine feet long and four feet wide. For 10 days starting Friday, it will stage short performances in Times Square, weather permitting. Ms. Jones has lined up six new plays and a dance piece, along with musicians, a stand-up comedian and a puppeteer, among other performers. Just as every performance will have only one audience member, every performance will have only one performer.”
The Drag Kings Of Edwardian England
“[The] highest-paid female entertainer on the British stage at the time was Vesta Tilley, the music-hall singer who was reputed to earn a £1,000 a week for pulling on trousers, putting on a swagger and singing popular songs such as ‘I’m the Idol of the Girls’ with a boyish elan.”
Does Elena Kagan Not Like Art?
A story from an old colleague relates that, when Kagan was young and at a private firm, she encountered a young, single partner making $750,000 a year. “So she asked the guy, ‘What do you do with all that money?’ And he said, ‘I buy art.’ I remember her telling that story and just shaking her head.” MJ Andersen suggests why visual art could be good for judges …
Why Big Cuts To The UK Arts Budget Would Be Insane
Michael Billington: “You don’t have to be an economic wizard to work out that subsidy is one of the best investments any government can make in British life. From an initially small outlay, we reap huge rewards. So why put down what is, to put it at its basest, a hugely productive cash-cow?”
Novelist, Delayed By Ash Cloud, Dies In Libyan Plane Crash
“A publishing deal for [Irish author Bree O’Mara’s] second novel, Nigel Watson Superhero … would have been her most significant career break. It should have been signed last month, but she missed the London Book Fair because of the flight ban after the volcanic ash cloud hit, and had to postpone her trip.”