“Canada’s writers, on average, earn less than $9,000 annually, according to a 2003 study for the Department of Canadian Heritage. “This week, the Writers’ Trust of Canada will add a little fat to the bones thanks to a $1.87-million bequest — said to be the largest cash gift to writers in Canadian history — from the estate of literary giant George Woodcock and his wife Ingeborg.”
Tag: 05.24.06
“Lost” – More Than A TV Show
The mysterious island adventure is also an interactive website that tantalizes fans with clues. And it’s a novel…
Kinkade Houses To Come To Life
Thomas Kinkade – the self-styles “painter of light” – is designing a series of homes in Idaho to look like housees in his paintings. “The California artist, beloved by middlebrow America but reviled by the art establishment, has signed a deal with developers in this resort city to help design five lake-view houses that are copies of homes in paintings such as ‘Beyond Autumn Gate.’ The houses will cost $4 million to $6 million.”
Schiff’s Franklin Wins Washington Prize
“Biographer Stacy Schiff has won the second annual George Washington Book Prize for “A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America” — walking away with $50,000 and proving once again that the Founding Father industry is alive and well.”
A Stake Through Lestat’s Broadway Heart
After only 33 regular performances, the Broadway vampire musical “Lestat” is to close. “Lestat — which is said to have cost more than $12 million — was the Broadway debut of Warner Brothers and involved creative best sellers like Elton John, Bernie Taupin and Anne Rice.”
Ads Come To the Theatre
Movie theatres have been running ads for years. Now live theatre is getting them. “The advertisement, which is itself advertised as the world’s first live theatrical commercial, is a creation of Visit London, a tourist organization. There have already been performances of the live commercial on stages in Dublin and Hamburg. ‘They’re a captive audience. They can’t switch channels or change over or walk out once the thing is started’.”
London Galleries Cash In On Contemporary
“Britain’s once sleepy contemporary art market has exploded. The problem is that its expansion coincides with a financial squeeze on the publicly funded institutions that have long dominated new art in Britain, and this could imperil the delicate balance of power between the public and private sectors.”
Delay Of Home For Washington Shakespeare
The Washington Shakespeare Company is “scheduled to lose its longtime home in the unglamorous but spacious Clark Street Playhouse. The company was supposed to move into a kind of time-share in Signature Theatre’s old Shirlington space (along with Classika Theatre and perhaps others), but construction delays on Signature’s new theater mean the company will need its old venue next fall.”
Remembering Katherine Dunham
“In her unparalleled career in dance, where she educated the world about the power of African dance as found throughout the diaspora, Dunham mixed academic research and showbiz flair. An anthropologist as well as a choreographer, she studied dance in the Caribbean islands, blending movements she found there with Western dance. Her style was not scholarly; she reveled in eroticism. She sought not to re-create specific rites but to transport the audience the way a spiritual experience might.”
A Way To Sell Canadian Art Globally
A Vancouver gallery has found a way to tap into a global market for art. This Thursday the gallery hosts “an estimated $6-million, biannual, on-line live auction of traditional and contemporary Canadian art, ranging in estimated price from $1,000 to $350,000. The auction that includes works by Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, Maurice Cullen, Jean-Paul Riopelle and E.J. Hughes will be held with gala glitz in a downtown Vancouver hotel ballroom. But it will also be broadcast simultaneously over the Internet, capturing a global audience with an increasing taste for Canadian art.”