Long gone are the days when a Broadway producer could come up with a good idea and $50,000 and head into production. The theatre world has changed – “from the large sums of money needed to get a production off the ground to the corporate presence in the theatre world to the role that advertising and marketing play in promoting a show. The day of the independent producer – nurturing a project from start to finish – is largely a thing of the past.” – Backstage
Tag: 06.22.00
PULLING BACK FROM A RECORD YEAR
Last year was the best ever for the Korean film industry. The country produced its top blockbuster of all time, earned record revenues at the box office, and this year sent five films to the Cannes Festival, including Korea’s first-ever to the main competition. But this year the number of tickets sold to domestic films plunged from 3.94 million last year to 2.52 million this year. – Korea Herald 06/22/00
A “NEW ERA” FOR CHICAGO THEATRE
Chicago’s major commercial theaters are consolidated into one operation and promise a new flowering of theatre activity for the city. “The new arrangement brings control of the Shubert, Cadillac Palace and Ford Center for the Performing Arts/Oriental theaters under an equal partnership of the Nederlander Organization and SFX Theatrical Group, New York firms that are the two largest commercial theater producers and owners/operators in the United States.” – Chicago Tribune
SHORTCUT TO A BOOK
Several recent magazine articles get converted into lucrative book contracts. There is, of course, nothing new about turning articles into books. But “the question really is whether these concepts would have as quickly and as lucratively become books had they not been prominent magazine articles and instead were peddled only through the traditional method of authors’ agents submitting written, often lengthily, book proposals to editors and publishers.” – New York Times
THE WRITING BIZ
It’s estimated that only about one percent of the graduates of creative writing programs go on to have successful writing careers. This despite a thriving business to educate writers. “Writers have become dependent on academies for the peace and funds with which to pursue their art. Once in the university, they have had to do something in return for the funds, and what they have done is to set up programs in creative writing. At last count there were more than 300 such programs granting more than 1,000 degrees a year. “Together they’ve probably turned out 75,000 official ‘writers.'” – The Idler
DIGITAL REALITIES
“For all the record companies’ bleating about lost sales, nobody is about to starve. But in highlighting how hard it is to control digital content once it is let loose on the Internet, Napster and its sort are merely the tip of a far bigger iceberg. As books, videos and other digitisable works go online, the same problems over copying and distribution are likely to arise. And the biggest difficulty is that, even if Napster, say, were shut down by the courts, many other, more powerful, systems are waiting to take its place that have been designed to be still harder to control.” – The Economist
WE’RE NOT IN STARBUCKS ANYMORE
The Starbucks store manager who recently won the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs gets a call to sub for Helene Grimaud at a prestigious chamber music festival. Christopher Basso will fly in after his day job at a Manhattan Starbucks to play the recital, replacing Helene Grimaud, who canceled her appearance due to a sinus condition. – Boston Globe
THE DIGITAL EXPERIENCE
Seattle’s Experience Music Project opens this week. So the building was designed by Frank Gehry and it’s colorfully blobby – just how do you experience the music in this “non-museum” museum? Why point and click, of course. This is a Paul Allen production after all. – New York Times
Gehry’s EMP building is startling, —
— but no one will rank it with his best work. It has been described as the architect’s rendering of one of the guitars Hendrix regularly smashed in performance, but it looks more like a pile of melted metal. – Boston Herald
NEVER TOO OLD TO DEBUT
Violinist Ida Haendel “is in her early seventies; her exact age is a matter of musicological confusion. As a child star in London before the Second World War, she sold out the biggest concert halls and never had need of the bijou Wigmore. In mid-life, she migrated to Canada. Now, playing as richly as ever, she is shunned by sexist orchestras that insist on female soloists (only females) being wrinkle-free. It is four years since she last played in Britain.” Now she makes her Wigmore debut. – The Telegraph (UK)