The Forgotten Everyday Details

“Biography of the long-lost past poses special problems. The most basic knowledge proves elusive, often never recorded in the first place. It’s one thing never fully to know your subject’s thoughts and dreams. It’s another to visit a room, intact after 350 years, where a beam of sunlight shining through a prism produced the most famous optical experiment in the history of science, and still fail to find out whether there had been glass in the windows.”

Taking A Reading

Readings of new plays have become an ubiquitous part of the process of getting a new play to the stage. “Readings have become, if not the name of the game, at least a very important part of the game when it comes to the art and business of the theatre. And the topic also raises the hackles of many playwrights and actors, who feel readings have, in many cases, become an abusive substitute for salaried rehearsals or even productions. At the same time, it’s generally agreed that when done with proper intention, readings can be invaluable for writers and performers.”

Broadway Star Pay Is Low

How much do stars earn on Broadway? Not much. “If Arnold Schwarzenegger can make $30 million for the latest “Terminator” flick and cast members of television’s “Friends” each pull in $1 million an episode, what is eight performances a week in a Broadway show worth? Let’s start with the basics. According to the latest Actors’ Equity figures, the minimum salary for a performer in a Broadway play or musical is $1,354 a week and it goes up from there. How high depends on how good a performer’s agent is or how many tickets a producer thinks a star can sell.”

Broadway Back After Blackout

Broadway was closed Thursday during the blackout, but Friday was back to business. “Theater box offices were open, as was the ticket agency Telecharge. Ticketmaster was experiencing some technical difficulties. The TKTS half-price ticket booth opened as scheduled Friday afternoon. Lines of would-be ticket buyers snaked a block south of the booth, located on Broadway and 47th Street.”

Coming To America -(The New Creative) Immigrants

A new wave of immigrants is making its mark on Hollywood. “Of course, Hollywood, built by immigrants, always has taken the world’s best: Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Evelyn Waugh, Ernst Lubitsch, to name just a few from the 1930s and 1940s. But this latest wave comes from Asia, Latin America, Australia, as well as from Europe, reflecting contemporary immigration patterns and some of the globe’s hottest movie-making regions. Unlike previous generations, this group tends to be well-educated, show-business-savvy young men and women with a hunger to learn from the world’s leading exporter of entertainment.”

Damien Hirst, Butterfly Killer

Animal rights groups are furious at artist Damien Hirst, who is using the wings of thousands of butterflies for his new project. “The man who made his name sawing up cows, pickling sheep and suspending sharks in tanks of formaldehyde has been busy over the summer plucking the wings off thousands of tropical butterflies. Animal rights activists, who have previously taken a dim view of his stark meditations on life and death, are not amused.”

Booker Nominees

Martin Amis and Margaret Atwood lead the nominations for this year’s Booker Prize. Amis has been nominated “for his novel Yellow Dog – not published for three weeks – while Atwood is recognised for her Orwellian tale Oryx and Crake. Big-name authors such as JM Coetzee and Graham Swift have also been selected, despite speculation that top literary stars would miss out.”

Your Music Future – Coming Soon

The way we get and consume music is changing. Fast. “We are now on the edge of an entertainment revolution. It’s all driven by technology, like the Internet 2.0. First, it established new ways of communication – e-mail and Web sites. The next wave will be about entertainment and its distribution. By year-end, it will be here.”

I’m Feeling All Empty Inside…

Toronto, like many cities, is caught up in the big museum-building craze. But what about what goes on inside, wonders Philip Marchand. “For the past 10 years, at least, there has been a drastic decline in such research and expertise in museums throughout Ontario. This decline has hit historical and regional museums the hardest, but it has also affected institutions such as the AGO. Libeskind’s Crystal and Gehry’s AGO expansion will not solve this problem, and may, in fact, aggravate it.”

Ingmar Bergman: I’m A Loser

Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman has a very poor opinion of his own talents, according to diaries in his personal archive, opened this week. “Somewhere in the depths of my foolish soul I nurture one conceited notion: “One day, perhaps – one day – something shining will be prised out of all this wretchedness,” he wrote of himself in 1938.