Since becoming artistic director of the OSF in 2007, Bill Rauch “has made significant changes, increasing the number of non-Western plays, bringing in new directors, expanding the use of nontraditional casting and pursuing a connection between Shakespeare and contemporary theatrical forms, including hip-hop and spoken-word poetry.”
Tag: 08.16.09
‘The Strangest Work Of Art Any Museum Has Ever Had In It’ (And It’s In Philadelphia)
“The [Marcel Duchamp] diorama known by its abbreviated French title Étant donnés is spectacularly bizarre, enigmatic, mysterious, disturbing, captivating, and, perhaps to some observers, repellent. None of those attributes is obvious, because Étant donnés is also as secluded as a cloistered nun.”
This Is Just Too Meta: Fahrenheit 451 Is Now A Comic Book
“Think back to the original novel. Comic books are the only books shallow enough to go unburned, the only ones people are still allowed to read. … Surely this [graphic novel edition of Fahrenheit 451] is black humor, a resigned joke about the imminent eclipse of books on paper by images, both digital and analog. Except that it isn’t.”
The Ever-Blurrier Boundaries Between Opera And Musical Theater (Do They Matter?)
With works like Caroline, or Change, Sweeney Todd and Les Misérables, mostly through-sung but written in a Broadway-ish idiom,”does the old-school definition of opera as ‘drama set to music’ require a fresh look?” Composer Ricky Ian Gordon, who writes in both genres, says, “The lines have become blurred. I feel like both forms are mutating.” But could a theater market, say, Caroline, or Change as an opera?
Kurt Weill Songs, Irish Jigs, And Why The Robot Wants Cheese: All Explored On A ‘Sublime Animated Series’
“An absurdist sensibility drives The Backyardigans, which chronicles the derring-do of five chewy-looking swashbucklers – Tyrone, Tasha, Pablo, Austin and Uniqua – in a range of David Hockney hues. With each episode devoted not just to a separate quest but also to a different musical genre – 80 so far, including Irish jig, King Oliver jazz, funk, bossa nova, township jive, Kenyan high life, tarantella, psychedelic soul, countrypolitan – the show blows you away with its artistic exactitude.”
A Pair Of Musical White Elephants Emerge From Their Stables
“Every great composer has a white elephant – a piece as grand as it is unsuccessful, a flop that only genius can create, and all the more embarrassing for that. Adventurers like Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, whose output is marked by an almost compulsive search for new ground, were fated to have at least one. Bernstein’s was the gargantuan 1971 Mass … Sondheim’s case stretched over 15 years with a musical whose titles ranged from Wise Guys to Bounce to Gold! until finally becoming Road Show late last year.”
After Fifty Years, Land Art Grows Less Monumental And More Eco-Friendly
“Far from the macho, heroic projects that were the hallmark of the first generation of earth artists, – some of whom, like Michael Heizer, have spent close to 40 years moving tons of dirt to create massive, remote sculptural environments – ‘leave no trace,’ or at least, leave an ecologically enhancing trace, are the watchwords of many artists working in the field.”
Dance (The Joffrey, No Less) Returns To Ohio’s Blossom Fest After Two-Decade Absence
“The last time the Cleveland Orchestra accompanied ballet from the pit at Blossom, in performance with Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Ballet, it was 1984. (The Joffrey last performed at Blossom in 1979.) Reopening the pit after 25 years and preparing the pavilion to host ballet again has been no easy matter.”
Glimmers Of Hope For New York City Opera
Anthony Tommasini: “In February, when [George Steel] took over, even those most hopeful about his potential wondered whether any manager, let alone one with so little experience in opera, could stabilize the tottering company. … [Yet] Mr. Steel’s steadiness and youthful enthusiasm (he is a boyish 43) seem to have paid off.”
Fred And Ginger: They Embodied Dance-As-Romantic-Love Like Nobody Else
Alastair Macaulay: “Dancing together, Astaire and Rogers expressed many of love’s moods: courtship and seduction, repartee and responsiveness, teasing and challenge, the surprise of newfound harmony, the happy recapture of bygone romance, the giddy exhilaration of high spirits and intense mutual accord, the sense of a perfect balance of power, the tragedy of parting and, not least, the sense of love as role playing.”