“Georgia’s culture minister controversially sacked its best known theatre director Robert Sturua as head of the national theatre for ‘xenophobic’ comments [about President Saakashvili] he made earlier this year … [Sturua] is one of the best known of all theatre directors from the ex-Soviet Union in the West, where his stunningly visual productions have astonished audiences.”
Tag: 08.18.11
Meet The Dance Company That Aims Not To Have An Artistic Director
“The Morphoses solution — to be a project-based dance company that invites collaborations with artists from a variety of disciplines – is still a work in progress.”
Des McAnuff’s Legacy At Stratford Festival
“From the moment he arrived at Stratford, people either loved or hated him, with the fans cheering his audience-pleasing productions, while the detractors mocked his excesses with the phrase, ‘Is it McAnuff for you?’ But even the most hard-core haters would have to concede that, under his leadership, the acting company had grown stronger, the guest directors improved almost exponentially and the physical standard of production hit new heights.”
Crowdfund Your Art
“Asking for public donations to get a project off the ground is not a new idea. Even Beethoven pre-sold concert tickets to raise funds for his new compositions. But these days, “crowdfunding†— going to the Internet to ask the public for small financial contributions to support projects — has infiltrated the arts scene and is extending to various causes and charities on a global level.”
Department Heads Fired In Management Shakeup At LACMA
“The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has shaken up its non-curatorial management team, firing several veteran department heads in what director Michael Govan says is not a financial belt-tightening, but a bid to better adapt to technology-driven change while shifting some priorities.”
Staging Big Musicals In Tiny Theatres
“What’s really striking, when watching a downsized musical, is the transformative effect these compact venues have on the crowd-pleasing but often distant ensemble numbers. … What would West Side Story become if it was no longer the Jets versus the Sharks, but a small number of colourful characters playing Russian roulette with their lives?”
What’s The Status Of New York’s Ground Zero Arts Center?
“The city remains committed to the 1,000-seat theater project anchored by The Joyce Theater dance venue and says a new board is being formed to oversee its creation. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has allocated $155 million to the project, which is estimated to cost $400 million to $500 million. But construction is at least six years away, [due to] ongoing work at the proposed site.”
Robert Breer, Experimental Animation Pioneer, Dead At 84
“Early on, he saw the potential for breaking with the narrative sequences and anthropomorphic forms that defined the medium. … [V]iewers were bombarded with wiggling lines, letters, abstract shapes and live-action images that jumped and flashed, zoomed and receded, appeared and disappeared, inflicting what Mr. Breer once called ‘assault and battery on the retina’.”
Britain’s Poetry Society Rehires Its Former Director
“Judith Palmer has been reinstated as director of the Poetry Society after some of the country’s best known poets, including Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy and George Szirtes, came together to call for her to be returned to the post she resigned from earlier this summer.”
Seeing Into The Mind With Mirrors
“You probably look in a mirror every day without thinking about it. But mirrors can reveal a great deal about the brain, with implications for psychology, clinical neurology and even philosophy. They can help us explore the way the brain puts together information from different sensory channels such as vision and somatic sensations (touch, muscle and joint sense).”