“Much of San Diego’s cultural life went dark during the [Sept. 8] outage, with restaurants, concert venues and playhouses shutting their doors. Only places with their own backup generators, like area casinos, kept the entertainment wheels turning.
Tag: 09.08.11
Reading Shakespeare in Kandahar
“At its core, Titus Andronicus is a play about how good people can become unhinged and indeed overwhelmed by the need to avenge. It is about how powerful people surrender themselves to cycles of violence, how tribal and religious customs unequivocally demand retaliation, and how two tribes’ or two religions’ speaking past rather than with each other can lead to chaos.” Relevant to Afghanistan, perhaps?
Lady Gaga – Pop’s Leading Conservative?
“None of Gaga’s supposed transgressions – from the near-nudity onstage to the risqué-ish lyrics … to the ritual oversharing – had not already been made in 1972. She is touted for her boldness in becoming an outré bisexual icon, even though David Bowie, literally old enough to be her grandfather, carried that flag in more treacherous times.”
Gleaming Vision Ruined: The Symbolic Legacy of 9/11
“It is worth pondering the fact that the potency of the ruins of the World Trade Center Towers lay not simply in their destruction, but in the symbolism reflected in their design.”
Passing The Mantle To Artist David Hockney, If He’ll Take It
“Early in his career, Hockney stated his personal credo as ‘I paint what I like, when I like and where I like.’ If his subsequent success has meant he has hardly needed to do anything else, his whims have generally succeeded in striking a chord with the public.”
Let’s Not Be Diplomatic: Early “Tosca” Problems May Have Been The Cast
Anne Midgette talks to “Tosca” soprano Patricia Racette. “Opera,†she said, “is such a rich art form. So even changing the ingredients — the singer, the costume — just changing it a little can make a huge difference in the perception of it.â€
Joint Custody Of Art, The Issues
“The agreement, and the regular movement of the gospel between Durham Cathedral and the British Library, raises many interesting issues—how to weigh the claim of the metropolitan centre, with its global traffic of tourists and scholars, to possess the greatest treasures on the grounds that they are of more than “regional†importance against the claims of a local and religious identity which, unusually, can claim genuine continuity over more than 1,000 years?”
And How Well Has Cinema Handled 9/11?
“Perhaps the whole point of 9/11 was that it could never be represented on the cinema screen. The diabolic, situationist genius of the kamikaze attacks was that they were themselves a kind of counter-cinema, a spectacle very possibly inspired by the art-form, but rendering obsolete any comparable fictions it had to offer.”
When A Bare Stage Fills The Theater
“Theatergoers, especially the kind who regard Broadway as Mecca, expect their seats to come with a breathtaking view. I mean of scenic scenery that gives its own spectacular performance … But for me, the most visually magical productions are often those in which the stage is a blank canvas, waiting to be written upon by the performers who inhabit it.” Ben Brantley offers some examples and asks readers for more.
Neil LaBute And Theresa Rebeck Want To Write A Play For You, Live!
“And on Tuesday, they’ll be doing just that – writing a play, together, in real time in front of you on Culture Monster. … LaBute and Rebeck won’t know what they’re writing about before they start. We’ve put together some characters and scenarios, and we’d like you to vote for your favorite.”