Tag: 10.06.04

Actors’ Insurance An Ever-Dicier Proposition

“Living the actor’s life often means uncertainty. Your job, working environment, and level of income are constantly in flux. While most actors are happy to choose this sometimes thrilling, sometimes terrifying existence over the grind at a fluorescent-lit cubicle, the very nature of it also means that certain necessities aren’t a given. Like rent money. Or health insurance. The process of getting and maintaining reliable coverage is a chief worry for the working actor.”

Chelsea’s Guerillas

“Two weekends ago, the staid art galleries of [New York’s Chelsea neighborhood] got a shot of guerilla art, when the RIDER Project parked in the area. The inside of the 15-foot truck had been meticulously sheetrocked, taped and painted white, turning it into a white cube art space showcasing the work of 17 emerging artists… Some of the gallery owners were not so pleased.”

Frankfurt Focuses On The Middle East

The Frankfurt Art Fair is broadening its horizons, inviting Arab writers to participate in what has traditionally been a near-exclusively European event. The idea is to promote translations of Arab literature, and the strategy may already be having an effect. “Some 50 titles have been translated into German this year, compared to between 12-15 in previous years.”

Scot Wins UK Poetry Prize

“Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie has won the £10,000 Forward Prize – the UK’s biggest annual poetry award. She took the best collection prize with The Tree House, a collection of poems embracing nature and spirituality. The award for best first collection was awarded to 29-year-old Leontia Flynn, from Fife, for her ‘strikingly original’ debut These Days.”

Clutch Performances

There’s never an easy solution when a soloist cancels on an orchestra, and for the Oregon Symphony last weekend, a sudden hand injury to pianist Louis Lortie only hours before showtime left a major void in their concert where Rachmaninoff’s 3rd should have been. On one half-hour’s notice, the orchestra’s musicians agreed to sight-read Tchaikovsky’s ultra-familiar 4th symphony as a replacement, and won a standing ovation for their efforts. Even more amazingly, with one concert still to be performed the next night, the symphony managed to convince an award-winning soloist to board a plane from Alabama to the Pacific Northwest and perform the original concerto with no rehearsals.

Where Is This Generation’s “Guernica”?

Among artists and intellectuals onstage at last weekend’s New Yorker Festival, “questions were repeatedly raised about the political potential of art and the role of intellectuals to be socially responsible. There was an urgency to the question that reflected the reality of time and place, of a presidential election four weeks away and of the inescapable reminders of Sept. 11.” But the answers remained debatable.