Harold Pinter’s theater-world friends discuss the man many consider to be England’s greatest living playwright. The 40th anniversary production of his play “The Caretaker” is about to open in the West End, and Pinter has four new plays under his belt in the last decade. – The Telegraph (UK)
Tag: 11.13.00
DYNAMICS OF A DEANSHIP
The storied Yale theatre school is looking for a new dean. The days when the president of the university can call up his candidate and just offer him the job, but the speculation is still fun. – Hartford Courant
GOT US A DANCE COMPANY – NOW WHAT?
The celebrated Jose Limón Dance Company comes to San Jose, and “only about 50 bodies filled the nearly 500-seat theater. Such a low turnout brings up the question, once again, about the status of the arts in San Jose. Is the community willing to support the best that the performing arts world has to offer? Are arts marketers willing to roll up their sleeves and promote such work? If not, why would a company like Limón bother to return?” – San Jose Mercury News
HARD MUSIC
Elliott Carter was 90 when he wrote his first opera. Some consider Carter America’s greatest living composer. Others “a mandarin aesthetic whose target audience can only be the academic analyst armed with graph paper and a calculator.” An the opera? “It boasts his perennial avoidance – as if on principle – of any hint of beauty, expressive content or sensual delight. It remains as resolutely standoffish toward the listener’s merely human sensibilities as a lump of granite.” – San Francisco Chronicle
THE JUKEBOX OF ALL JUKEBOXES
Recent developments in the digital music industry (like Napster’s partnering with Bertelsmann and announcements of enhanced security systems) spell disaster for some proponents of freely accessible downloadable music. But maybe “what’s really at stake is not whether music will be expensively secure or freely exchangeable – but simply how soon the recording industry will assemble the music delivery system that is inevitable, the ‘celestial jukebox.’ In layman terms, a networked device that will allow you to download any song your heart desires, anytime.” – Salon