The Real Dave Eggers – Who Knows?

Dave Eggers has a way of polarizing opinions about him. Is he a brilliant writer, a lone wolf who has gone his own way and eschewed Big Publishing? Or is he a shrewd PR guy who’s figured out how to play the fame game? “Eggers can’t lose: he will either be remembered as one of the leading American writers of the twenty-first century, or as someone who discovered, nurtured and galvanised those who are.”

Waiting for Maxwell:

Mitchell Maxwell is as New York as a producer can get – brash, self-centered, and confrontational. He may be a genius, or he may be a con man, and the Denver theatre community is waiting nervously to find out which it is, as Maxwell prepares to take over the city’s Civic Theatre, saying, “I’m going to bring shows to Denver, and they are going to be better and more interesting than much of the work that has been brought to Denver in the past. No disrespect to Denver. It’s just a fact.”

Egoyan’s New Role:

Atom Egoyan knew his film Ararat, which tells some hard truths about the World War I-era slaughter of Armenians in Turkey, would be controversial. He wasn’t prepared for just how controversial. Since Ararat debuted several months ago, Egoyan has been called a liar, a propagandist, and had his life threatened via e-mail. It’s enough to make a director long for the days when he was only being called an anti-Semite by a Toronto critic…

Is the Large-Scale Ballet Passe?

In Boston, where the Boston Ballet recently underwent a very public overhaul, everything has changed, and nothing has changed. The big ballet company is still struggling to sell tickets, despite an undeniable uptick in artistic quality. Meanwhile, the city’s smaller, more daring dance companies are thriving, mirroring a trend in countless cities around the U.S. But does the success of the little guys necessarily mean failure for large-scale classical ballet?

Do the Arts Ignore the Poor?

For all the lip service paid by arts organizations to the concepts of education and diverse audience access, most orchestras, galleries, and theatres are still shockingly devoid of low-income patrons. The causes are myriad, from societal pressures to overbearing formality to high ticket prices, but solutions seem to be nearly nonexistant.