Mixed Results For Ontario Theater Fests

What with the down American economy and the SARS scare keeping many tourists out of Ontario, the last couple of years have been a struggle for the Shaw and Stratford festivals, southern Ontario’s duelling theater showcases. The numbers on the latest season are out this week, and Stratford posted a modest surplus, while Shaw announced its first deficit in a decade. Still, Stratford exceeded 600,000 ticket-buyers for the fourth year in a row, even after having to cancel six shows as a result of the massive power outage which hit the northeast in August.

TIFF Picks A New Director

“Noah Cowan, who began his cinematic career at age 15 selling tickets for the Toronto International Film Festival, was crowned the fete’s new co-director yesterday. This self-described ‘child of the festival,’ was one of 12 American and Canadian candidates who applied for the job, one of the top film-related postings on the planet.” Cowan was previously associate director of programming for TIFF, before leaving in 1997 to head up a distribution company in New York.

Battle Of The Network Stars At The 49th Parallel

Canada has always been concerned about the risk to its homegrown culture from the American pop culture juggernaut. But these days, the situation, particularly in the television realm, seems dire: the public funding upon which Canadian TV writers and producers rely is at record low levels, and Canadians seem increasingly willing to abandon homegrown product for American shows. With most Canadians now able to receive all the major American broadcast networks on cable, and many additional American programs being rebroadcast on Canadian channels, Canada’s TV industry is at a loss as to how to recapture its audience.

Filmmakers For Global Peace

Global peace may sound like an awfully lofty goal, especially for a group of artists with little to no political clout, but no one has ever accused filmmakers of allowing harsh reality to stand in the way of idealism. “This week through Sunday, Orlando is host to a cultural event that would seem much more happily scheduled in the 1960s, and maybe better in Woodstock, N.Y.: the first Global Peace Film Festival. It’s the creation of Shaikh Abdul Alishtari, a genuine Moroccan sheik and founder and CEO of the Orlando-based GlobalProtector.net Web filter company, who came up with the idea just before the latest Iraq war.”

Illinois’s New Poet Laureate

“When legendary wordsmith Gwendolyn Brooks died in December 2000 after more than three decades as Illinois’ poet laureate, she left behind some mighty big shoes to fill. On Wednesday, following a three-year search, poet and teacher Kevin Stein replaced her. A longtime English professor at Bradley University in Peoria and the married father of two, he edged out co-finalist Rodney G. Jones of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.”

Telegraph: Iraq’s Orchestra Inspiring

The Washington Post may have dubbed it a “show concert,” but the audience in Washington, D.C. was clearly moved by the music-making of the Iraqi National Symphony in its American debut this week. “The mournful strains of the balaban (a distant cousin of the oboe) and the haunting screech of the oud (the forerunner of the lute), [made] a captivating premiere at the Kennedy Center,” says Alec Russell, and the Post failed to make mention of the hundreds of Iraqi expatriates who lined up all morning in the snow just to get tickets, or the rousing ovation of the (mostly) non-partisan crowd.

Funding The Arctic Arts

A new initiative from the Rasmuson Foundation will create a 10-year, $20 million arts funding program in Alaska, with money from the foundation going to develop a cultural scene as unique as America’s northernmost state. “Over the years, arts groups in Alaska have struggled for money. At the apex, 1982, the Alaska State Council on the Arts received nearly $5 million in state money, handing out more than $4 million in grants… for 2004, it is about $460,000.” Alaskan arts groups have relied mostly on private donations to survive, but it can be hard to solicit donations to cover day-to-day operations. That’s where the Rasmuson program comes in.

TV Nation (On Stage)

Plays are starting to look too much like TV, complains playwright Joanna Laurens. “Where are the subtle plays, plays that address current social issues by sidling up to them, not by hitting you over the head with them? That is what I want to see. I don’t want the same experience from both television and theatre. The mediums don’t function in the same way – and yet, they are increasingly being used interchangeably. Let’s put this play on the screen; let’s put this film on the stage. Let’s clog up our theatres with naturalism.”

UK Theatre: Wanker Nation?

What can you tell about a country by the plays it produces? An American critic drops in to the London stage, and reports that British playwrights seem to have a dismal perception of today’s UK. “The organised, shimmering intelligence of contemporary British theatre contrasts, shockingly, with its vision of a hopelessly incompetent wanker nation. Is the Great Brittle of these 12 plays, a country where no one has any faith in anything, true to the life people are living outside the theatre? Or is the truer portrait of Britain in late 2003 that piece of street theatre enacted by thousands of well-behaved, jolly protesters in Trafalgar Square last month, toppling the papier-mché statue of George Bush?

Game On

Video games have fast become the recreation of choice. “Figures for the overall size of the industry in 2003 will not emerge until March but, in 2002, the UK leisure software market value topped £1bn for the first time, compared with cinema box-office income of £755m and video/DVD rental worth £500m.”