“The main figure might be Apollo, or it might be Hymen, the Greek god of marriage. The man draped in blue might be a poet who is being presented to his spouse, the rather pale lady – or he might not be. What is the die with the five dots, underneath the woman draped in red, all about? What is the significance of all the gold?”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Fashioning Drama Out Of Female MPs’ Words
“With 22% of its MPs female, Britain is number 50 in the league table of women in parliament, a dubious distinction it shares with the Czech Republic, Eritrea, Latvia and Uzbekistan,” playwright Gillian Slovo writes. “But what I needed to understand was why the mother of parliaments came so low in the table.”
Acting Nominees Who Won’t Win A Tony This Year
Michael Riedel predicts who’ll walk away empty-handed Sunday night “due to heavy-duty competition in their categories and the politics of this year’s Tony races,” and despite “remarkable performances.”
Rights Crackdown Pits Songwriters Vs. Small Venues
“Across New England, church coffeehouses, library cafes, and eateries that pass the hat to pay local musicians or open their doors to casual jam sessions are experiencing a crackdown by performance rights organizations, or PROs, which collect royalties for songwriters. Copyright law requires that any venue where music is performed publicly … have a performance license. “
The iPad’s Marginalia Problem
“One of the guilty pleasures of an actual, ink-on-paper book is the possibility of marking it up–underlining salient passages, making notes in the margins, dog-earing a page. While it’s true that some electronic book platforms for the iPad allow highlighting,” and some e-readers “allow you to type notes, they barely take advantage of being digital.”
Selling An Online Peek At The Process Of Filmmaking
Producers of a low-budget movie “decided to turn the cameras on themselves, using a live video stream to let viewers watch the production from beginning to end and interact with the film’s cast and crew through a chat room. For a fee of about $10, viewers can log onto the website SulSet.com and ‘see everything that happens behind the scenes on a real Hollywood movie set….'”
Misha Dances Merce, And Points The Way To The Future
“At 62, Baryshnikov is the perfect mature Merce dancer. He draws your gaze to the movement of every part of his body, infusing the waving [of] his arms or lifting [of] a chair with expression. The … combination of Baryshnikov’s personality, experience and technique, placed at the service of Cunningham, best demonstrates how the work may continue.”
Tony, Tony, Tony: Why Do You Shun Off-Broadway?
“There would be no Broadway without the non-profit theaters, and yet this apartheid system survives. London’s top awards, the Oliviers, don’t make that distinction. Other local awards, such as the New York Drama Critics Circle and the Drama Desk, do include off-Broadway, but they lack the brand recognition of the Tonys….”
Report: Arts Giving Fell 2.4 Percent In ’09 To $12.3 Billion
“That decline was less than the 6.4 percent drop to $12.8 billion in 2008,” and also less than the 3.6 percent decline in “giving to all categories of charities and nonprofits” in 2009. “Experts had anticipated a much sharper drop last year amid the worst recession since the Great Depression.”
Escaping MP3s’ ‘Alien Digital Gloss’ With Books On Vinyl
“The Underwood discs, scheduled to appear twice a year, [represent] part of the growing resistance to the dematerialisation of art. By emphasising tactility, scarcity (each issue is limited to 1,000 copies) and physical beauty, it offers something that can’t be digitally replicated.”