Category: people

Australian fans of the TV show “Xena” have formed a club and are performing shows based on the series. “In recent weeks, they’ve perfected costumes and choreography for a production of ‘Bittersuite,’ a musical revival of a favourite Xena episode by the same name. In weekly practices, they clank plastic swords, march in unison and sing such lyrics as, ‘Forgive those who harm you, do good to those you hate.’ ” No word yet on whether Cameron Mackintosh has optioned the rights. – The Age (Melbourne)

Spanish playwright, widely revered in Spain, was known for his opposition to the country’s former fascist dictatorship. – CBC

New York Magazine theater critic John Simon loses it at a performance of “Music Man” and screams at the parent of noisy kids to shut them up. “Simon said he ‘smelled trouble’ as soon as he saw several young children – between the ages of 4 and 8 – sitting in front of him.” – New York Post

• Michael Ondaatje had a respectable literary career before “The English Patient” and the movie of it made him truly famous. The author, who lives in Toronto, has been described as “the Greta Garbo of Canadian letters.” With all the distraction of Hollywood, it’s probably not surprising that his follow-up book took seven years to produce. – The Telegraph (UK)

Trisha Brown’s dance company celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. At the age of 63, Brown’s still pushing. “I’m hell bent right now. The learning curve is stretched so tight it’s twanging. I’m discovering, questioning, looking for solutions. I want to get out as much work as possible. It’s not surprising,” she says. “After all, I’ve been a wife, a mother, a dancer, a choreographer, a citizen in a radically changing world. I’m in my seventh decade. Over time one gets rewritten by experience – by loss, by death, by accidents. All these things have made me think a lot about emotion, about the shape of emotion.” – New York Times

Helgi Tomasson returns to New York City Ballet as a choreographer. At 57, he “remains trim though his hair has gone from black to white and thinned somewhat. He has now been running San Francisco Ballet for the same number of years he danced with City Ballet. ‘It was not a terribly smooth transition,’ he says, in his understated way, of his arrival there; his restrained approach and attention to the refinements of classical technique represented a big change from the flashy showmanship of the previous director, Michael Smuin.” – New York Times

Composer Frank Wildhorn is the first American musical-theater composer in 22 years to have three shows running simultaneously on Broadway. He’s been called the American Andrew Lloyd Webber, but while his loyal fans are fanatical in their love of his work, the critics haven’t been kind. “Six million people have seen my stuff. I make no apologies for what I write. I just want to appeal to my generation. Look, if you’re 45 or 50 years old, that means in the early ’70s you were listening to the Stones or John Denver or Jim Croce. If nothing else, I represent the era I grew up in. I still write for pop artists all the time. I feel it’s important to speak to audiences in a vocabulary that’s comfortable to their ear.” – Orange County Register

Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron are architecture stars of the moment with this month’s opening of London’s new Tate Modern. “All famous architects have mighty egos, and Herzog is unusual only in the openness with which he displays his. If he weren’t brilliant he would be insufferable, but it isn’t unduly flattering to say that he is brilliant. His immodesty is also redeemed by a talent for collaboration with others, most notably his childhood friend and business partner de Meuron. Both are turning 50 this year. They are young – in the slow-moving world of architecture – to have got to their present status.” – London Evening Standard

Chinese film actress Gong Li wants to enroll at Beijing University as a social studies researcher. But the university’s website “has been flooded with hate mail, saying that should the star of such critically-acclaimed movies as ‘Farewell My Concubine’ and ‘Raise The Red Lantern’ be accepted, it would be because of her fame and good looks. Others wrote in to say the university should ‘hang its head in shame’ if her application was successful. – The Straits Times (Singapore)

Producer David Merrick, who died this week, was a producer to be reckoned with.  “Merrick is the Bermuda Triangle in a Brooks Brothers suit. He lures writers and playwrights in like naval air squadrons, never to be seen or heard from again,” said the writer and comic Stan Freberg, a survivor of a Merrick flirtation with one of his plays. – Washington Post