“A nine-hour Robert Lepage epic, a journey into Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘tormented psyche’ and a reimagined ballet interpretation of Carmen will be on the bill in Toronto in June for the Luminato arts and culture festival.”
Tag: 02.18.09
Scientists Say It’s OK To Skip Your Econ 101 Lecture
“Students have been handed another excuse to skip class from an unusual quarter. New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person.”
Rude Guerilla Theatre’s Final Act: Lobbing Caryl Churchill’s Gaza Bombshell
“As the often-confrontational Santa Ana storefront troupe makes its final bow,… the last script Rude Guerilla will perform is Seven Jewish Children, a play for Gaza,” Caryl Churchill’s very controversial 10-minute play. “It will be staged once, as a reading, on March 22.”
– And Said Bombshell May Go Off In New York As Well
“Three years after New York Theater Workshop drew protests for canceling My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a play sympathetic to Palestinians, it is considering mounting a production of a new piece by Caryl Churchill, Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, that at times contains images of heartless Israelis.”
Ben Blank, 87, The Man Who Invented TV News Graphics
“As graphics director for CBS and later ABC television news introduced the concept of using logolike images behind anchors as signatures for major news coverage… and in so doing helped transform the appearance and content of network evening news.”
Angry at Management, Peoria Symphony Musicians Unionize
Less than a month after the PSO board declined to renew the contract of music director David Commanday, the orchestra’s players have decided to join the American Federation of Musicians. A statement cites as factors “the board’s lack of consultation with the players regarding this decision, their lack of recognition for the players’ overwhelming support of Commanday, plus statements by Board Chairman John Day regarding the future direction of the Peoria Symphony.”
Charleston Symphony Players Say, Make Us Work More!
The board of the perpetually-strapped CSO wants to cut the core group of contracted musicians from 46 to 35 or even fewer. But the musicians themselves say that they’re underutilized and that “more shows, either through a larger orchestral season or in private contracted gigs, would help increase revenue and eliminate the urge to purge.”
Pinched By The Recession? Offer Your Head As A ‘Cranial Billboard’
Air New Zealand is the latest of several companies to advertise using temporary tattoos on willing participants’ bodies. “For shaving their noggins and displaying the ad copy [on their bald heads] for two weeks in November, they received either a round-trip ticket to New Zealand (worth about $1,200) or $777 in cash (an allusion to the Boeing 777, a model in the airline’s fleet).”
There Will Be No Jimi Hendrix Vodka
As if life weren’t bad enough already. “[The] owners of Jimi Hendrix’s music, trademarks and licensing rights won a legal victory in their trademark infringement case against local businessman Craig Dieffenbach and Electric Hendrix Spirits, which created an ‘Electric Hendrix’ brand of vodka.” The defendants must pay a $3.2 million judgment and remove all Electric Hendrix from the shelves.
Ballerina And Dance Teacher Marina Svetlova, 86
After dancing in Ida Rubinstein’s experimental dance company and the Original Ballet Russe, she was the chief soloist in the Metropolitan Opera Ballet from 1943-50. Her biggest legacy may be as an instructor: she headed Indiana University’s ballet department from 1969 to 1992 and trained hundreds of dancers at her summer programs in Vermont.