“Everyone hears the announcement, but no one thinks it applies to them,” says one director. The producers of various plays try various ploys to get the audience to pay attention to the pre-show turn-it-off announcement rather than treating it as background noise.
Tag: 02.21.10
Napping Makes You Smarter
“A nap during the day doesn’t just beat tiredness, but actually improves the brain’s ability to absorb new information, claim US scientists.”
An Elton John Bio-Ballet
Choreographer and Alberta Ballet artistic director Jean Grand-Maître “describes the $1 million ballet as melding Bob Fosse-inspired jazz choreography and classical ballet en pointe with urban hip-hop, rollerblading, drag queens and Cirque du Soleil-style acrobatics. Broken mirrors, white powder, homoerotic angels and a spinning piano are among the imagery used in the production.”
Who Says Chopin Isn’t Butch Enough?
“Chopin’s music has sometimes been branded effeminate, or ‘salon music’: not quite serious, not quite healthy, not quite German, since it departs from the structural conventions of the great Viennese classical school. … Indeed, some of Chopin’s ardent defenders have implicitly bought into the idea that the music is weak and needs defending, trying to emphasize its seriousness (and manliness) by playing the works in sets.”
Does Topical Theater Even Work Anymore? (A Dialogue)
Brantley: “What I’m wondering is if it’s possible for the theater to be truly topical in a culture of instant satire, when this morning’s headlines have by midday been digested and regurgitated all over the Web.” Isherwood: “By the time a ‘topical’ play has been developed and workshopped and tried out in a regional theater, say, the point it addresses may have gone stale.”