“The Elephant Theatre Company – one of the most recognizable names in Hollywood’s Theatre Row district – has suspended operations for the 2012 season due largely to financial difficulties and will undergo an internal reorganization, … Founded in the mid-’90s, the Elephant specializes in new American plays, often with edgy themes.”
Tag: 02.29.12
Sondheim Is Writing A New Musical
“The composer Stephen Sondheim revealed on Wednesday that he is currently hard at work on a new musical and that it will be a collaboration with the playwright David Ives. … No further details were given.”
Philadelphia Orchestra Keeps Its CEO (For Three Years This Time)
After a series of contract extensions that covered a few weeks at a time, “the Philadelphia Orchestra Association has signed president and chief executive officer Allison B. Vulgamore for three more years.”
Japan’s Leftist Revolutionary Filmmaker Is Now An Eminence Grise
Masao Adachi was part of two underground movements in 1960s Japan: avant-garde film and leftist protest. (He later joined the Japanese Red Army.) “Now 72, Mr. Adachi is the focus of renewed interest: part exemplar and part cautionary tale, a figure who lived out the dilemma of merging art and politics more fully and messily than just about any of his radicalized peers.”
A Non-Film By An Iranian Filmmaker Forbidden To Make Films
“In the middle of acting out the screenplay of a film” – titled This Is Not a Film – “he isn’t allowed to make, using strips of tape and a cellphone and his living-room carpet as his only props and sets, Iranian director Jafar Panahi grows discouraged.”
Playing The Buddha Onstage
Reaching 40 with too much money and too much booze, Evan Brenner went through a midlife crisis not unlike that of Siddhartha Gautama himself. After poring through the Buddhist sutras and finding a “whirlwind” story of the prince’s life buried under all the religious teaching, Brenner decided to incarnate (as it were) Siddhartha in a solo theater piece.
Trumpeter Maurice Andre, 78
“Not only was he largely responsible for establishing the trumpet as a popular solo instrument, but he also dominated the scene in the 1960s and 70s with a punishing schedule of concerts (an average of 180 a year) and more than 300 recordings, many made on his trademark piccolo trumpet.”
Sotheby’s Caught Up In Dispute Over Cambodian Warrior Statue
“Cambodia has asked the United States government for help in recovering a thousand-year-old statue of a mythic warrior that sits in limbo at Sotheby’s in New York and that some experts believe was looted amid the convulsions of the Vietnam War and the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.”
Technology – Will It Save Us Or Kill Us?
“Are our devices going to be markers of our rise to glory, or instruments of our eventual demise? “
Are Really Good “Bad” Movies Dying Out?
“After all, some films are so terrible that they gain a cult of devoted followers. It’s those films that fans say can enhance our understanding and enjoyment of all movies, and provide some much-needed relief from the predictability of the film industry. They’re also, aficionados worry, a dying breed.”