“The Folio Society has been named as the surprise sponsor of a new fiction prize that its supporters hope will rival the stature of the Man Booker prize, but – crucially – will also be open to American writers, allowing the likes of Jonathan Franzen to compete with Hilary Mantel.”
Tag: 03.13.13
Edward Albee’s Laying An Egg Is Finally Ready
It’s a play by the man himself (and doubtless a shot at the critics he so vocally despises), and it will debut this summer at New York’s Signature Theater Company after a year’s delay caused by Albee’s (as he put it) “overcomplicating” the script.
Let’s Stop Being Patronising To Community-Based Theatre
Lyn Gardner: “I can only ever review what I see. I can’t review intent, and I can’t review the fact that the people putting on the show will almost certainly have expended much time and effort, and may even have mortgaged someone’s granny’s house to raise the money. So where does that leave the critic – and indeed the audience – when it comes to community or participatory theatre, where often the performance is but the tip of the iceberg?”
And Britain’s Best Work Of Art For 2012 Was – The Olympic Cauldron?
Jonathan Jones: “Thomas Heatherwick’s Olympic Cauldron has won the South Bank Sky Arts award for the best British work of visual art in 2012. Yet the Cauldron is not a work of art, and Heatherwick is not an artist.”
The Real Ballet War In Russia
The Tsiskaridze-vs-Filin (and almost everyone else) conflict that forms the backdrop to the current madness at the Bolshoi is part of a larger struggle within Russian ballet – especially at the nation’s flagship companies, the Bolshoi and Mariinsky – between traditionalists and modernizers. Yet there’s one company that’s straddling the divide with remarkable success.
The Prize Formerly Known As Orange: Longlist Includes Kingsolver, Mantel, Zadie Smith
“Among the contenders for the leading prize for fiction written by women is a bestselling thriller and a how-to-live-your-life memoir so divisive it had some reviewers wanting to throw it across the room. Also in the running are novels by literary heavyweights Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith and Barbara Kingsolver.”
Today’s Opera Singers Are Weak Wussies, Says Covent Garden’s Music Director
Antonio Pappano: “It happens more and more. There’s something about this generation of singers, that they are weaker in their bodies or don’t care. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something that is very, very frustrating for me personally.”
San Francisco Symphony On Strike; Tour In Jeopardy
“Musicians for the San Francisco Symphony went on strike today after eight months of fruitless talks with management centered on wage and benefit issues. The immediate impact: The symphony announced a concert scheduled for 2 p.m. Thursday has been canceled. Also in jeopardy: a tour to the East Coast.”
Theology Of Free – Does It Work In Publishing?
“The result is the growth of an info-elite–“newsies like me and you out there in the audience”–and vast consumer world uninterested in news, or at least uninterested in paying a meaningful amount of money for it.”
Amazon Reduces Author Royalties Cut
“Amazon is proving very detrimental to the niche author. To the public they are wonderful because they sell books cheaply but for anyone that has to deal with them they are a nightmare. All they are concerned with is driving the prices down. “