The “official photograph of President Obama, Vice President Biden and about 40 staffers who assembled to applaud the late-night passage of the [healthcare] bill … inserts Obama squarely into the middle of healthcare reform’s bipartisan history,” between portraits of FDR and his Republican cousin, “failed predecessors in the fight for federal healthcare legislation.”
Tag: 03.22.10
Sirs Peter Hall And Alan Ayckbourn Talk Shop
Hall: Interesting thing about notes. You can see an actor missing doing something, and if you tell him what he should do, he won’t do it…. But if you say: “I think you were so wise not to . . .” then he’ll do it. It rather works, I find.
Ayckbourn: Remember when Mrs Thatcher invited you to a reception at Downing Street and you asked me to come with you because “she likes you”?
Herta Muller: To Escape Police, We Proofread In The Woods
“Speaking at the Leipzig book fair on Saturday, [Nobel laureate Herta Muller] said that while she was writing books including her debut, the short story collection Niederungen (Nadirs), which was censored in Romania, she would meet her German proofreader in the woods to avoid discovery.”
Peter Bohlin And The Beautiful Cube
Architect Peter Bohlin’s Fifth Avenue Apple store cube is reportedly “the fifth-most-photographed building in New York, the 28th worldwide.” Its design likely “helped him triumph over two superstars, Thom Mayne and Adrian Smith, to win this year’s gold medal from the American Institute of Architects,” yet Bohlin works “by sketching on paper rather than by turning on a laptop.”
Is Criticism Pointless?
“[O]ver the past decade much of our ‘critical’ cultural has degenerated into a glorified form of punditry, in which critics have forsaken their role as compassionate arbiters for the barbed joys of snark.”
On The Lower East Side, Art Handlers Stage Their Olympics
“Points were subtracted for inelegant taping, dripping sweat on the art, and, once, because a team that finished early didn’t ‘waste time properly’ by leaving to smoke a cigarette or go to get a beer.”
Wolfgang Wagner, Longtime Bayreuth Director, Dies At 90
“He was a hard-working, strong-minded festival administrator. From 1966 until 1998, he was also an active stage director. Yet he will always be most remembered for who he was, not what he did. His ambivalent legacy as Richard Wagner’s grandson dominated his life, thoughts and work.”
At The Oliviers, A Best Play Upset And American Influence
“Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop, which premiered at a 65-seat south London pub theatre, has pulled off a huge shock at this year’s Olivier Awards, beating both Jerusalem and Enron to the Best New Play Award.” Many of the other winners had U.S. origins: prizes went to Spring Awakening, Hello, Dolly!, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
What’s With Actors’ – Or Our – Weird Accents?
Charles Isherwood, from London: “It’s only when you come to this city and hear British actors playing Americans that you realize how funny we all talk. … I found myself wondering whether the twang-free voice I’d always assumed I’d been speaking in sounded so very peculiar to the British.”
Why Do Designers Like ‘@’ So Much?
“The French and Italians have nicknamed it the ‘snail.’ The Norwegians have plumped for ‘pig’s tail,’ the Germans ‘monkey’s tail,’ and the Chinese ‘little mouse.’ The Russians think of it as a dog, and the Finns as a slumbering cat. … Yet the Museum of Modern Art in New York has deemed it to be such an important example of design that the @ has been officially admitted to its architecture and design collection.”