The union representing stage actors is preparing to begin talks with Broadway producers on a new contract. “But officials from both sides said these negotiations were not likely to be as contentious as last year’s talks with the stagehands’ union, which culminated in a 19-day strike that shut down most of Broadway.”
Tag: 04.16.08
Who Owns Captain America? (Not The Guy Who Drew Him)
“On the frontier of a new industry, [comic book] writers and artists are creating scores of characters, but publishers profiting from them. These days creators have learned from the past by self-publishing or otherwise securing the rights to their progeny. But some of the founding fathers of American superheroes are still seeking justice.”
Are Australia’s Arts Groups Now Too Business-Savvy?
In 1999, Australian arts groups were changed forever by a report that declared that cultural groups would never achieve long-term sustainability until they started adhering to the basic rules of business. “But almost a decade after the landmark [inquiry,] has the pendulum swung too far?”
Someone Wanted This Job?
“The scene at [Australia’s] National Institute of Dramatic Art has been far from pretty over the past couple of years… Nervous students, unhappy staff, resignations, petitions and a letter of protest from leading arts industry figures” have all been par for the course at the high-profile Sydney school. All in all, quite a challenge for NIDA’s new director, who started work this week.
People! Hang Onto Your #%@*ing Fiddles!
“An amateur musician lost a violin worth £180,000 when he left it on a train. Robert Napier, 67, left the rare Goffriller violin on the luggage rack of a train from Paddington to Taunton as he returned to his home in Bedwyn, Wiltshire.” The loss comes less than a week after a Toronto Symphony violinist left his instrument at a streetcar stop.
Allen Was Forced Off Orange Judge’s Panel
“Those who questioned whether reading was high on the list of the singer Lily Allen’s recreations appeared to be vindicated yesterday when the organisers of the £30,000 Orange Prize for fiction admitted that they had dropped her from their panel of judges after she failed to turn up to meetings.” Allen had said she withdrew for health reasons.
Famous British Painting Comes Home
“It is one of the most important pre-Raphaelite paintings, with as British a theme as you can imagine – yet Edward Burne-Jones’s The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon is virtually unknown in the UK. Yesterday, the monumental masterpiece was reinstalled in a British gallery – Tate Britain – for the first time in more than 40 years.”
ENO’s Big Plans
The once-struggling English National Opera, feeling confident after posting a £1m budget surplus, is planning a whopping ten new productions next season. “Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami and actor Fiona Shaw are to make their… directorial debuts, in a new season that will seek to refresh the artform by bringing in fresh names from outside the opera world.”
New Ontario Summer Festival Won’t Come Cheap
The plan to create a summer home in Southern Ontario for the Toronto Symphony and National Arts Centre Orchestra will require at least CAN$20m in road and sewer improvements for the proposed site. “The target site is a 300-acre lakefront property that formerly housed a tank training area and rifle and artillery range.”
Arts & Culture As “Soft Power”
Actress Cate Blanchett says that her home country has “an opportunity to put creativity and the arts back into the centre of Australian life here and abroad. This is how a middle power can exercise its soft power in a positive and stimulating way — that shows the world that we are much more than the cliched images that come readily to mind.”