Tag: 04.20.03

TV Generation – So That’s Where The Playwrights Are Going…

More and more playwrights are finding themselves writing for TV, as the lines between who works for stage and who works for screen get blurry. “For young playwrights, the new opportunities offer another way to make a living as the theater world is pummeled by a faltering economy. They move to Los Angeles, dividing their time between television and theater productions, writing plays and screenplays. And they do it without hearing the cries of ‘Sellout!’ that met earlier generations who charted similar paths.”

Milwaukee Schools Slashing Arts Education

Milwaukee’s public school district is having a budget crisis. So how does it propose solving it? In part, by decimating its arts programs. “Although the district’s financial officers will not submit a proposed budget to the School Board until May 1, a preliminary analysis shows that the district will likely lose 21 art instruction positions and 13 music positions. The cuts would reduce the district’s costs by more than $2.4 million. It seems pretty obvious to us right now that the arts are where there are going to be some big cuts.”

Can A Broadway Bomb Make It Big On The Road?

Seussical the musical was not a hit when it got to Broadway, and the critics were not kind. But after a $2 million makeover, wholesale tinkering from top to bottom, the remade show has been out on the road, and doing pretty well. “The reviews in other cities have been kinder than those of the original production, and the show has performed well at the box office, if a bit unevenly. And, of course, there’s a wide range of Seuss souvenirs raking in cash at intermission.”

Creativity On A Deadline (And Sometimes You Miss It)

“Creativity is hard to schedule. Yet orchestras today have to plan their seasons months, even years in advance. This leads to a disparity: on one hand, stringent deadlines; on the other, a process of creation that requires flexibility and can never quite be pinned down. For when you commission a piece, you’re never sure what you’re going to get — or when you’re going to get it.”

Is Music Better/Worse Depending On Who Wrote It?

Does a piece of music’s back-story change the way we hear it? Of course. But “do we serve music as a whole by giving attention to pieces whose qualities, taken by themselves, rarely rise above the competent and the agreeable? In other words, does a life that resonates with profound circumstances justify the reputation of music that falls short of such depths? Music moves the spirit in a way that other arts do not. Dare we compromise its integrity, no matter how moving the story attached? Some would say not.”

Rethinking All That Moving Around

Western dance – particularly ballet – has emphasized athleticism (and thereby youth). But more and more, dancers are exploring the Asian tradition, which is less athletic, and concentrates more on the upper body. “By the time critics notice something in art, artists have almost always long since led the way. So it is with Asian dance and its impact on the West, which has by now insinuated itself into our dance vocabulary. Ballet remains popular, and rightly so: there is something thrilling about artistically inflected athletic accomplishment, and we’ll always respond to that. But feats of studly skill are not all there is to dance, and Asians know it.”

Appreciating The Barnes Collection

The Barnes Collection, outside Philadelphia, is one of the America’s great collections. “The Barnes collection, all 8,000 pieces of it, is like a multilayer cake. The masterpiece paintings that traveled around the world between 1993 and 1995 are the creamy, highly visible icing. Underneath, less readily noticed, other specialized groups of objects produce a fascinating and incomparable texture. These subcollections are themselves of splendid quality and variety. Not only are they aesthetically stimulating, but they also help to create the distinctive displays, called ‘ensembles,’ that make the Barnes unique.”

FreeRiders – On The Backs Of Famous Writers

A new category of novel is developing, one we might well call ‘Freerider Fiction.’ In these books, the author rides the reputation of some true- to-history literary figure to a place he probably would not have reached on his own. Some recent examples of Freerider Fiction (FRF) are Monique Truong’s ‘The Book of Salt’, Kate Taylor’s ‘Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen’, Helen Humphreys’ ‘The Lost Garden’ – and, of course, Michael Cunningham’s ‘The Hours’.”