Broadway producers of Tony-nominated shows are complaining about the cost of including them in the awards show. “To stage a musical number at Radio City, individual shows are required to foot most of the production costs. That can set a show back more than $200,000, a figure that has producers seeing red. Producers would like the Tony show to share in those costs.”
Tag: 06.06.07
Uh Oh! Not A Book Contract
So you think landing that big book advance puts you on Easy Street? Think again. Your problems have only just begun.
Non-Profit Arts Economy Grows 50 Percent
“Americans for the Arts’ national survey released last month found nonprofit arts yields more than $166.2 billion in annual economic activity throughout the U.S., which represents a 50 percent increase over five years. The study also found that the nonprofit arts industry creates the equivalent of 5.7 million full-time jobs.”
Actors Protest Lack Of Canadian Dramas
Canadian actors protest the absence of canadian dramas on Canadian TV networks. A 1999 policy “led private broadcasters to drop Canadian drama to make way for shows such as E-Talk Daily and Entertainment Tonight Canada,”
Nigerian Wins Orange Fiction Prize
Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wins the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction. “She beat five other contenders for the £30,000 women-only award, including Kiran Desai, shortlisted for her Booker Prize winner The Inheritance of Loss. Adichie’s novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, is her second work and set during the Biafran War of the 1960s.”
Gates To Leave Phillips
The director of Washington, D.C.’s Phillips Collection has announced that he will step down from the post in 2008. Jay Gates has been on the job for nearly a decade, and presided over a major reinvigoration and expansion of the collection and its mission.
Stratford Turns Back To The Bard
Canada’s Stratford Festival is under new management, and it appears that the a renewed focus on Shakespeare (Stratford’s original centerpiece) is in the cards. “All four shows on the flagship Festival Theatre stage next season will be written by [Shakespeare]… This can be taken as a solid sign that the festival is returning to its classical roots and away from the model of more recent years, in which multiple musicals and family-styled adaptations like To Kill a Mockingbird were allowed to dominate the schedule.”
Can Arts Ever Really Get Beyond Race?
Several recent issues involving arts groups and race have made headlines and angered minority interest groups, and each incident has rekindled old angers that we’re continually told are supposed to be passe in a “post-racial” America. “It’s an endlessly renewable rite in American life, it seems, an almost reflexive response to anything inflected by a question about race… The arts, we believe, we hope, are different, a realm where we really can connect — beyond race and class, beyond identity. We shouldn’t have to count and keep score and pay attention in that way.”
Hollywood Diversity At Issue Yet Again
The advocacy groups that were heartened last fall with the success of dramas featuring multicultural casts are unhappy with Hollywood once again, following the unveiling of the fall 2007 season. “Though minorities are featured in most of the 29 new series on the major networks, only five feature performers of color in central starring roles. While most of the shows have at least one regular minority cast member, the performers are mostly in support of the main white characters.”
The Net Won’t Kill TV, But It’ll Make It Uncomfortable
“The Internet has been touted as a rival that could destroy network television, but a new report on the Canadian TV sector suggests the two are destined to live side by side – though not necessarily in harmony… It paints a picture of tough programming decisions for the networks in the future, particularly as TV shows become available on-demand through the Internet.”