The most common submissions included “Gone With the Windex,” “The Importance of Being Ernst & Young,” “Gulliver’s Travelocity,” “Lost Verizon,” “Midnight In the Olive Garden of Good and Evil,” “Slaughterhouse-Five Guys,” “A Tale of Two Citis,” and “Of Mice and Mennen.” People within our publishing company enjoyed “One Flew Over the Condé Nast,” perhaps a little too much.
Tag: 06.12.12
Why Are Broadway Theatre Tickets So Expensive?
“Broadway plays and special events are limited-time-only star-studded events that draw lots of rich people. And producers have gotten wise to the idea that rich people are extremely price insensitive when it comes to seeing celebrities on the Great White Way, especially if there’s only a short window. The message rich people appear to be sending is: If you charge it, we will pay it.”
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Facing Deficit, Considers Going Part-Time
“Details of the negotiations, which began in April, have dribbled out and reveal far-reaching proposals to trim the SPCO’s annual expenses, which totaled $10.9 million last year. The board’s initial proposal called for reducing guaranteed workweeks for most musicians [from 35] to 20 weeks per year, and in some cases to 15 weeks per year.”
‘Exit, Pursued By A Bear’ And Its Spawn: In Praise Of Impossible Stage Directions
“The modern winner among challenging stage directions is generally held to be ‘They cross the Andes’, in Peter Shaffer’s 1964 play The Royal Hunt of the Sun.” Yet, observes Mark Lawson, “even the most notoriously difficult stage directions … are actually less daunting than they look.”
Fans Worldwide Unite To Give Ai Weiwei The Finger
Riffing on one of Ai’s more notorious pieces, which included photos of himself flipping off Tiananmen Square and Beijing’s Olympic Stadium, the producers of the recent documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry are “inviting fans of the artist to submit photographs of themselves giving a middle-finger salute to symbols of injustice … The photos will be assembled into a mosaic and given to Ai upon his release” from house arrest this month.
Forget Swan Lake – How About A Ballet With Actual Swans?
French choreographer Luc Petton and his dance company, called Le Guetteur, were given some swan eggs a couple of years ago by a zoo. As the cygnets hatched and grew, they bonded with the dancers, who often tried imitating their movements. This led, of course, to an inter-species dance piece.
Notorious Siamese-Twins Musical To Be ‘Re-Imagined’
“Side Show was one of those artistic ventures that, adored by musical theater enthusiasts but shunned by the less ardent of Broadway’s fans, failed to catch on.” Now the show, about a pair of real-life conjoined twins who became circus stars during the Great Depression, is “getting another chance at broadening its base” with a reworking by its creators slated for San Diego and Washington DC beginning next year.
Are Memorials About Power And Authority?
Why can’t today’s memorial designers think straight about just authority? Some of the reasons are well-known. We live in a culture that finds it easier to assign moral status to victims of power than to those who wield power. Most of the stories we tell ourselves are about victims who have endured oppression, racism and cruelty.”
Warning: Greek Antiquities Imperiled By Budget Cuts
“Effects of the cultural cuts are already being felt by the public, as museum galleries and sometimes whole museums suffer from sporadic closings. But Greek and international archaeologists and curators warn that the real consequences of the cuts will not become fully apparent for years and will be far more dire for ancient artifacts and historical scholarship.”
How Philadelphia Became A Home For Innovative Opera
“This is a significant change for a town long known for its conservative musical tastes. It was not that long ago that German and French repertoire was considered exotic in an environment which equated opera with traditional Italian fare. Performances of 20th and 21st century opera had been even more of a rarity.”