Tag: 07.11.17

Why Theatre Productions Rights Should Be Free For Underfunded Schools

“Licensing fees for shows can often be the highest expense on a school production’s budget. Depending on the show, amount of performances, ticket prices, etc, they can often range to $2,000-$3,000.  In fact, according to MTI’s Cost Estimator, a 4 performance run of “Annie” with an auditorium of 200 seats, tickets at $15 and a 4 performance run(standard for most high schools) would likely cost between $1,998 – $2,703. That’s a lot for any school but near impossible for one with very little funding.”

Sacramento Ballet’s New Artistic Director Spent Years Dancing Under The Old Ones

In January, the company’s board of directors decided not to renew the contracts of Ron Cunningham and Carinne Binda, who had led Sacramento Ballet for three decades and developed it into a fully professional outfit. They’re being replaced, as of next season, by Amy Seiwert, who spent most of the 1990s dancing in the company under Cunningham and Binda.

Has The Music In Musicals Become Too Ingrown?

“I go to a lot of musicals. I listen to a fair amount of pop music. A lot of pop music that is successful is catchy. A lot of musicals that aren’t successful aren’t catchy. Brit composers seem addicted to wordy exposition that furthers the plot but leaves the brain the second the song has stopped. Even pop stars who should know better – *cough, cough Gary Barlow* – seem to think a musical is more about a thesaurus than a chorus.”

Report: Depictions Of Smoking In US Movies Is Dramatically Up

“Depictions or suggestions of tobacco use in top-grossing movies rose 72 percent from 2010 to 2016, according to the report, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The increase was especially large among top-grossing movies with R ratings, which saw a 90 percent rise in tobacco-use imagery, though researchers noted with special concern that movies rated PG-13 also saw a sizable increase: 43 percent.”

Why Are Some Of Us Still Reluctant To Take Sylvia Plath At Her Word About Ted Hughes’s Abuse?

“[There’s a] cultural bias against women’s voices and the domestic truths of women’s lives and the deep role this has played in painting Plath as both a pathetic victim and a Cassandra-like, genius freak. It is only in a culture where these two things be claimed simultaneously that Hughes, a known philanderer and violent partner, can spend forty years botching the editing of, or outright destroying, his estranged, now dead wife’s work, then win every conceivable literary prize and be knighted by the Queen.”