“I’d never been naked on stage before and, like most people, the thought of volunteering for that universal nightmare of full-frontal nudity before a jeering audience scared the bejesus out of me. But I’m an actor, and we’re nothing if not an ambitious lot, so with the help of a gym membership and some hair removal cream, I found myself at an audition…. A week later, I was offered the job. (A day after that, I moved into the gym and began an affair with rice crackers and beansprouts).”
Tag: 07.28.09
It’s Amazon’s Power That Makes Its Missteps So Unnerving
“For Amazon, books are a business, and the more hegemony it exerts over the market, the better off it is. For the culture, though, books and information serve as a collective soul, a memory bank, something bigger than mere commerce that shouldn’t be merely bought and sold. Because of that, it’s not the incidents themselves but their ramifications that are disturbing, the idea that Amazon can effectively alter the collective memory at will.”
Actresses’ Movie Roles Are 1-Size-Fits-All; Not So On TV
“There are more and better roles for women on one season of ‘Brothers and Sisters’ and ‘Big Love’ or ‘Damages’ and ‘Desperate Housewives’ than there will be in an entire year of Hollywood films. Roles that require depth and wisdom and boundless energy, that demand of their performers the dramatic flexibility and exploration of character. Roles that don’t seem to punish them simply for being women.”
Saying They’re Mum On Cuts, Minister Baffles Arts Crowd
“British Columbia’s arts community is in a state of shock following comments made by the Minister for Tourism, Culture and the Arts, Kevin Krueger, that the community is not concerned about the provincial government’s projected 50-per-cent cuts to funding.” Krueger told a radio interviewer that he’s “not hearing complaints at all from the arts and cultural community,” but the community — and even the interviewer — beg to differ.
China Embraces Puccini, A Composer It Once Reviled
“Back in the 1960s and ’70s, when Italian opera was deemed a capitalist indulgence in China, no work was more despised than Giacomo Puccini’s ‘Turandot.'” But the Chinese are “singing a different tune these days. For the 60th anniversary of China’s communist revolution in October, a new production of ‘Turandot’ has been commissioned for the 100,000-seat Bird’s Nest stadium” — one of a raft of productions of “Turandot” and other Puccini operas in the country.
Merce Cunningham Dies At 90
“Over a career of nearly seven decades, Mr. Cunningham went on posing ‘But’ and ‘What if?’ questions, making people rethink the essence of dance and choreography. He went on doing so almost to the last. … Even when it became known that he was fading, and friends began coming to bid farewell to him in recent days, he told one colleague that he was still creating dances in his head.”