“The proposed performing arts center planned for downtown Orlando will almost certainly be built a piece at a time, a fall-back plan that reflects the stranglehold the recession has put on the city’s $1.1 billion plan for new community venues. … It’s not yet clear exactly how the design will accommodate multiple phases. The plan calls for three performance halls – seating 2,800, 1,700 and 300 – under one roof.”
Tag: 07.29.09
The Smell Of Fear (It’s Real)
“The smell of the sweat you produce when terrified is not only registered by the brains of others, but changes their behaviour too, according to new research. It adds to a growing body of evidence that humans may communicate using scent in a similar way to how other animals use pheromones.”
Funding Boost For English Theatre Has Improved Everything But Audience Size
“The more than £100 million of extra public cash that has been invested by the government in English theatre since 2002 has resulted in a ‘confident and energised’ sector, creating ‘innovative’ and ‘risk-taking’ work with higher production values, while employing more staff and paying better wages, but has failed to increase audience numbers across the country.”
‘Like A Lower East Side Gallery Transplanted Into A Treehouse’: NY State’s Wassaic Project
“A rare survivor among the stately wood-crib elevators that once towered over rural America, this 105-foot-tall structure has been reincarnated as one of the strangest new homes for contemporary art in the Northeast.”
Louisiana Parish Sues Architect Of Unfinished Arts Center
“With construction of the performing arts center [in Metairie, near New Orleans] … running a year behind schedule and $10 million over budget, Jefferson Parish has sued the project’s original architect, alleging that numerous fundamental flaws in the design are the source of the complications and costs.”
Longtime Broadway Composer Stephen Schwartz (Wicked) Moves Into Opera
The Grammy- and Oscar-winning songwriter behind the musicals Wicked, Pippin and Godspell is working on “his first opera, intriguingly titled Seance on a Wet Afternoon, which will have its world premiere Sept. 26 at the Granada in Santa Barbara. … Schwartz wrote both the music and libretto for Seance, a psychological thriller about a medium, her husband and the spirit of their deceased 11-year-old son.”
Keeping A Cool Head: Ice Age May Have Sped Development Of The Human Brain
“Some 2.5 million years ago, our ancestors’ brains expanded from a mere 600 cubic centimetres to about a litre. Two new studies suggest it is no fluke that this brain boom coincided with the onset of an ice age. Cooler heads, it seems, allowed ancient human brains to let off steam and grow. For all its advantages, the modern human brain is a huge energy glutton … [and] would have generated heat faster than it could dissipate it in the warmer climate of earlier times.”
Moviegoers, All Blinking At Once
“Worried you’ll blink and miss a crucial piece of the action? Then you can relax. While watching a film, we subconsciously control the timing of blinks to make sure we don’t miss anything important. And because we tend to watch films in a similar way, moviegoers often blink in unison, researchers find.”
Kerouac’s Mother’s Will A Forgery; Domino Effect Unclear
“In one of the longest-running probate battles in Pinellas court history, a judge on Friday declared the will purportedly signed by Kerouac’s mother — the mom who inherited Kerouac’s belongings at his 1969 death — to be a forgery. … She died in 1973. Her will left everything to Kerouac’s third wife, Stella, who in turn gave everything to her own siblings when she died in 1990.”
How The Little Mermaid Is Like Bank Of America
“When this fiasco opened to lousy reviews in January 2008, Disney executives ran around town telling everyone that the reviews didn’t matter because ‘The Little Mermaid’ was like ‘Bank of America.’ Let’s see. Bank of America stock price, January 2008: $50. Bank of America stock price, July 2009: $13. You know what? Those Disney executives were right!” (Scroll down.)