Tag: 08.07.06

American Girl Actors Back On The Job

“Actors working in musical shows at the American Girl Place theatre in midtown Manhattan returned to work on Saturday after walking out for two days late last week, an Equity official said Monday. Though the two sides have not resolved the central issue — whether management would recognize the actors’ attempts to join Actors’ Equity Association and thereby receive the benefits a union contract would provide — officials at American Girl welcomed the actors back and said they would be paid for the time they missed, according to Maria Somma, a spokesperson for Equity.”

Why Aren’t We All Watching TV On Computers?

“In theory, TVs and PCs were supposed to converge and spawn one hybrid media device. In practice, they touch on the couch without breeding. TiVo buffs up your TV with PC-style software that ends the pain of VCR programming. YouTube delivers a searchable trove of instant-play clips to your computer screen. But when you plunk down on the couch to relax, you probably don’t want to search YouTube with a remote wand.”

Actors Protest Scottish Smoking Ban

” ‘The smoking legislation aims to protect the public from the harmful effects of secondhand smoke,’ runs its official line. ‘This applies equally to actors, performers and theatrical audiences as it does to other workers and members of the public.’ In a country where 13,000 people die every year from smoking-related illnesses, this might seem sensible. And local support for the ban has risen from 56% to 78% since the Smoking, Health and Social Care Act came into force in March. But Scotland had reckoned without the Edinburgh festival, where the appetite for controversy is insatiable, and where artistic freedom is as sacred as the right to a pint at 5am.”

50 Years In Santa Fe

John Crosby founded Santa Fe Opera in 1956 “among the high hills a few miles north of the city. Over the decades of his visionary and sometimes autocratic stewardship, Crosby evolved a trademark artistic profile that has made Santa Fe Opera one of the nation’s most distinctive companies…”

Is The Pompidou Accident-Prone?

“Since its opening in 1977, the Pompidou Center’s Musée National d’Art Moderne has been counted among the world’s most admired and most visible museums of contemporary art, beginning with its startling Paris building, its outside walls industrially festooned with ducts and fixtures. But in some circles, the institution has also acquired a reputation as a place where bad things sometimes happen to borrowed art.”

Sotheby’s On The Fast Track

Sotheby’s CEO William Ruprecht is riding high times at the auction company. “Will we have the top lot of the season? Who knows? In the first six months, we grew about twice as fast as Christie’s. But we’re not in a race with Christie’s. We’re not in the same game. We focus on the high end, not on the mass market. We don’t sell Star Trek memorabilia as a major part of our effort. We don’t do online sales. We brought that to the art market five years ago, and we ditched it. Guess why.”