The first Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region opens this week in Denver. “It will be by far the largest and most significant gathering of playwrights ever held in this part of the country. The three-day, nine-session festival represents 18 states – virtually the entire country west of the Mississippi. Despite a paltry budget and little marketing support,” the event will feature some of the American West’s biggest names in theatre.
Tag: 08.08.04
Keeping Theatre Alive When Things Are Tough
A panel of theatre professionals gathers in Dallas to discuss the state of theatre. There was lots of gloom, with warnings that new ideas to revitalize have to be found. “We’re sadly mistaken if we think we’ll recover with the economy. … A lot of this is going to be about finding a different path.”
Crossing Over (For Better Or Worse)
Look at the classical music charts these days, and you aren’t likely to find Bach. Crossover rules now. “It’s easy to see all this as merely a matter of marketing or cynical exploitation. But there seems to be something deeper involved, a breaking down of barriers that has classical musicians moving into what used to be pop territory and pop musicians nibbling around the edges of the classical pie. The world of music is changing, and the result may be something the Three Bs would hardly recognize.”
Tracking The Festival Controversies
The great Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals have been noticed in recent years as much for their off-stage controversies as they have been for their musical offerings. Isn’t it time for a little stability?
A Museum Of Natives, By Natives, For North America
“When the new National Museum of the American Indian opens [in Washington, D.C.] on Sept. 21 amid a flurry of drumming, chanting, eagle feathers and sweetgrass ceremonies, it will mark the culmination of a debate that began in Canada in the 1980s over who gets to tell the aboriginal story… Most of the museum’s staff boast native ancestry and the story the museum tells is in the first person.”
Maybe Not The Best Metaphor To Use, Though
The National Museum of the American Indian may be an architectural and societal triumph, but the man who designed it is so upset that he isn’t even attending the opening. “[Architect Douglas] Cardinal was picked, along with the firm of GBQC in Philadelphia, to design it in 1993 but the museum’s board wanted him to work under James Stuart Polshek, former dean of the Columbia School of Architecture, who is well connected in Washington… ‘Polshek wanted me to be Tonto to his Lone Ranger — his sidekick,’ says Cardinal. ‘I told them I wouldn’t work with that individual. He called me racist.'”
In Boston: An Arts Czar Who Matters
Boston Mayor Tom Menino is impressed with Susan Hartnett, the woman he named last years as the city’s arts czar. “I’ve gotten more kudos for making Susan director of this new department than I have for anything I’ve done in a long time.”
A Post-Boston Ozawa
Conductor Seiji Ozawa returns to Tanglewood and talks about life post-Boston Symphony. Ozawa says the creation of the new opera company for Japan will realize the last of his major career goals, “apart from teaching, and that is something I hope will never end.”
Preserving Pavarotti’s (Pretend) Perfection
Any opera buff can tell you the legendary story of the night that Pavarotti was booed off the stage at La Scala after he cracked a high note. But a new DVD release of that very performance of Verdi’s “Don Carlo” is mysteriously missing the infamous mishap. The record company EMI has, in fact, patched the offending moment with a better take. Why? Simply because they can – after all, “live performances can [now] be edited as easily as studio work.”
A Tale of Two Museums
“Two new museums open in the Washington area during the last year or so. One, in suburban Virginia a good hour’s drive from the Mall, lives up to hopeful expectations… The other museum, smack downtown and across the street from the new Convention Center, falters after just 14 months of operation… The reason for the difference? Wondrous stuff to look at — or a puzzling lack of such.”