A new concept is being tested in a few North American theaters: closed captioning. The idea is simple – patrons whose hearing loss makes it difficult to hear the voices coming from the stage can read the full text of the play in real time on a small screen placed near the stage. The captions are smaller than the surtitles used at many opera houses, and can be read easily from roughly the first ten rows of the theater. The hope is that the new technology will bring older audiences back to the theater.
Tag: 08.10.04
Why Dance Is Worth Covering
What keeps dance critics so passionate about an art that society increasingly views as expendable? Perhaps it’s their own importance in the struggle to keep the form alive. “Dance is more dependent on the musings of its critics than, say, poetry and music are on the writings of their critics. Unless you live in a culturally significant city, your chances of seeing a wide range of live dance (much less different casts of a single work) are slim… Even the most obscure post-minimalist or Renaissance composer is more likely to be culturally available—at least, satisfyingly enough on CD—than any well-established or even world famous choreographer.”
Calgary Phil Back in Black
“The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, which was forced into bankruptcy protection two years ago, said yesterday it has eked out its best operating surplus in a decade… The orchestra suspended operations in October, 2002, when it filed for court protection from its creditors and embarked on a $1.5-million fundraising venture to stay afloat. The orchestra streamlined operations, hired a new management team, cut musicians’ pay by 20 per cent and sought out new sponsors, donations and ticket buyers.”
Cleveland Turns Summers Over to Welser-Möst
The Cleveland Orchestra has announced that music director Franz Welser-Möst will take over the job of planning the orchestra’s summer music festival once current summer director Jahja Ling’s contract expires in 2006. The orchestra will save about $60,000 with the move, but that appears not to have been a factor in the decision. Welser-Möst, like many of his predecessors, wanted to have more of an active role in planning the summer, and while he will not increase his summer presence on the podium, the programming will likely change noticably under his directorship.
Poet Donald Justice, 78
Donald Justice, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Midwestern poet whose works were renowned for their precision of style, has died following a stroke. “Mr. Justice was acclaimed as both a poet and a teacher. His poetry followed an unusual trajectory over the decades, starting out in a traditional way, diverting into the experimental and surreal, and returning to meter and rhyme in the end.”
The Concrete Renaissance
Concrete is cheap, and efficient, and comparatively easy to work with. What it is not is attractive, and so it is understandable that architects and artists have not frequently embraced it as a medium. “But concrete has a rich history in aesthetics. Though it has been responsible for much that was dreary and utilitarian, it was also the glop that built the Pantheon in Rome. And now architects have returned to it as an aesthetic device.”
Improving A City’s Look (Primarily With Big Nudes)
Photographer Helmut Newton was already in the late stages of setting up a foundation in his name in Berlin when he was killed in an auto accident earlier this year. He did not live to see the opening of the foundation. “But now more than ever it has become his memorial, and an eye-catching one at that. Where stern portraits of bewhiskered generals once presided over the foyer of the officers’ club at Jebensstrasse 2, near the Berlin Zoo station, five of Newton’s trademark ‘Big Nudes’ now proclaim his place as a pioneer of erotic fashion photography.”
Fay Wray, 96
“Fay Wray, an actress who appeared in about 100 movies but whose fame is inextricably linked with the hours she spent struggling, helplessly screaming, in the eight-foot hand of King Kong, died on Sunday at her apartment in Manhattan. She was 96.”
FCC Ruling May Show The Limits Of Broadcast Sex
The FCC has responded to complaints from a right-wing watchdog group by ruling that two popular TV shows – Will & Grace and Buffy the Vampire Slayer – did not violate the commission’s decency standards by airing episodes which contained, respectively, simulated lesbian sex and two principal characters (of opposite genders) engaging in sex. Neither program contained any nudity, and the FCC ruled that while sex was clearly shown to be taking place in the Buffy episode, there was “little evidence that the activity depicted was dwelled upon”. The ruling may give broadcasters a guideline for what the FCC will find acceptable in future.
Trove of Unpublished Poetry Found in UK
250 pages of unpublished poems by Philip Larkin have been discovered in the library archives of the poet’s hometown. “Larkin, who died in 1985 aged 63, was chosen as the [UK’s] best-loved poet of the last 50 years in a 2003 survey by the Poetry Book Society.”