“(I)s it hypocritical for those of us who love the theatre to rave about a production and campaign for its success, only to turn cold on it when it achieves the kind of mass appeal we always believed it deserved? … Does commercial success kill the soul of such shows or is it merely our restless quest for new ideas that makes them seem stale?”
Tag: 08.11.07
An Ensemble Makes Music, And A Political Point
“An ensemble of musicians separated by oceans and thousands of miles will perform together later this month for the first time, having composed music layer-by-layer with sound files exchanged over the Internet. Their goal: Show how the arts can bridge diverse cultures — even among people who have never met in person before coming together on stage.” The musicians, from Afghanistan, Iran, Ethiopia, Morocco and the United States, are slated to perform in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Casablanca.
‘Til Death Do You Part: A Theatre Ticket Good For Life
“How about a lifetime ticket? In what may be a first for a theater company, the Boulevard Ensemble is offering just that. For $1,000, you can see every individual performance the company presents until you die or the troupe dies, whichever comes first. And you get free intermission refreshments at every one of those performances. In true Boulevard fashion, founder and artistic director Mark Bucher warns you not to be a pig about the coffee and cookies.”
Futurist William Gibson Anchors Himself In The Present
Cybervisionary novelist William Gibson recently did a live reading that was also a virtual reading on Second Life. “I had a laptop open so I could see it as if I was watching from within Second Life. What I saw I found a bit distracting — people levitating and sitting on top of the microphone.” He writes, these days, about the contemporary world, which is not, he says, as big a shift as it might seem. “All science fiction is in one way or another about the moment in which it’s written, even if the people who write it don’t know that.”
On Blast Walls, Iraqi Artists Paint Their Nation’s Past
“For four years these vast concrete slabs have slowly crept through Baghdad, snaking along road, river and sidewalk as they shut out light and encircled ministries, palaces and districts. Now, confronted by the inescapable presence and likely longevity of these blast walls, the city has hired two dozen Iraqi artists to soften their harsh gray solidity by using the city’s past to hide its present.”