Vaclav Havel is back as a playwright. “Can the artist survive the blatant compromises of executive power? The focal character of his new play, Leaving, is a deposed leader coming to terms with a melancholic void after losing the status inseparable from his sense of himself.”
Tag: 09.11.08
Band Giving Away Its Music (But There’s A Catch)
“The Oasis giveaway announced this week seems delightfully old school. In conjunction with the NME, Oasis will make available sheet music for three unreleased songs, Bag It Up, The Turning and (Get Off Your) High Horse Lady, to be featured on their forthcoming album, Dig Out Your Soul (due to be released in October). So it is free music, but the catch is you have to play it yourself.”
Richard Monette, 64, Long Time Director Of Canada’s Stratford Festival
“Richard had a real pulse on the public and an ear to the ground, a trait often used against him in the press. I never quite understood that. What did they want him to be – an elitist thinker? He had a popular touch and taste, along with an enormous love of Shakespeare and the classics. But it’s too soon to say what his legacy will be. I don’t think we’ll know that for another five or 10 years.”
Colorado Opera Founder Nathaniel Merrill, 81
During his tenure with Opera Colorado, Merrill induced such old Met colleagues as Placido Domingo and Eva Marton to perform in his stagings at Boettcher. Renowned set designers and conductors also were convinced to try opera in the round.
Pretty Thin: What Denver Will Be Reading This Fall
In a departure from the first four years of the program, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper announced Tuesday that this year’s One Book, One Denver selection is the late Dashiell Hammett’s “The Thin Man.” Previously, only books centered from living authors were chosen. Hickenlooper said of the change in criteria, “In the fifth year, we decided to be a little more adventurous” and select a “page-turner.”
Britain’s Poet Laureate: I Got Writer’s Block
“The pressures and peculiarities of the laureateship, some of which I put myself through, did have a rocky effect on my life. It was a strange mix of making me self-conscious that so few writers are made to feel because of being so public. There is an isolation in being the Poet Laureate,”
How We Ended Up With Nothing At Ground Zero
“There have been a lot of battles at Ground Zero by New York’s modern-day titans. Mayors versus governors. Architects versus architects. Developers versus Port Authority executive directors. It goes a long way in Christopher. Ward’s mind toward explaining how we got to a point, seven years later, that the $15 billion (and growing) project that’s meant to respond to the 9/11 attacks is so out of whack.”