Vogel: Catch These New Playwrights

Paula Vogel is high on a new generation of playwrighs. “In the past 30 years I have not seen such an extraordinary flowering of talent — so attention must be paid. I think these playwrights are post-post-modern. They are using different strategies other than irony.. television has brought irony to its height and perhaps that’s why theatre is turning away from that.”

Web Dictates New Rules For Restaurant Critics

“Does being identified really affect a critic’s experience? (Restaurants can change the service and the ingredients, but can a bad kitchen ever turn out great meals on demand?) Is the traditional rule of reviewing anonymously really just a game (or only a performance of kabuki)? And why not just come clean in a world that seems to have become one big virtual confessional?”

Cleveland Clinic Removes Painting After Complaints

” A controversial painting removed from display last week at the Cleveland Clinic includes depictions of blacks that many employees viewed as racially stereotypical, Clinic officials said Monday. Numerous employees at the Cleveland Clinic complained last week about the painting, ‘My Home Town,’ by Cleveland artist Michelangelo Lovelace, who is black. Lovelace, in turn, said last week that he had been censored when the Clinic replaced the work with another of his paintings.”

Wheeling & Dealing Big Business At TIFF

The acquisition and rights deals struck against the backdrop of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival are expected to surpass last year’s record of CAN$50m. “A small Canadian or foreign film sold to an international broadcaster may not seem like much of a headline grabber, but multiply that many times over and you get a sense of the volume of transactions.”