What kind of changes will mark Kent Thompson’s new regime at the Denver Center Theatre Company? “Some kind of change not only was coming, but necessary. But how sweeping that change should be to one of the nation’s few remaining resident regional theater companies would be only Thompson’s second major test. The first had been how he would craft an 11-play season that would invigorate the company with more urgent and underrepresented voices.”
Tag: 10.02.05
Denver Taking Back The Tickets
In 1998, Denver’s major performing arts organizations began selling their tickets through a single service run by the Denver Center. But the combined ticket selling hasn’t gone well, and one by one, the organizations have gone back to selling their own tickets. Denver Center “did a great job for a lot of years, but they had to serve a lot of clients, and a lot of clients with really different needs. And then ‘The Lion King’ would go on sale, and it would be overwhelming for everybody,”
What Oprah means To A Broadway “Color Purple”
“Twenty years and 49 million regular viewers later, Winfrey’s sudden and unexpected endorsement of the upcoming musical version of that very same Alice Walker story has propelled what was looking like a midtier Broadway opening heavily dependent on positive reviews into a critic-proof international megahit. Oprah’s impact on a Broadway show is unknown territory — Winfrey has never before formally got behind a Broadway show (or any other piece of theater, for that matter).”
The Battle For New Orleans
“Rebuilding ‘The City That Care Forgot’ represents the greatest urban renewal project in American history, but nearly everyone with a stake in the city’s future agrees that the outcome is far from certain: Will officials oversee a process that yields a stunning model for 21st-century living, or will fighting among special interests produce a more homogeneous, tourist-centric New Orleans?”
How Have Movies Influenced Visual Art?
“In the 19th century, painting was supreme, prints were a lesser form of painting, and photography was artistic only insofar as it aspired to the condition of painting. What happened, though, when technology and representation collided at the end of that century to create the motion picture, a whole new way of visualizing reality? Did still pictures change when there emerged a new kind of picture, one that moved? Might Thomas Eakins and Thomas Edison have shared more than just a first name and monogram?”
Madness In The Floorboards Disturbs Paris ArtWorld
A long screed carved into a floor by a schizophrenic French farmer has become Paris’ most controversial artwork. “Since the Plancher de Jeannot (Jeannot’s Floorboards) went on display last week, it has created an unprecedented stir. ‘People are terribly disturbed by it. Some feel it should not be on public view.’ The carving – 80 lines of text, in capital letters with no punctuation – contains references to Hitler, to Popes and to an infernal machine that controls humans. The work raises painful questions about whether madness can be artistic.”
Schizophrenic Book World Worries About Quills
“You gotta admit a nationally televised awards show for authors has its challenges. Let’s face it, most honorees are just a tad lower on the recognition-o-meter than your average Gwyneth Paltrows and George Clooneys. But for some, that’s just the start of the problems with the Quill Awards, which, in the book world, has managed to strike as many nerves as the plastic surgeon who paralyzed Joan Rivers’ face.”
Do Artist Training Programs Work?
Of course they do. Just look at Chicago Lyric Opera Center for American Artists. The training program was launched in 1974 to “give promising young opera singers professional-level training and stage experience.” Look at what its graduates have accoplished…
Illegal Downloads Still Dominate Canada
“Canadians illegally download 14 music CDs or other files from the Internet for every file they take from the web legally, a new recording-industry poll suggests.”
Where Are The Women Playwrights? (Why Don’t We See Them On Our Stages?)
Despite critical acclaim, women playwrights are badly represented on American stages. “During the 2003-04 season 21 percent of professionally produced plays in the United States were written by women; during 2004-05, the number dropped again to 19 percent. The absolute numbers aren’t changing. There’s simply a kind of schizophrenia in the theater managements. I think that despite the evidence, artistic directors have a strong conviction that plays by women don’t sell’.”