“Wilson cared passionately about black theater as a distinct medium, and in the late 1990s he famously wrangled with Robert Brustein, then artistic director of American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., who claimed that theater should be ‘a unifying, not a segregating, medium.’ In 1997 the two men held a public debate in New York, and Wilson continued to argue that ‘colorblind’ casting — casting without regard to race — is ‘an aberrant idea’ and that blacks should not allow others to dictate their culture.”
Tag: 10.03.05
SanJoseSymphony.org? Don’t Go There!
The website Sanjosesymphony.org is being occupied by a cybersquatter. “Now, the only way to remove the embarrassing link is to buy the domain or file legal action. No bargain solution either way.”
Embracing Doctor Atomic
John Adams’ “Doctor Atomic” debuts in San Francisco. “In a risky stroke Peter Sellars assembled a libretto from interviews with the project participants, history books, conversation transcripts, declassified documents and poetry. His cut-and-paste job has produced a libretto of heightened emotional resonance and surprising dramatic continuity. With Mr. Adams’s haunting score, what results is a complex, searching and painfully honest if somewhat problematic opera.”
August Wilson, 60
The playwright has died of liver cancer only a few months after announcing the diagnosis. “Radio Golf,” the last of the 10 plays that constitute Mr. Wilson’s majestic theatrical cycle, opened at the Yale Repertory Theater last spring and has subsequently been produced in Los Angeles. It was the concluding chapter in a spellbinding story that began more than two decades ago, when Mr. Wilson’s play “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” had its debut at the same theater, in 1984, and announced the arrival of a major talent, fully matured.”