“Around the country, copyright concerns are fueling a grassroots movement that brings together artists frustrated by the corporate lock on popular-culture icons, musicians pondering the distribution of their work in the era of sampling and Napster, and technophiles worried about the ways that new digital copyright-protection technology is fencing in the formerly wide open electronic frontier. More than protecting those who create, this growing chorus of critics says, the current copyright system serves to enrich big corporations, stifle innovation, silence social criticism, and impoverish the culture.”
Tag: 10.15.03
Money To Burn Crashes And Burns
The new musical Money To Burn has closed in London after only two performances. The show closed between it’s matinee and a planned evening performance, making it one of the shortest-lived runs ever in London’s West End. “The notices were unusually savage, especially in a town where theatre critics tend to couch their harsher observations with the occasional leavening word. Not so this time. Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph called the musical “jaw-droppingly dreadful.” In The Guardian, Michael Billington was one of several critics to give the show one star out of five: ‘Faced with such dross as this, one’s first inclination is to run screaming into the night’.”
Booker Winner’s Improbable Win
D.B.C. Pierre’s Booker win seems improbable. Pierre is “the pen name of Peter Finlay, 42, a cartoonist, and a reformed gambler and drug addict. He now lives in a remote part of Ireland. The initials stand for Dirty But Clean.” He says he absorbed the dialects for his his first-ever book by watching Jerry Springer on TV.
Critics Attack Hytner’s Broadway Deal
Director Nicholas Hytner is winning cheers for his direction of London’s National Theatre. But his deal to transfer National plays to Broadway has angered some Broadway producers. And others are wondering if Hytner will be able to deliver on promises to superstar playwrights.
Adelaide Fest Goes European
“The indigenous content of the 2004 Adelaide Festival was a vexed question given the emphasis put on it last year by Los Angeles’ modern opera impresario Peter Sellars before his spectacular resignation over disagreements with the Adelaide Festival board. Seemingly to avoid the issue altogether, artistic director Stephen Page, an indigenous man and artistic director of the Bangarra Dance Theatre, has programmed a strongly European festival in the conventional arts mode.”
Patrons of Playwrighting
Rita and Burton Goldberg wanted to do something to promote writing for the theatre. So they called up New York University in the mid-90s and volunteered. “Since then, they have given more than $1 million to Tisch, specifically to support student playwrights. They provide scholarships, foot the bill for an annual playwriting competition and finance a master playwrights’ program that during the last three years has brought John Guare, Kenneth Lonergan, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, Tina Howe and Neil LaBute to Tisch classrooms and lecture halls for a semester apiece.”
Prisoner For A Day – Manchester Installation Shows You What It’s Like
A recreation in Manchester of the American prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba invites civilians to become prisoners for a day. “The worst thing was the sensory deprivation. When I couldn’t see or hear anything I wanted to panic. I jumped if someone touched me and the ground was so uneven I was scared I’d fall down. I felt euphoric whenever my mask was taken off.”
Chair Sells For Record Price
An 18th century chair bought for £300 50 years ago, has set the world record for an English chair when it sold for £386,400, almost twice the highest estimate, at a Sotheby’s auction.
The Booker Winner’s Amazing Display
DBC Pierre, who won this year’s Booker, said he would use his winnings to pay off some of his many debts. “The virtually unknown author, who won for his debut novel, Vernon God Little, turned last night’s prize-giving ceremony in London into an astonishing exercise in self-pity. The prize, which is 35 years old, last witnessed such eccentric scenes in 1972 when the winner, John Berger, pledged to give his cheque to the Black Power movement.”