“There are your everyday whims, and then there are the whims of a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. The writer in this case is Suzan-Lori Parks, who decided one afternoon in 2002 that she would write a play a day for a year. Ha! Neat idea. Well, four years later those plays are about to be presented in what may be the largest and most elaborate theatrical premiere ever, involving some of the most prominent institutional theaters in the country.”
Tag: 11.10.06
Child Sticking With Performance Today
Fred Child will stay on as host of the nationally syndicated Performance Today when production of the daily program of live classical performance shifts from Washington, D.C. to St. Paul, Minnesota this winter. NPR announced plans to dump the show earlier this year, as the network has chosen to focus mainly on news/talk programming, but the national distribution arm of Minnesota Public Radio agreed to pick up PT with no interruption in the show’s run.
Pooling Generosity
For a long time, arts benefactors in the U.S. tended to be ultra-rich businesspeople wanting to create a cultural legacy for themselves. But today, the giving pool is much wider, and is made up of donors from many income levels. In fact, many lower-level donors have begun pooling their resources to form “giving circles,” which can have a major impact.
Could Oakland Ballet Come Back From The Dead?
A Nutcracker revival is being staged in Oakland this season, which may surprise some people, since Oakland Ballet folded in 2005. But the original founder of the now-defunct company hasn’t given up on dance in Oakland: he hopes that a successful run of Tchaikovsky’s famous holiday ballet will convince investors that Oakland Ballet is worth reviving.
Blanchett To Run Sydney Company
Hollywood star Cate Blanchett has accepted a position as co-director of Australia’s Sydney Theatre Company, along with her husband, director Andrew Upton. “Blanchett revealed that both she and Upton were on three-year contracts, each of which has a three-month ‘slot-out’ clause in-built into the contractual arrangement, to allow either one of them to take three months out each year should they wish to pursue other activities.”
Sex On The Big Screen
“What makes a film truly erotic? Unrequited longing, transgression, voyeurism? Can men and women ever agree? And why are film polls on the subject always so disappointing?” Director Sophie Fiennes’s latest project, “The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema,” attempts to find a serious set of answers on a subject that’s usually only giggled over.
Art Is So Bourgeois, Anyway
An important Kirchner painting sold at the record-setting auction in New York the other day for nearly $40 million. But possibly more interesting than the work itself is the identity of the seller – “Anita Halpin, the 62-year-old stalwart and chair of the far left” Communist Party of Britain. “For a communist, it may seem a galling sum for 200cm by 150cm of canvas. Worse still, perhaps, for a woman with Stalinist credentials.”
Dallas Opera Orchestra Rejects Contract
The musicians of the Dallas Opera orchestra have rejected a new contract that both sides believed was settled earlier this week. For the moment, the orchestra is continuing to work, though it hasn’t ruled out a strike. At issue is a provision in the new contract which would have reduced, through attrition, the number of core players in the ensemble.
Radio 3’s Long Evolution
Earlier this week, BBC Radio 3, the Beeb’s classical station, announced changes to its schedule which may (or may not) result in far fewer live performances being broadcast. The changes are causing no small amount of consternation in Britain’s classical music world: “The station has ventured quite far from its traditional ground. In 1992, Radio 3 was described in the BBC’s annual report as ‘the UK’s leading patron and broadcaster of classical music’. In the same document, in 2004, it was described as providing ‘a broad spectrum of classical music, jazz, world music, drama and arts discussions’. That is quite a shift.”