Tag: 11.27.20

‘In The Land Of Bittersweet’: ‘Nutcracker’ And The Christmas Of COVID

Reporter Cory Stieg looks at how various companies are adapting the ballet for this very unusual Christmas, from going online completely (most East Coast troupes) to in-person performances with smaller, socially-distanced casts and audiences (Ballet West in Utah), and why Nutcracker is so important even beyond its status as a revenue generator. – Dance Magazine

How COVID Turned One Of The Year’s Hottest Plays Into A Site-Specific Work

After the pandemic blew up the plans of every American stage company for this year, Blanka Zizka, director of the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, got the idea to create a COVID bubble for cast and crew at a house in the Poconos, where they’d do a site-specific production for later viewing online. And one of the year’s most awarded scripts, Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning, seemed like the perfect choice. Writer Jane M. Von Bergen reports on how Zizka and her colleagues made it happen, complete with actual screaming foxes. – The Philadelphia Inquirer

Camilla Wicks, One Of World’s Leading Violinists In 1940s and ’50s, Dead At 92

She performed her first Mozart concert at age 7, debuted at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic at 18, and played the Sibelius concerto for the composert himself, who called her performance the best he’d heard. Her fame faded after she retired to raise five children, yet, wrote Henry Fogel in 2015, “Her technique is as close to flawless as humans get, and her intelligence and interpretive breadth are clearly those of a major artist.” – The Washington Post

The Impossible Weight That Public Sculptures Of Women Must Bear

It’s not just the sexualized, weirdly tiny Mary Wollstonecraft; it’s not just the naked Medusa in the park; it’s not just that rather iffy sculpture of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Sojourner Truth all sitting down to plan universal suffrage. No. It’s the arc of public art for its entire history – and we do mean history in this case. “Two millennia of European and American history could be told through a genealogy of equestrian monuments to men, from Marcus Aurelius to Gattamelata, from Confederate generals to Kehinde Wiley’s exhilarating riposte, Rumors of War (2019). (And that’s just one genre!) One reason Wiley’s monument succeeds is that it has a heroic model to subvert. But women have no such models.” – Hyperallergic

In Praise Of Classical Music Radio

Radio in particular – and Portland’s All Classical in particular. There’s a lot of media nowadays, and a lot of choices to make – perhaps too many. “Radio cuts through all that. You make one decision – tune to a station – and then passively take in whatever it has to offer. Maybe it’s a bunch of Haydn or Mingus, maybe it’s an hour of spooky Irish music, maybe it’s interviews with local composers you’ve never heard of playing music composed by kids who go to school with yours.” – Oregon ArtsWatch

The Worst Kind Of Book Thief

Easily the worst is the kind that steals from a shared heritage in libraries for private sale or just adoration. “It denies everyone the opportunity of having access to that book. Even a rare book bought (or stolen) from a bookshop will end up having just one owner, whereas in a public library that same book is available for anyone who wishes to read it.” – The Guardian (UK)

Documentaries Are Hot Right Now, Threatening HBO’s Dominance

But the two women who run the documentary division at the behemoth aren’t worried. “Audiences’ appetite for nonfiction has grown as new funding sources like Kickstarter have emerged, and new formats, like podcasts. At the same time new and affordable technology has helped democratize the medium, and competition has exploded among deep-pocketed platforms hungry for documentary content.” And then there’s Netflix. – The New York Times

More Details Emerge About Why Mosaic Theatre Company Kicked Out Its Founding Artistic Director

Ari Roth was fired from Theatre J after 18 years as an AD, and so he quickly founded his own company – Mosaic. Recently, he resigned under pressure from Mosaic. Why? A liaison with Equity says he is living with an older definition of an AD as someone who can treat staff and others badly, as long as his vision is great: “His defense is that the role of the artistic director has changed. … But everything changes. Everything evolves. We just happen to be living in a time where this imaginary rule that an artistic director’s actions will be tolerated by the people below — that rule no longer exists.” – The New York Times