“When I was doing tours of musicals in America I really wanted to do St. Joan and The Cherry Orchard, and people would turn around and laugh and say, ‘Honey, that’s not for you’.” Now that, in her 70s, she’s won an acting Emmy, “I’m keeping myself in good health because I want that great [dramatic] part on Broadway and then I’ll be really satisfied.”
Tag: 12.15.09
Broadway Service Workers Could Go On Strike
“A group of more than 260 workers on Broadway – cleaners, porters and matrons (bathroom attendants) at some 30 theaters – inched closer to the possibility of a strike on Tuesday afternoon. A unanimous vote … gave the union bargaining committee the authority to settle or strike.”
Another Problem With Multitasking: Less Focus And Self-Control
New research out of Stanford Univ. found that subjects who did the most multitasking “had difficulties, compared to the low media-multitasking group, when asked to ignore information that was in the environment or in their recent memory. They also had greater trouble relative to their counterparts when asked to switch rapidly between two different tasks.”
Grade Inflation Is An Inflated Concern: Researchers
“Looking through an economic prism, the authors [of the study] interpret grades in part as marketplace signals. With two exceptions, they see the gradual grade increases they found as mostly harmless, a practice that ‘is costless’ to faculty and ‘makes students happy’.”
Before Brokeback: Gays In the Old West
“[A]s a new series at the Autry National Center [in L.A.] shows, the presence of homosexuals and transgender individuals in the American West is much older than the movie might lead you to think. It is, in fact, almost as old as the West itself.” The series, called “Out West,” includes “a gallery tour, panel discussions, lectures and performances to be rolled out in four installments over the course of 12 months.”
Still Usable? Dickens’ Toothpick Fetches $9,150 At Auction
“An authentication letter from Dickens’s sister-in-law says the author of Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol used the toothpick up to his death in 1870.”
Fresno Metropolitan Museum Appears On Brink Of Closure
“The problem is the same one that has plagued the museum since its downtown building reopened in November 2008 after a three-year, $28 million renovation: too many expenses, not enough money. Met officials said … donations and grants, the lifeblood of any nonprofit, privately supported museum, have slowed to a trickle.”
House Votes To Muffle Commercials’ Ear-Splitting Volume
“Irritated by loud commercials, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., drafted the measure after discovering it was a common complaint with the Federal Communications Commission.
Right now, the government doesn’t have much say in the volume of TV ads. It’s been getting grievances about commercial loudness for decades.”
Biden Hosts Movie, Music Honchos In Piracy Roundtable
“The first such gathering ever held, it included cabinet secretaries, the government’s ‘copyright czar’ Victoria Espinel, as well as studio chiefs, media lobbyists, union leaders and legal experts.” The vice president “said he continues to raise the issue of copyright theft and its impact on economies with every foreign leader he meets.”
The Orchestra That Refuses To Die
“Prince George’s struggling symphony orchestra shouldn’t even exist. It has a mammoth $250,000 deficit. It will lose another $95,000 when the B.C. government slices its arts budget. … But the struggling orchestra in the hard-scrabble northern B.C. town refused to die. If the people wouldn’t come to the symphony, the symphony decided it would go to the people.”