“For years, theaters have transformed Hughes’ original script, adding songs, and changing settings.” At San Francisco’s Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the production “always includes wayward shepherds. They find their way to the baby Jesus by singing songs by musicians who’ve died in the past year.”
Tag: 12.23.09
Senator McCain? Arts Funding Creates Real Jobs
“Artists need and deserve work, just as all Americans do. And their industry is a key engine in our economic recovery. More than 5.7 million jobs in this country are generated by the nonprofit arts sector, and that work touches and enriches the lives of all Americans.”
J.K. Rowling Is Decade’s Top-Selling Author
“With Dan Brown at number three and John Grisham, Danielle Steel and James Patterson also in the top 10, the first literary, or non-genre, author doesn’t emerge until number 37 – Ian McEwan with sales exceeding 4m books. He is just ahead of Sebastian Faulks, the only other literary novelist in the top 50.”
Boys Choir Of Harlem Is No More
“The choir’s last official performance was in 2007, around the time of the death of its founder, Walter J. Turnbull. But no one ever announced that it was gone. … For a famous organization that politicians had vowed would outlive its founder, it had a quiet end.”
Bah! Humbug! The Classics We Hate
“In the spirit of Christmas grumpiness, arts personalities reveal the heritage classics they secretly can’t stand.” Among the contributors are conductor Mark Elder, designer Nicky Haslam, director Jude Kelly, ballet star Edward Watson, novelist A.S. Byatt, and Covent Garden chief Tony Hall.
‘The First Christmas Card Was Dreamed Up By An Art Bureaucrat’
“It was Sir Henry Cole (1808-1882), first director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who – daunted at the thought of writing by hand piles of greetings to his friends – came up with the idea in 1843. That first card represented three generations of an early Victorian family, flanked by scenes of charitable acts, celebrating by drinking goblets of wine.”