What Happened To Cultural Theory? "While Theory has become a humdrum intellectual matter within the humanities and a nonexistent or frivolous one without, it has indeed acquired a professional prestige that is as strong as ever. This is the paradox of its success, and failure. Intellectually speaking, twenty-five years ago Theory was an adventure of thought with real stakes." Now? Butterflies & Wheels 06/27/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 6:13 am
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Russia's Imitation Contemporary Art Scene The sad state of contemporary Russian art is exemplified by the sham Moscow Biennale produced last winter, writes Viktor Misiano. "The biennale was paid for by the Russian government in a clear attempt to create a Western façade for the new Russia. The exhibition was wanted by the government and paid for by the government. It was practically imposed by the government. Some $2 million was spent on the blind reproduction of a Western biennale. Even the timing of the biennale was chosen for purely cynical reasons." The Art Newspaper 06/24/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 7:15 pm
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Met Plans Mozart On A Diet The Metropolitan Opera is planning a reduced 90-minute version of Mozart's "Magic Flute". "The short version (the full version runs more than three hours with intermission) is a test of what could become a new way of attracting audiences, said Joseph Volpe, the opera house's general manager. The performances, to take place in the winter holidays of the 2006-7 season, will be aimed at both children and adults." The New York Times 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 8:40 am
- Met Opera Signs Deals With Musicians, Singers... The Metropolitan Opera has new contracts with the unions that represent musicians, singers and dancers. "Both are five-year contracts that freeze wages for two years, then provide for a 4 percent increase in the third year and 2 percent increases in the fourth and fifth years." Backstage (AP) 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 8:29 am
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Kimmel Cuts Staff, Budget Philadelphia's Kimmel Center (home to the Philadelphia Orchestra, among others) has a $3 million deficit and is cutting 11 staff. "Part of the financial drain is long-term debt. The Kimmel took out a $30 million loan to help bridge the gap between the time pledges to its construction campaign were made and the time they were fulfilled. But only $3 million of the loan has been repaid, and each year the debt costs the Kimmel about $2 million in principal and interest payments. Now Kimmel leaders are trying to raise $90 million to reduce the debt and build an endowment." Philadelphia Inquirer 06/27/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 6:01 am
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Violinist Isidore Cohen, 82 "Isidore Cohen, a violinist who, as a member of the Juilliard String Quartet and the Beaux Arts Trio, was an important chamber music performer and a teacher, died on Thursday in the Bronx." The New York Times 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 6:26 am
A Rarity These Days - DJ Who Shapes Tastes LA disc jockey Nic Harcourt is the tastemaker of the day on his KCRW show Morning Becomes Eclectic. "At a time in radio when D.J.'s generally possess little personality and no responsibility for choosing the music they play, he has emerged as the country's most important disc jockey and a genuine bellwether." New York Times Magazine 06/26/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 7:30 pm
Debating Sartre At 100 Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre would have been 100 last week. "French newspaper and magazine supplements, as well as television panels, radio shows and bookstore displays, utterly swamped the idea, pushed by ideological enemies of bad faith, that 20th-century Europe's most famous philosopher has long since grown passe. Did Sartre hate America or regret it? Was the "freedom" he exalted the same as George W. Bush's? Could the "later Sartre" fairly be dubbed a "godfather of political terrorism"? The tiny, wall-eyed, serial seducer and manuscript producer would have loved every paragraph." Philadelphia Inquirer 06/25/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 3:12 pm
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"Mambo" Cancels Broadway Plans "The Mambo Kings" won't be going to Broadway after all. Producers canceled a planned opening in August. The "lavish" $12 million show was critically panned in a tryout engagement in San Francisco that ended June 19.
Backstage (AP) 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 8:32 am
It's The Theatre That Has Gotten Small... "There's been a predominance of television realism and of a section of the critical culture that demands a moral message from new writing. This is in danger of making theatre about as interesting as muesli. Why would anyone write stage plays now? If you can write dialogue and you can hit a deadline you can write TV. You can write about your south London council estate or your middle class swingers and you can make more money and reach more people and therefore have more impact. Apart from anything else, the denial of the larger stages to living playwrights has made it harder and harder for them to earn a living from writing, as they see their income from royalties dwindle to insultingly low levels." The Guardian (UK) 06/27/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 7:54 pm
Hunting For That Lost Musical Theatre Gem Marshall Fisher is a hunter of lost musicals. "In the middle of his career, Orson Welles said to Cole Porter, 'I want to write a musical' - Around the World in Eighty Days - 'I want to direct it and I'm going to be in it.' Truman Capote wrote House of Flowers with Harold Arlen. John Steinbeck wrote with Rodgers and Hammerstein, who had wanted to make a musical out of Cannery Row. But Steinbeck, classy John Steinbeck, said, 'No, I'm gonna write a sequel specifically for you,' - so he wrote a little novel called Sweet Thursday." The Guardian (UK) 06/27/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 7:49 pm
Billy Elliot - Feet In Two Cultures John Lahr finds himself intrigued by the new "Billy Elliot" musical that has earned raves in London. "The British love musicals; they just don’t do them very well. The problem, it seems to me, is spiritual. The jazz of American optimism, which lends elation and energy to the form, is somehow alien to the ironic British spirit. At its buoyant core, the American musical is the expression of a land of plenty. England, on the other hand, is a land of scarcity—the Land of No, as a friend of mine calls it. Billy Elliot is fascinating because it situates itself precisely on the cultural fault line between the two traits." The New Yorker 06/27/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 7:37 pm
Broadway's Attrition Rate Soars This Week Myriad Broadway shows closed last weekend weekend (including the musical "Brooklyn", the revivals of "La Cage aux Folles" with Robert Goulet, "On Golden Pond" with James Earl Jones and Leslie Uggums, and the limited run of "Mark Twain Tonight!" with Hal Holbrook), this coming Sunday will see seven more shows close... Yahoo! (Reuters) 06/27/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 7:05 pm
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Big Thefts At France's National Library; Curator Questioned About 30,000 books (including about 2000 classified as rare) are missing from France's Biblioteque national, and the library's chief curator is being questioned. "The curator, who has denied the allegations, is the subject of one of half a dozen police inquiries into suspected thefts at the institution, which was founded in the 16th century and, as France's principal copyright and legal deposit library, holds some 35m books, documents, manuscripts, maps, plans and photos." The Guardian (UK) 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 8:08 am
Charge: France's Literary Prizes Rigged The integrity of France's major literary awards were called into question this week by a government anti-corruption probe. "There is an evident risk of a conflict of interest. Moreover, the conditions in which the jury members are recruited or co-opted, often for life, are not exactly transparent, which makes them suspect as a matter of principle. France's major literary awards such as the Prix Femina, the Prix Médicis and - most prestigious of all - the Prix Goncourt have long been accused of rigging their votes, taking it in turns to reward big publishers." The Guardian (UK) 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 8:05 am
In Defense Of Schools Of Writing Are writing MFA programs a waste of time, as Elizabeth Clementson recently asserted? Not exactlywrites Steve Almond: "MFA programs are like any other educational opportunity: what you put in is what you get out. The reason they exist is to help young writers develop the humility and gumption necessary to keep writing in a culture that largely ignores literature. They are welfare states for artists, basically." MobyLives 06/27/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 8:11 pm
- Previously: Do Writing Workshops Kill Good Writing? "In the workshop, the students critique each other's writing and as the comments are bandied about, a "consensus" develops about what does and doesn't "work" in a story. The writer then meshes the "popular" opinions of the group into his or her work, slowly removing the unpopular parts, until the work is readable and accessible to all. More often than not, this process destroys the writer's initial vision, leaving behind a work that is void of passion and anything that is different, new, or creative. Many of world's greatest novels would have never made it through the workshop process." MobyLives 06/20/05
Jordan Bans New Saddam Book The country of Jordan has banned sales of Saddam Hussein's latest book. "The former Iraqi dictator is behind bars and stripped of power but Jordan was anxious enough to ban his tale yesterday, claiming it could damage regional relations. Some 10,000 copies had been printed for this week's launch, a literary and political event authorised by Saddam's daughter, Raghad, who is based in Jordan." The Guardian (UK) 06/27/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 8:03 pm
Poet Laureate: Why No Poetry In UK Secondary Schools? Britain's poet laureate Andrew Motion says he's "bitterly disappointed" that poetry and creative writing are largely missing from English secondary schools curriculum. "He said the government had missed a "magical opportunity" to rescue poetry from oblivion when it rejected recommendations from the former chief inspector of schools." The Guardian (UK) 06/27/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 8:00 pm
The Enduring Success Of Mein Kampf Hitler's Mein Kampf still sells. A few weeks ago a signed copy sold at auction for £23,800. In Turkey, the book hit the bestseller list this year. It was the bestselling book of the 20th Century. "Mein Kampf is still available in the UK and the US, and sells enough to keep itself comfortably in print. Germany, by contrast, has - since 1945 - rigorously banned it. Israel, unsurprisingly, also favours suppression. In 1999 the Simon Wiesenthal Centre prevailed on Amazon not to dispatch copies of Mein Kampf to Germany or anywhere else it is proscribed." The Guardian (UK) 05/27/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 7:57 pm
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Why Has Movie Attendance Plunged? We've Seen Them All Before! Everywhere you look this summer, there are movie remakes and retreads. "Is it any wonder this avalanche of retreads has come at a time when theater attendance is headed toward its lowest level since 1996? Young moviegoers, who make up the bulk of film audiences, crave surprise, sensation and authenticity. So if the multiplexes are full of homogenized pop baubles, why wouldn't more people than ever be happy to stay home and fire up a DVD on their new plasma-screen TV?" Los Angeles Times 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 6:20 am
Rich: Castrating Public Broadcasting Frank Rich writes that "the right's new assault on public broadcasting is toothless, far from it. But this time the game is far more insidious and ingenious. The intent is not to kill off PBS and NPR but to castrate them by quietly annexing their news and public affairs operations to the larger state propaganda machine that the Bush White House has been steadily constructing at taxpayers' expense." The New York Times 06/26/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 7:24 pm
Supreme Court Ruling Will Have Implications On Tech We Can Use Monday's ruling by the US Supreme Court that tech companies can be liable for copyright infringement by those who use their technology will have serious implications for tech development. "While entertainment companies touted the victory as a crystal clear decision about right and wrong business practices, technology groups said they are left with a murky, unclear standard of what it means for a company to encourage, or induce, its customers to infringe copyright, and this will lead to more litigation. 'This really has given a tremendous amount of leverage to content owners to dictate the kind of technology that consumers will have available to them'." Wired 06/27/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 6:46 pm
- Supremes' File-Sharing Decision Isn't The End... Sure, Monday's file-sharing decision by the Supreme Court was unanimous. But it's clear the Big Media companies "didn't win anything like what they had been asking the Supremes for—a rule that would penalize any company that made money off a product widely used for infringement, regardless of what the company intended. And though the technical companies and consumer groups are troubled by the outcome in this case, there's still much to encourage them." Reason 06/27/05
Posted: 06/27/2005 6:44 pm
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Judge Rules Graham Dances Belong To Company A U.S. District Court judge in New York has found that seven Graham dances — including the seminal works "Embattled Garden" and "Phaedra" — belong to the center rather than to Ron Protas, Graham's personal heir." Los Angeles Times 06/28/05
Posted: 06/28/2005 6:23 am
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