tagged w/ Performing Arts
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Qualche giorno fa vi segnalavamo l’interessante esposizione che si terrà a partire dal prossimo 24 aprile presso il museo Madre di Napoli intitolata “Urban Superstar Show”. L’evento organizzato dalla galleria romana Mondopop sotto la direzione di David Vecchiato promette di essere “…La più esauriente mostra di Urban Art mai presentata in un museo italiano, porta al MADRE alcuni tra i nomi più interessanti della giovane Arte Contemporanea che nasce dalle ultime tendenze delle culture giovanili e urbane…”. E scorrendo la lista degli artisti invitati crediamo che abbia tutte le carte in regola per diventare un importante momento di promozione e divulgazione di una corrente artistica spesso confinata in un circuito di “addetti ai lavori” ed ignorata quindi dal grande pubblico e dagli amanti dell’arte in generale.Qualche giorno fa vi segnalavamo l’interessante esposizione che si terrà a partire... more
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Alzi la mano chi non ha mai sentito parlare di Augusto De Luca. Riproviamo. Alzi la mano chi non ha mai sentito parlare del “Cacciatore di Graffiti“. Siate seri, se siete nostri lettori abituali sapete bene di chi stiamo parlando.
In un vecchio articolo vi avevamo già presentato questo “personaggio” allora agli inizi della sua carriera come “Graffiti Hunter“. In quella occasione vi avevamo parlato della performance condotta con l’ausilio del suo fidato braccio destro Iabo, anche lui ospite di ziguline in una interessante intervista dedicata alla cosiddetta Street Art.
Ebbene, a distanza di un anno, abbiamo voluto conoscere meglio il deus ex machina che ha dato vita ad un vero e proprio “caso” sul web e fuori dal web. Qualche giorno fa tramite skype abbiamo fatto una bella chiacchierata con quello che per noi è diventato il “papà dei graffitari”.
Nell’intervista che segue Augusto De Luca ci ha racconato per bene chi è il “Cacciatore di graffiti“.Alzi la mano chi non ha mai sentito parlare di Augusto De Luca. Riproviamo. Alzi la... more
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artist bio of Arema Arega, Cuban songstress
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"A question that comes up time and again in the theatre world is how critics and practitioners should relate to one another. The rise of theatre blogging has done a great deal to blur the lines between these two camps, due to the fact that more directors, actors and designers are taking to their keyboards to air their opinions, and that the internet allows artists and reviewers to talk more directly than ever before.
Yet, as we can see from this week's blogs, this situation can give rise to a number of quite knotty ethical questions. Rob Weinert-Kendt has been looking back at the argument that erupted a couple of weeks ago when David Cote, the theatre editor of Time Out New York, engaged in a thorough trashing of blogger and playwright George Hunka. Weinert-Kendt is interested in how a relationship in the virtual world can affect matters in the real one; he mentions that the New York Times once commissioned him to review one of Hunka's plays, but eventually spiked it "because George and I were on each other's blogrolls". Weinert-Kendt goes on to wonder what sort of coverage Hunka and his theatre company can now expect from Time Out. Given Cote's attitude, would it be naive to assume Hunka might be treated fairly?
This sense of responsibility incurred by the critic towards the artist is being discussed in a different way by Kris Vire on the Storefront Rebellion blog. He responds to a recent suggestion that in a time of recession, "critics should champion [rather than criticise] theatre in their communities to help save art". This, Vire argues, is nonsense: "It does no one any good to encourage bad theatre … The absolute worst thing we can do as critics is to be soft on a show we didn't enjoy because people worked so hard on it."
Suzy Evans, in a guest post on the Playgoer's blog, agrees. She argues that "just because we're in a recession doesn't mean critics should promote and congratulate poor theatre – that would simply exacerbate the problem". If critics praise bad work, not only will readers lose their faith in the judgment of the writers, artists won't be challenged or motivated to do better.
Many theatre practitioners might actually agree with this. The actor Travis Bedard, who blogs at Cambiare Productions, recently received very mixed reviews for a show he was in. "It is in my best interest to have as rigorous a review of my work as I can get," he wrote. "I may discard some of it as not useful to my future work or as an outlier in reference to this work. But if it's all going to simply be treacley appreciation for 'how hard I tried' I will never be one whit better tomorrow than I am today." In the long run, honesty is far more valuable than flattery."""A question that comes up time and again in the theatre world is how critics and... more
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"Many Seattle theater fans have been regaled, moved and amused by Hana Lass in the past year.
The gifted young actress played an ardent Juliet in Wooden O's "Romeo and Juliet." She also covered several roles in "Crime and Punishment" at Intiman Theatre. She was a blue-nosed gamin and a witch in two Seattle Children's Theatre shows. And her sprightly Ariel graced Seattle Shakespeare Company's "The Tempest."
So what parts will Lass tackle in the coming season?
As of today: none.
"It looks like I'm probably not going to be working for at least a year," says Lass. "It's just a tough time. The crazy thing is, there isn't even much to audition for."
Lass knows what a precarious career she's chosen. And she keeps an office job "in my back pocket" for lean periods.
But compared to the last two years, pickings are dramatically slimmer for even the most-established members of the city's esteemed professional acting pool.
The national economic recession is one obvious reason the employment picture is grim.
Large theaters saw their invested endowment funds tank. Donations to arts groups from individuals, corporations and government agencies are taking a hit.
By most estimates, live theater attendance has not gone in the Dumpster. But it's accelerated the trend of patrons buying fewer multiple-show subscriptions and more pay-as-you-go single tickets.
To reduce costs, ACT Theatre (usually a bastion for local actors) slotted two solo plays into its 2009 season — both with performers from out of town.
Seattle Rep went further, slashing its 2009-2010 budget by a third — a drastic but essential measure, says Rep producing artistic director Jerry Manning, adding the Rep also trimmed office and production staff.
But this season the Rep will offer locals only 20 roles (compared to 40 last season), and some shorter gigs for play readings. "I fought for every acting contract, but the numbers are gruesome," says an apologetic Manning. "But it becomes an institutional question: do you make Draconian cuts and just shut down for a third of your calendar? Or cut corners, but still offer patrons ... a full banquet of plays?"
The actors get it, but also wonder if the right corners are being cut.""Many Seattle theater fans have been regaled, moved and amused by Hana Lass in the... more
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"At the Stratford Arts Festival next weekend, the soliloquies of “Hamlet” will be spoken much as they have been for the last 400 years. But the performance will take place outside what is commonly known here as the Shakespeare Theater. At the audience’s back, the theater will sit, as it has for the bulk of the last quarter-century, boarded and ghostly, its collapsing exterior balcony and weathered teak only hinting at the physical deterioration inside. And the festival’s serene setting, along the Housatonic River, will belie the discord that has roiled for decades over one main question: not “to be or not to be,” but “what to be.”
For 30 years beginning in 1955, this community of 50,000 and its theater were central to the production of Shakespeare in America. But today, the legacy of what the theater once was is running headlong into the reality of what it should become. Like many Shakespearean tragedies, it is playing out against a backdrop of competing political and cultural agendas and disruptive natural forces.
“When it rains, it’s a waterfall in here,” said J. Sibley Law, chairman of the Stratford Arts Commission. Standing in the theater in early July, where daylight was visible through the roof, Mr. Law said the deterioration had grown worse since the last time he visited, several weeks earlier. “When I first started coming in here five years ago, this was like new,” he said, pointing to a warped and rotted dressing table on the stage.
The air was acrid, and the smell of rot, mold and mildew was intense. Below stage level, dressing rooms and what was once a lounge for important visitors were wet, filthy and oozing. There was rust on steel girders that hold up the stage. Items in prop rooms were crusted with corrosion, frozen in time. A backdrop remained half-raised. Catwalks were rotting. Photographs from old performances, including one of Katharine Hepburn and Morris Carnovsky in a 1957 production of “The Merchant of Venice,” were strewn carelessly about the lobby.
“You know, I never saw a performance in here, and I come in and it just makes me sad to see some place like this in this kind of shape,” said Mr. Law, who has overseen the salvage of about 1,000 artworks and props whose value could be as high as $3 million. “This is not an easy fix, and people don’t get it.”
There has been little consensus on the right way to reconstitute the theater since it closed in the mid-1980s, broke and out of benefactors. While some simply want to get the doors open with any kind of entertainment that will turn a profit, there are those who cling to its origins: a summer home for Broadway’s elite to perform Shakespeare and the classics.
In its heyday, the theater showcased a huge roster of stars like John Houseman, Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones. And it helped establish early credentials for the likes of Jane Alexander, Christopher Walken, Julie Taymor and Kelsey Grammer.""At the Stratford Arts Festival next weekend, the soliloquies of “Hamlet” will be... more
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"The full seriousness of the failure of a new box-office system at last year's Edinburgh fringe festival has been revealed with the publication of new accounts.
At the Festival Fringe Society's AGM in Edinburgh yesterday, the board said the failure contributed to losses of £882,407, leaving the organisation in danger of collapse.
The society had appointed the IT company Pivotal Integration to create a new ticketing system. However, its "liquid box office" was suspended the day after it went live, tickets were sent out late and popular shows were overbooked. The system was replaced by one created by ticketing company Red61, extra staff were hired, and by mid-August Pivotal had gone into administration.
Accounts for the year ending 30 November 2008 reveal that income was £2,163,771, while a total of £3,046,178 was spent.
"There's no question we came very close to the edge of the abyss," said Tommy Sheppard, a board member and director of the Stand Comedy Club. "There were times around the turn of the year when we were looking at the cash flow on a week-by-week basis to make sure we had enough money to pay people."
He said a £125,000 loan from Edinburgh council – now repaid – an advance from the Scottish government and funds from the Scottish Arts Council proved to be lifelines, and that the society was now "very much on the mend".
According to the accounts: "The Trustees expect that it will take at least three years to establish an adequate level of reserves." The society has net current liabilities of £671,833 against net assets of £48,442.
Kath Mainland, chief executive of the Festival Fringe Society, said it was now "robust". However, she acknowledged that 2008 was a "difficult year that highlighted what a fragile and vulnerable enterprise the arts can be".""The full seriousness of the failure of a new box-office system at last year's... more
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"It is not especially original, but it's hard not to notice the striking similarities between theatre and organised religion: the communal experience, the gathering together in one place to bear witness; finding a space within a crowd to reflect in silence on one's thoughts; the civic, social and, to an extent, pastoral needs which both can fulfil.
For the ancient Greeks, theatre clearly played an important part in the intellectual and moral life of the city; it's probably reasonable to speculate that the day-long performances of tragedies must have accrued some of the heady atmosphere of the religious trance.
In our contemporary world, a certain amount of ecclesiastical atmosphere has been reintroduced into the theatre. Directors make more of the echoing silences of large spaces, while contemplation and awe are encouraged – at least in certain, more serious, productions on the subsidised stage. Meanwhile, much of what's left of contemporary Christianity seems to have forsaken the same sense of awe and reverence in favour of light-filled modern halls, with barely a nod to traditional religious architecture.
Some of the most successful avant garde work seems to be aiming to recapture this sense of the austere for a secular audience. Consider Franko B performing I Miss You! at the Tate Modern – in the midst of this cultural cathedral, a naked figure bleeds slowly, dripping on to a white cloth. Even taking into account its secular intent, the resonances don't need spelling out.
It is fascinating that while theatre and performance have a long history of challenging the teachings of organised religion, the spaces and resonances that they are now adopting seem to owe so much to its history.""It is not especially original, but it's hard not to notice the striking similarities... more
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Nigerian dancer, Qudus Onikeku shares his amazing journey around several African countries, as he and his partner perform impromptu dance pieces in open public spaces. These unannounced street performances, Qudus explains, are a way of taking the art back to the people who inspired it, but rarely get to see. He stretches his talent beyond the reach of the exclusive foreign stages and elites that he normally performs for, and connects with the common man on the street.
"I am an artist, not an activist" he explains. As reluctant as Qudus may be to take on the title of "activist", he does have and well informed and conscious voice full of opinions on the political situation in Nigeria. Watch what he has to say here with Sahara Reporters!Nigerian dancer, Qudus Onikeku shares his amazing journey around several African... more
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"Guthrie theatergoers settling in for "Caroline, or Change" this spring assumed they were getting a musical. Did they get an opera?
Even though the show came from Broadway and not the Metropolitan Opera, Greta Oglesby's title character opened the show in song, and, as the curtain fell, nary a line had been spoken. Where was Tony Kushner's Tony-nominated "book"?
In a world of "Les Misérables," "Sweeney Todd," "Miss Saigon" and the current Broadway hit "Next to Normal," does the old-school definition of opera as "drama set to music" require a fresh look?
"The lines have become blurred," said composer Ricky Ian Gordon, whose "The Grapes of Wrath" had its 2007 premiere at Minnesota Opera. "I feel like both forms are mutating. Everyone on every level is experimenting on both forms, and what we have are a lot of interesting hybrid pieces being born."
"Frankly, for me as a practitioner, those questions hold about as much relevance as the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin," said Ben Krywosz, artistic director of Nautilus Music-Theater, a Twin Cities troupe dedicated to the genre.
Oh, thanks for destroying my story.
"It matters to producers and audiences," Krywosz added hastily. "There would have been a whole different hoopla around 'Caroline, or Change' if they were positioning that as an opera. Suddenly, the Guthrie is doing an opera, and what's that all about? That's where producers need to be careful about who their audience is. There are many people who wouldn't come if they called it an opera."
Bradley Greenwald, who sang the role of the father in "Caroline," agreed. "I know they do," he said of theatergoers who run away when they see the opera label."""Guthrie theatergoers settling in for "Caroline, or Change" this spring assumed they... more
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"It’s time once again for that theatrical roulette known as the New York International Fringe Festival, which runs Friday through Aug. 30: spin the wheel and if you’re lucky you’ll hit a winner, though you may well come away feeling as if you’ve just spent $15 to see someone’s bad idea. That’s what I felt after my initial Fringe exposure.
I found myself sitting in the Fringe “Welcome Meeting” along with scores of other people who had plays in the 2002 festival. I had submitted a mini-musical I’d written called “Not Herself Lately,” and, to my naïve surprise, it had been accepted. Only later did I realize that, at least back then, you could submit the instruction manual for a washing machine and it would be accepted, as long as you had the required “participation fee” (this year, $550). My “Not Herself Lately” was a musical about a female serial killer. At the welcome meeting, we went around the room, each participant giving a brief summary of his or her show. By the time my turn came, there had already been two other shows about female serial killers, including one musical. Sigh.
Since then I’ve absorbed a bit more of the Fringe culture (in 2004 I had another show in the festival, a stage version of “The Last Detail”) and now know the keys to mounting a successful Fringe show:
Since no ticket buyer can possibly plow through the more than 200 offerings and make a reasoned, nuanced selection, the best way to get people into your show is to put the word “Naked” in your title, whether or not anyone is naked, or at least to strongly imply in your show description that nakedness is available. This year there will almost surely be good crowds for the likes of “Dream Lovers” (“Are they having dream sex in their fantasy or fantasy sex in their dreams?”), “Porn Rock: The Musical” (“This provocative, sexy, multimedia rock ’n’ roll extravaganza invites you to join the party”) and “Sex and the Holy Land” (“a stereotype-shattering sexploration of Israel”). Also, “Spermalot: The Musical” and “State of Undress” (www.theimpulseinitiative.com).
No one wants to think too hard in 90-degree weather, so titles with pop-culture references that promise easy laughs are always good. Most likely to deliver mindless entertainment this year: “Pie-Face: The Adventures of Anita Bryant,” “George and Laura Bush Perform Our Favorite Sitcom Episodes” (www.georgeandlaurabushperform.com) and “Clemenza and Tessio Are Dead.”
Savvy playwrights know that people love animals. Domestic or wild; furry or leathery. Thus this year offers “Be the Dog” (“Celebrate a world of complex human relationships unearthed by one simply exuberant dog”), “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!” (“The siren call of a mysterious cock lures an excitable, debt-ridden landowner on a quirky journey of discovery”), “Cephalopod: A Play Below Sea Level” (“Mary struggles to stay afloat amid her pot-smoking Jewish mother, squid scientist husband and the tides of loss”) and “Elephant in the Room” (which actually seems to be about an obese woman, but elephant-lovers won’t realize that till after they’ve bought tickets).
So by those standards, I should have titled my first play “Not Her Naked Self Lately: A Musical That Might Have Kittens In It,” or perhaps “Not Herself Lately, and Not Kate Gosselin Either.”""It’s time once again for that theatrical roulette known as the New York... more
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"Experimental theater in L.A. is getting a significant financial boost thanks to a $1-million grant to Center Theatre Group's new play production program from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The three-year grant will be used to develop stage productions with L.A.-based artists that use new technologies and a non-textual approach to performance, said CTG in its announcement Wednesday.
The nonprofit theater, which includes the Ahmanson, the Mark Taper Forum and the Kirk Douglas Theatre, will establish three categories to distribute the grant money. One program will offer three large-scale commissions for original non-text-based pieces; another will provide completion funds to projects that have already started but need additional financial support.
The third program will establish an "innovation fund" that will allow CTG to respond to the needs of projects involving unusual approaches to theater, including the use of new media and other technologies.
One of the early beneficiaries of the Mellon grant will be a commission for Phil Soltanoff, artistic director of New York's Mad Dog Theatre Company, to produce a new work with an L.A.-based ensemble that will be performed at the Douglas.
In a statement, CTG artistic director Michael Ritchie said the new commissions "will give us the opportunity to work with individuals and organizations that we haven’t collaborated with in the past."""Experimental theater in L.A. is getting a significant financial boost thanks to a... more
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"At the end of the opening night of the Collaboraction production of Migdalia Cruz’s “El Grito del Bronx” [REVIEW] at the Goodman Theatre, the actor Eddie Torres took the stage for the usual post-show thanks and party announcement. But he had something unusual to add: Anyone who didn’t feel like they had enjoyed the evening’s show should now make their way to a table in the lobby, where they could pick up a refund for what they’d spent on their tickets.
Cash money on the spot.
For “El Grito del Bronx,” which closed last weekend, was the pilot project of a unusual new endeavor from the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, wherein the funder decided to cover the cost of Collaboraction offering a money-back guarantee.
Torres is a Chicago actor with a very warm and kind face. As he made his speech, he spoke gingerly about the money-back guarantee. Clearly, he was embarrassed. The audience sensed the awkwardness of the moment and responded with a collective “A-w-w-w,” as if to say, en masse, that the speech was unnecessary and no arts supporter in his or her right mind would even think about being so tacky.
Let us stipulate that the Driehaus Foundation is a vital and well-informed part of the Chicago theater. Many of the shows I currently recommend are produced by theaters that benefit from Driehaus largesse. Without Driehaus funding and its quiet management help, the off-Loop scene would be much the poorer.
But I hope the money-back guarantee dies a quick death, never to return. It’s not that I’m opposed to money-back guarantees in general—I recently took Home Depot up on a similar offer. But a piece of art is not a light fixture. And I think that such a speech is beneath the dignity of a fine artist like Torres.
It’s a bit like watching an actor leap down from the stage and start clearing tables. Those in the audience know about economic realities, but it still makes us uncomfortable. We don’t like to see those who bare their souls for an audience’s edification and enjoyment have to stoop to such things.
And although I had my problems with “El Grito del Bronx,” which I did not recommend, no reasonable person could have failed to see the effort, heart and craft behind that show. Nobody was making much money. Indeed, this wasn’t about the making of money. Demonstrably, this was a very personal endeavor on the part of everyone involved. Any thus I think anyone demanding a refund was being unreasonable.""At the end of the opening night of the Collaboraction production of Migdalia Cruz’s... more
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"Arena Stage has received a $1.1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to create the American Voices New Play Institute, an initiative to help further new play development within American theater.
The new org will become a focal point of Arena's renovated facility, slated to open next year. D.C. playwright Karen Zacarias ("The Book Club Play") will be the first resident playwright under the new program.
The institute will become a center for research and development of practices, programs and processes for new play development, Arena said. It will build on previous initiatives by the company under a.d. Molly Smith to emphasize American works, including the hosting of the National Endowment for the Arts' New Play Development Program.
Smith said the new play initiative will begin operation with a suite of interrelated programs, including playwright residencies, new-works producing fellowships and annual aud enrichment seminars.
In addition, the institute will host national new work showcases, new play development symposia and establish a "wisdom bank" -- an Internet-based clearinghouse of information and multimedia relevant to the infrastructure required to develop and produce new plays.
The NEA project is led by Arena associate a.d. David Dower, who with Smith will guide the institute in partnership with Georgetown U.'s theater department.
Smith said the one-year producing fellowships will expand the scope of Arena's current fellowship program to immerse budding artistic producers in the practices of creating, resourcing and managing new play development. They will be designed with help from execs at New York City's Foundry Theater.
Arena's $100 million-plus Mead Center for American Theater is slated to open in fall 2010. It will house Arena's two existing performance spaces, the Fichandler and the Kreeger, plus a new 200-seat black box space called the Kogod Cradle.""Arena Stage has received a $1.1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to... more
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"Why do we go to theatre? For lots of reasons; but one of them is obviously to see star actors in great plays. Which explains the figures recently released by the Society of London Theatre, showing that attendances at straight plays in the first half of 2009 are up by 19% on the previous year. No big surprise there when you look at what's been on offer: Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in Waiting for Godot, Jude Law in Hamlet, Ken Stott in A View from the Bridge, Helen Mirren in Phèdre. To that we can now add Rachel Weisz in A Streetcar Named Desire, which is causing a box office stampede at the Donmar.
But what can we learn from all this? Mark Lawson recently argued that it showed the economic crisis was making managements more conservative and that there was a flight from the new and the risky. Now Mark is a good man with whom I normally agree, but here I beg to differ. First, I don't think there's anything reactionary about audiences craving to see Shakespeare, Racine, Beckett, Miller and Williams. Secondly, in the short time since Mark wrote his piece two new plays have appeared, which shows there is a comparable appetite for living writers. Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem, running close to three-and-a-half hours, has been packing out the Royal Court. Meanwhile, Lucy Prebble's Enron has been raising a storm in Chichester, which I guarantee will be repeated when it moves to the Court in September.
But what do Jerusalem and Enron have in common? One, after all, is a lament for the decline of rural England. The other is a sharp analysis of the corporate crisis. What unites the two plays, apart from their epic scale and superlative productions, is that both are built around phenomenal star parts and performances.
Audiences are hungry for new plays that deal with big issues and provide fat lead roles. I am not anti-ensemble, and I always hesitate to tell dramatists what to do. But history proves that the plays that endure are those that provide rich gifts for actors. That's why John Osborne's The Entertainer – coming to Manchester's Royal Exchange this autumn – is never out of the repertory. Or why Pinter's plays, with Jonathan Pryce doing The Caretaker in Liverpool in October, are ceaselessly revived. Or why Peter Shaffer's Amadeus will never die.""Why do we go to theatre? For lots of reasons; but one of them is obviously to see... more
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"Doctor Johnny Long has a PHD, only not of the seven-years'-study-and-thesis variety. Long is a porn star, and his "PHD" stands for "pretty huge dick". Yes, it's pretty basic stuff, but that's kind of the level in Porn: The Musical, part-funded by Cameron Mackintosh, and one of many fringe shows on the subject of sex and all things related.
Sex is always a hot ticket here: with more than 2,000 shows vying for audiences's attention, a poster featuring naked buttocks and the word "porn" is naturally going to get at least a double-take. But this year's recession-hit fringe is more sex-crazed than ever. The Chippendales are on at the Gilded Balloon; Jane Austen's Guide to Pornography is at the Zoo Southside; porn star Ben Dover is billing himself "innocent till proven filthy" at the Underbelly; and Ashley Hames, sometime reporter for cable TV sex show Sin Cities, is at the Pleasance Courtyard telling some disturbing tales about his adventures with "sexual astronauts".
For some, this glut of sex-related shows points to increasing commercialism. Richard Demarco, the veteran theatre promoter and one of the festival's founders, has worried that: "If it's not careful, the fringe will soon be associated with Las Vegas." But audiences don't seem to mind – there have been queues around the block for the Chippendales, Porn: The Musical and Ashley Hames, whose show opens with a sickening clip showing Hames having his scrotum nailed to a board by a Parisian dominatrix, and moves on to alcohol enemas apparently delivered for fun.
Both shows carry warnings and are recommended for over-18s only, but the explicit content has proved too much for some. An entire row got up and left Hames's show after 10 minutes, while others chose to quit Porn: The Musical shortly after the first lewd (if semi-obscured) coupling of Doctor Long and Sanddy "with a double D". Audience members Harry and Ruth, both students, told me they'd had enough of sexual excess on the fringe: "If I hear one more joke about penises," Ruth said, "I may just explode."""Doctor Johnny Long has a PHD, only not of the seven-years'-study-and-thesis variety.... more
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"If you are looking for a sign of how strapped the University of California, Los Angeles, is for cash, consider that its arts and architecture school may resort to holding a bake sale to raise money. California’s severe financial crisis has left its higher-education system — which serves nearly a fifth of the nation’s college students — in particularly bad straits. But tens of thousands of students at public and private colleges and universities around the country will find arts programs, courses and teachers missing — victims of piercing budget cuts — when they descend on campuses this month and next.
The arts are of course not the only victims of the recent economic meltdown. Large reductions in budgets have stung pretty much every corner of academia, from philosophy to Chinese, from gymnastics to geology.
Crowded classes may not be as harmful in lecture courses, but in creative and performing studios, increasing class size is not always an option, he added. “You can’t teach painting to 40 students or give that many students voice lessons in opera or jazz.”
Several other college arts administrators around the country also said programs that serve the surrounding community as well as the students — like museums and performing arts centers — are especially vulnerable.""If you are looking for a sign of how strapped the University of California, Los... more
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"Long before tonight's opening of that most epic of Seattle Opera productions — the "Ring" cycle — a college student out to demystify the Wagner saga for other young people already has filmed an online reality series: "Confessions of a First-Time Operagoer."
A few blocks down the street, under a large multicolored tent, dozens of school kids leap and tumble at circus camp — for many, their first exposure to another local arts organization, Teatro ZinZanni.
And at the Olympic Sculpture Park downtown, a recent event designed to attract young people included a dance party with DJs, interactive displays of video art and nighttime tours led by guerrilla artists.
As core arts audiences grow older and attendance declines among young people, big arts organizations across the country are reaching out to potential new audiences in innovative ways. Seattle has become a center for this kind of outreach.
The attempts to create a broader base of attendees are taking many forms and using many tools, from reality TV-style webcasts to social-networking sites, dance nights and scavenger hunts.
Of course, arts organizations have conducted educational and outreach activities for years. Many offer discounted tickets for younger attendees, and a program called Teen Tix allows teenagers to get $5 rush tickets at many Seattle-area arts venues.
But now, "there's a real shift in the way that people connect to arts activities," said Dwight Gee, executive vice president of ArtsFund, which raises money for the arts in Western Washington.
A National Endowment for the Arts survey conducted last year showed that arts audiences in general are older than they were 26 years ago and that the rate of attendance among 18- to 44-year-olds has declined.
Some arts organizations maintain their audiences aren't graying, saying participation remains more of a time-of-life issue — that people trying to build careers and raise kids are less likely to attend arts events.
In any case, to Kelly Tweeddale, Seattle Opera's executive director, a more interesting issue is how behavior has changed among different age groups.
People don't just decide one day to go to the opera, she said. It takes exploration and exposure. And increasingly, younger people want that exposure through Web videos or audio downloads, and to know via social-networking tools what their friends think, before they'll go to a live performance.
"That's very different from our core audience who go to a Web site and look for basics — the who and where — and who use traditional media," Tweeddale said. "It's a huge behavior shift."
Without building a highly engaged community, this idea of building audiences — it just doesn't happen,"""Long before tonight's opening of that most epic of Seattle Opera productions — the... more
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"It has seemed like old times in the Theater District recently. The Shubert Theatre is sizzling with the touring production of “Jersey Boys.’’ The Commonwealth Shakespeare Company is back on Boston Common, frolicking in “The Comedy of Errors.’’
Add an earlier summer production of “The Color Purple’’ at the Wang and the fact that the Wilbur is now home to the Comedy Connection and you might get the impression that the recession is over and the performing arts are thriving again in Boston. Restaurants are hopping, even on weekdays. If there isn’t Broadway-style buzz in downtown Boston, at least there’s palpable energy, rather than the depression of empty streets and marquees advertising long-shuttered shows.
Beyond the quality of these shows is the hope that they represent a return to the days when a healthy theater scene and a bustling downtown feed off each other. The theatrical engine driving that dynamic has been Broadway Across America, operating the Colonial, Opera House, and Charles, where Blue Man Group is ensconced now and seemingly forever.
it would be nice to think that “Jersey Boys’’ and “The Comedy of Errors’’ - together with Broadway Across America, the Cutler Majestic, and the Stuart Street Playhouse - represent the beginning of a performing arts renaissance downtown. And there’s still the reopening of the Paramount, sometime in the future. Citi is now part of a consortium investing in new theatrical shows that, presumably, will make their way to Boston.
So there’s certainly hope. It was less than 30 years ago that the Colonial and Wang were really the only theatrical venues booking shows downtown. The scene shifts along with the economy. And with the vision of a few determined producers.""It has seemed like old times in the Theater District recently. The Shubert Theatre is... more
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