"Chicago-based dramatist Marisa Wegrzyn has won the 2009 Wasserstein Prize for her new play, Hickorydickory." The award, which also includes a reading at New York's Second Stage Theater, is given "for an outstanding script by a young woman who has not yet received national attention."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
The Washington Post's classical critic answers ten questions about the decade past, covering such issues as the decline of record labels, the rise of the Web, hits (in both senses) at the box office, and the trajectory of classical radio. And she predicts the future. ("Classical music will survive. I predict that.")...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
What with the movie, the Mayan calendar, and the solar-galactic-alignment thing, one NASA astronomer has "been getting about 20 letters and e-mail messages a day from people … scared out of their wits," seriously wondering if they should euthanize themselves and loved ones before the end of the world less than three years hence. So the agency "felt it was prudent to provide a resource."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"For all the fun we have with them, illusions do serious work in illuminating how our brains work, and in particular how perception works. They may also help us understand how consciousness developed, and tell us about our 'neuro-archaeology'."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
There's a "reprehensible message" underlying most war-themed video games: "Killing foreigners on behalf of one's country is one hell of a good time." But Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is "a first-person shooter that plays as a tragedy, not a power fantasy[,] … a murder simulator that won't let you forget the nature of your actions."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
The British actor played Robert McCall, the title character of the CBS detective series, from 1985 to 1989. He also starred in the films The Wicker Man and Breaker Morant....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
Synchronicity Performance Group planned an extremely tight budget for 2009-10, and the company couldn't sustain the loss it took on its children's play Bunnicula, about a vampire rabbit. "As a result, Synchronicity has cancelled the last two shows of its season: Sarah Ruhl's Dead Man's Cell Phone and The Brand New Kid, a family show."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Nothing. (laughter) No, it was a joke in the dressing rooms at Judson. We were all naming categories of visual art practitioners and someone said, 'We were doing postmodern dance at Judson.' We all cracked up and no one countered us."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"We might call a fickle, changeable acquaintance a chameleon, but the true champions of camouflage turn out to be cephalopods - octopuses, cuttlefish and squid. Unlike a chameleon, an octopus can duplicate the colour and texture of almost anything."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"A contact lens that harvests radio waves to power an LED is paving the way for a new kind of display" - graphics transmitted right onto the lens and into its wearer's field of vision. Uses might "include subtitles when conversing with a foreign-language speaker, directions in unfamiliar territory and captioned photographs."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"How many tweets does it take to cover the entire span of opera history? The San Diego Opera wants to find out and has launched a Twitter project in which it will tweet about everything from Monteverdi to Mozart to Philip Glass on a daily basis. With more than 400 years to cover - and at a rate of two tweets per day - the project could take years to finish."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Where hard-line Abstract Expressionists shunned figural elements in their work, Mr. Kriesberg used them lavishly. As a result, he was often called a Figurative Expressionist; the term applied to midcentury Expressionists whose work was not strictly abstract."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Google has scaled back its digital book plans after submitting a revised settlement with industry regulators following pressure from European and Asian governments. The amended settlement proposes Google will only digitise books copy-protected in the US or published in the UK, Canada and Australia - a significant reduction on its original plans." (New Zealand is ticked off.)...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"German book publishers - angered at being included in the Google Books Settlement without being consulted - voiced concern Sunday that they had now been excluded."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"Thanks to what was billed as the largest individual philanthropic gift made to a cultural institution in the bay area, the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center will be renamed the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts." The donation is thought to be upwards of $20 million....
ArtsJournal
mclennan
He covered music and dance for the paper as a staff critic from 1960 to 1986 and later as a freelancer. "From 1963 to 1965, when he was the chief dance critic of The Times, he championed avant-garde groups, often to the consternation of mainstream ensembles, and advocated for multimedia presentations and other innovations."...
ArtsJournal
mclennan
"The people behind a controversial movement known as 'flarf' believe phrases found on the Internet and strung together into poetry provide a critical social commentary. Others," needless to say, "think it's worthless drivel."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"With a $1.25 million policy in force and just an $85,000 mortgage on the building," the owner of the Pocono Playhouse, which burned down last month, "could be in line for a million-dollar payout." It wouldn't be the first time Ralph Miller cashed a big check after a fire at one of his theaters....
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"It seems likely most creditors, especially consignors whose possessions were sold but who have yet to receive payment from Ritchies, are going to come out of the proceedings empty-handed." It appears that "the money Ritchies collected from auction sales was not put in a separate trust account for consignors."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference
"A former Winterthur Museum employee voluntarily turned himself into Delaware State Police today after a theft investigation revealed he had spent more than $100,000 of the museum's money."...
ArtsJournal
http://www.artsjournal.com/criticaldifference