This past weekend on NPR’s Weekend Edition, Scott Simon talked with David Marcus, a senior contributor to The Federalist and the artistic director of a theater company in New York City, about defunding the National Endowment for the Arts. Go ahead and listen. I’ll wait. And if you’re angry by...
A roundup of articles about the current and recent productions of The Mikado and the controversy surrounding them. Leah Nanako Winkler from Sept 2015: The Mikado in Yellowface is Coming to the Skirball Center of the Performing Arts and We Should Talk About It Howard Sherman from Sept 2015: Putting...
Terror and Courage, Hope and Art We can’t claim to engage our communities in important conversations if we run away from them One of the plays to generate the most interest at our recent National Showcase of New Plays was Pluto, by the prolific and supremely-talented Steve Yockey. An alum...
This afternoon, the New York Times ran a story by Patrick Healy about the producers of Three’s Company & their reaction to 3C, a play by David Adjmi. At issue is the question of copyright and intellectual property, fair use vs. parody and/or transformative, derivative work. Healy cites productions such...
As Adam Feldman pointed out this week on the Time Out New York site: “(Mike) Daisey acknowledged that he had erred in presenting his work—a hard-hitting look at the brutal Chinese labor conditions that underwrite our sleek electronic gizmos—on Ira Glass’s series because ‘the tools of theater are not the...
There are two kinds of light: the glow that illuminates and the glare that obscures. — James Thurber In the rush to parse statements and assign blame this weekend, it seems like we’re missing the point. This isn’t–or shouldn’t be–an attack on Mike Daisey’s art or his ability. What’s on...
Once upon a time, perhaps 15 or 20 years ago, I read a really fascinating article which posited that the arts would get more coverage in the media if they opened themselves up and provided greater access to the media. It suggested that the arts were working too hard to...
Tweets, blogs and other manners of Internet posting have been aflame since this morning, when Charles Isherwood of The New York Times declared online that he wished to forego having to review any further plays by Adam Rapp. In the ensuing hours, Isherwood has been chastised for the tone of...
Alright, I’ve had it and I’m not keeping it to myself anymore. It seems that not a day goes by that a news item appears one place or another announcing that someone famous is considering/acquiring rights/contemplating/dreaming about creating a Broadway show or being on Broadway. Yesterday it was Kara DioGuardi...