Election mashup
Posted on February 27, 2008
Filed Under Personal | Leave a Comment
This video originally appeared on Slate but caught my eye on the Wikinomics blog. (Google Reader brings me a bumper crop of such things to sift through each morning.) It’s a mashup of Reese Witherspoon in the movie Election with footage from the current campaign. (Warning – the clip opens with a short car commercial. That annoys me as much as the clip amuses me.)
Assassins in the news
Posted on February 24, 2008
Filed Under Musical Theater, Professional | Leave a Comment
My favorite musical is in the news today, as reported in Inside Higher Ed:
A student production of Assassins, the award-winning musical, was to have premiered Thursday night at Arkansas Tech University, but the administration banned it — and permitted a final dress rehearsal Wednesday night (so the cast could experience the play on which students have worked long hours) only on the condition that wooden stage guns were cut in half prior to the event and not used.
Habitues of the Chazzyblog know why I’m a fan of Sondheim and Weidman’s Tony-award-winning musical. Its power to provoke both deep emotion and contemplation in spectators is well known to me, having seen several excellent productions and directed the work myself. In September of 2001, the Roundabout Theatre postponed the production of Assassins that was in rehearsal at the time of the 9/11 attacks; indeed, if I were a commercial producer, I might be hesitant to back this piece in that environment. However, the decision of the President of ATU seems indefensible, for reasons the article explores in detail. The comments at the end of the article are equally interesting, including this one:
Despite my anti-violence, anti-gun, peace-loving ideological views, I very much enjoyed the production of Assassins at Arlington Virginia’s award-winning Signature Theater last year. The show is thought provoking and encourages discernment of complex issues — like should happen in a good history, sociology or ethics class discussion or lecture. I believe shows like Assassins help us to be more discrete — to do a better job of understanding complex and distinct things such as those that lead to violence. Application of discretion in this instance in Arkansas might have added pre-and post show discussions of such elements.
Read the article and voice your opinion to the administration of ATU if you feel so moved:
Dr. Robert Brown c/o Susie Nicholson 1509 North Boulder Ave. Russellville AR 72801
Administration Building
e-mail:
rcbrown@atu.edu Dr. Robert Brown, ATU President
georgena.duncan@atu.edu Dr. Georgina Duncan, ATU Dean of Liberal Arts
telephone:
(479) 968-0237 for the president’s office
OR
The Courier (letters to the editor) www.couriernews.com/letters.php
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (letters to the editor) www2.arkansasonline.com/contact/voicesform
The Stages of Bart Sher
Posted on February 24, 2008
Filed Under Musical Theater | Leave a Comment
Fascinating article in the Sunday Times Magazine about director Bartlett Sher, whose staging of “The Light In The Piazza” was just about as perfect as anything I’ve ever seen. I especially enjoyed this bit of insight about the rehearsal process:
“When you’ve worked on something in rehearsal, you have to be brave enough to allow it to be pretty bad and not get overwhelmed by that,” he said. “The thing about directing is it’s really about managing a lot of very mostly damaged people. They’re damaged in incredibly interesting and fantastic ways, including myself. But you have to have a very high level of love for how messy and screwy people are, and not be afraid to get messy when you’re working with them. Everybody is going to have a moment of panic, anxiety and total terror, and the director has to be the sanest person in the room to help everybody through that….”
Perhaps one might be permitted perhaps the teeniest expression of envy at the man’s insight – not to mention his current success.
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