Monday, February 18, 2013

Worth a Look

Here are some posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time:

Robert Wilson's Theatrical Universe

Classical Music - Limelight Magazine: I began to make my first works for the theatre in the late 1960s, and they were all silent. This culminated in a major work that was seven hours long – and also silent. It was written with a 13-year-old African-American deaf-mute boy who had never been to school and knew no words. We were supposed to show it only twice in Paris in 1971 but it was a huge success and we ended up playing for five-and-a-half months to 2,200 people every night in a sold-out theatre. The last thing I had expected was to have a career in the theatre, as my background was in architecture and painting. The work was called Deafman Glance, and the French called it a “silent opera”. I started thinking about it and realised that’s exactly what it was: it was structured silences. That was my beginning.
 


Marianne Elliott: 'Why do something that's run of the mill?'

Stage | The Observer: Marianne Elliott loves a challenge. The director of such high-risk projects as the National Theatre's runaway hit War Horse and its more recent smash, The Curious Incident Of the Dog in the Night-Time, as well as the dark, pared-down Port, which recently opened at the Lyttelton, she has never knowingly opted for a theatrical safe bet.
 


Can a play with a mentally challenged cast be reviewed by critics in the standard way?

The Globe and Mail: On the stage of the Young Centre in Toronto these days, an actor with Down syndrome is confronting audience members with their own prejudice, demanding, “You think I’m retarded? Look at yourself!” Toronto playwright and director Judith Thompson is the hand behind this harrowing moment: She is the director and co-creator of Rare, a show in which nine Down syndrome adults talk about their lives, their pain and their hope. The show, which opened this week, almost defies criticism – Globe and Mail theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck has declined to assign it a star rating while Toronto Star reviewer Robert Crew has given it four stars – but not contextualization.
 


Wing News (February 2013)

americantheatrewing.org: Ben Cameron talks with Alan Brown (of Wolf Brown), Cynthia Hedstrom (of the Wooster Group), and Howard Shalwitz (of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company) about regional theatre’s impact.
 


Judge rules that it's illegal to sell custom Batmobiles because the Batmobile is itself a fictional character

io9.com: California resident Mark Towle runs car customizing shop Gotham Garage, which makes replicas of cars from TVs and movies. Naturally, Batmobiles were on the menu, at least until Warner Bros. smacked Towle with a lawsuit for violating its intellectual property. Now a U.S. District Court Judge Ronald Lew judge has ruled that the Batmobile is subject to copyright because the Batmobile is itself a fictional character in the Batman franchise.

No comments: