Monday, April 15, 2013

Worth A Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Was Shakespeare a tax dodger? Bard was 'ruthless businessman who exploited famine and faced jail for cheating revenue'

Mail Online: It sounds like the sort of character who would have been deeply unpopular in one of his plays. William Shakespeare was a 'ruthless businessman' and tax dodger, researchers have claimed. Although he wrote plays that championed the rights of the poor and the needy, archived documents show the playwright was actually a wealthy landowner repeatedly dragged before the courts and fined for illegally stockpiling food and threatened with jail for evading taxes.



Suzy Lee Weiss: To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me

 WSJ.com: Like me, millions of high-school seniors with sour grapes are asking themselves this week how they failed to get into the colleges of their dreams. It's simple: For years, they—we—were lied to. Colleges tell you, "Just be yourself." That is great advice, as long as yourself has nine extracurriculars, six leadership positions, three varsity sports, killer SAT scores and two moms. Then by all means, be yourself! If you work at a local pizza shop and are the slowest person on the cross-country team, consider taking your business elsewhere. What could I have done differently over the past years?
 

Religious protests greet Broadway play's first performance

News - The Stage: The world premiere of Colm Toibin’s stage play The Testament of Mary, a one-woman show starring actress Fiona Shaw and directed by Deborah Warner, was marred by protests on Thursday, March 26, the night of the production’s first Broadway preview. The protesters were members of the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, a not-for-profit organization with its national headquarters in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, “concerned about the moral crisis shaking the remnants of Christian civilization”, as noted on the TFP website.
 

Is Audition-Room Privacy Dead?

www.backstage.com: A planned auction of 54 VHS tapes featuring early auditions by actors Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sandra Bullock, and many others has touched off a fit of handwringing in the casting community and endangered the age-old idea of the audition room as sacred space. On April 5–6, Julien’s Auctions of Beverly Hills will put the tapes up for sale, some with suggested values as high as $2,000–$4,000. Darren Julien and Martin Nolan appeared on NBC’s “Today” March 29 to publicize the auction and claimed that the tapes were being sold by three casting directors who wished to remain anonymous. But the tapes are widely believed to have come from CDs Jane Jenkins and Janet Hirshenson, who cast most of the projects associated with the auditions. Letterhead from their office can be seen in the catalog for the auction. Kathleen York, whose auditions for the films “Jersey Girl” and “Ransom” are included in the auction, is confident that the tapes come from Jenkins and Hirshenson.
 

Politics Spills Onto Stage in Budapest

NYTimes.com: Draw a triangle on the map of Budapest. At one corner, atop the Millennium Column in Heroes’ Square, rises an angel. A few kilometers away at the apex, built like a boat about to sail into the Danube, stands the Hungarian National Theater.

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