Porter Square MBTA Station almost all to myself...

Porter Square MBTA Station almost all to myself..., originally uploaded by arthennessey.

Moon and Window II

Moon and Window II, originally uploaded by arthennessey.

"You Can't Do That!"

Broadway Producer Kevin McCollum is interviewed by Brendan Kiley in The Stranger:

My shows initially sound impossible. If it sounds like a sure thing, I run away. Theater is an inconvenient business, and you have to surprise people. I am an enemy of cynicism, and the cynicism comes when you aim too low. I love shows that, on paper, make people say: "What? You're going to put puppets on Broadway? You're going to put a drug dealer on Broadway? These people have AIDS! You're going to produce an entire show about a guy who just plays a record? You can't do that!"

Public Art and Parking

While Tom Garvey and Greg Cook take on public art in their respective corners, talk radio hosts are making hay of this article by Jen Thomas on the Wicked Local Cambridge blog:

Starting this week, the city of Cambridge has been handing out redesigned parking ticket envelopes that feature a revamped method of receiving a parking citation. Part of a public works project called “Crossing Non-Signalized Locations,” the envelopes adorned with yoga poses are an attempt to bring out the poetry in parking enforcement.

“The idea is to take something out of an interaction that has some sort of tension to it and give those kinds of communication an alternative quality to them,” said Lillian Hsu, the director of public art at the Cambridge Arts Council.

(...)

In addition to the envelopes, the installation includes three other components, all meant to bring warmth and wonder to the world of parking regulations.

“I found the parking officials here to be very extremely smart, grounded and really interesting. And it’s those qualities that were missing from the world of parking enforcement in which they worked,” Peltz (the artist) said.

As part of this project, six new street signs were installed around the city. The signs, written and designed to appear like a regulation street sign, are meant mostly for pedestrians and play off the poetry Peltz found in his reading of the city’s parking code.

“The idea is that people stumble upon them and wonder about them and find them puzzling,” Hsu said.

For example, in response to an existing sign on Inman Street that reads, “If you’re reading this sign, You’re biking the wrong way,” a new sign continues the poem with the phrase “If you’re reading this sign, You’re reading this sign.”

End Day

100_8134, originally uploaded by arthennessey.

What Does Success Look Like?

Anis Shivani has interviews with several leading poets about the state of poetry in America. Here is poet Ron Silliman:

Fifty years ago, there were well under 1,000 poets writing & publishing in English. Today, there are easily over 20,000. A dead-end? Hardly. But what is changing--and unsettling to those who look at poetry without looking at history--is the relation of the poet (and poem) to audience. Writers who want to have just a few poets, each with a mass audience, are doomed to disappointment. But we have not yet articulated in any settled manner what a "successful poetry career" will look like if there are 20 times the number of poets, but perhaps only two or three times the number of readers we had 50 years ago. Every single poet is having to figure this out for him or herself. It's worth keeping in mind that we're in this together.

Reminds me of theater. Every year, programs at universities and conservatories turn out more and more graduates, but the number of Americans who attend theatrical events, (according to the NEA Survey of Public Participation in the Arts,) remains constant or even drops from year to year.

Menemsha, Martha's Vineyard

Menemsha, Martha's Vineyard, originally uploaded by arthennessey.

"Going Places"

Here in the Hub, Victorian America gets the dramatic treatment by two of America's most bankable playwrights.



Above, Debra Wise, Melissa Baroni and Jennie Israel in David Mamet's Boston Marriage at New Repertory Theatre (Photo by Andrew Brilliant/ Brilliant Pictures)

And Sarah Ruhl's take on Victorian ladies coming face to face with the advent of electricity opens this weekend at Speakeasy Stage. Below: Anne Gottlieb and Marianna Bassham in a scene from IN THE NEXT ROOM (or The Vibrator Play). (Photo by Stephen T. Meyer.)



Below is my team's entry into the 48 Hour Film Festival a few years ago - Time Share revolves around three Victorian women and a modern day Victorian scholar. Written, filmed and edited in 48 hours and had to include certain characters props and lines of dialogue. (Amanda and I wrote the screenplay.)

New Looks for Fall

Guess I'm not the only one who has rearranged their corner of cyberspace.

The Arts Fuse and The Hub Review have new looks as well.

Check them out.

Back Further to the Future

Blogger and critic Alison Croggon has some thoughts on the age of the internet critic and the supposed Golden Age of print criticism:

Once upon a time (say, a decade or so ago), it was enough to work for an august masthead like The Age or The Australian to ensure a certain status. It didn't matter if your work was relentlessly mediocre, as were Leonard Radic's reviews in his three grey decades as Age theatre critic. The institution guaranteed status and respect. "Authority", in other words, was vested in an institution rather than in the quality of a critic's work. In the best circumstances, publications gain lustre from the quality of their critics (Michael Billington for The Guardian, Kenneth Tynan for the London Evening Standard). But in the worst, as so often has been the case in Australia, the situation has been the other way around: the critic has been important because of where she is published.

This assumption has seriously disintegrated over the past five years. What we have now is a noisy and merciless marketplace in which a critic's authority has to be earned in every piece of work he writes. And the evolution of serious, engaged and intelligent critical conversation has shown up many established print reputations as the shabby pretences they actually are.

You can read some of Alison's reviews and thoughts on her blog Theatre Notes.

Martha's Vineyard, State Beach...

Martha's Vineyard, State Beach..., originally uploaded by arthennessey.

On South Beach Waves are getting bigger...precursor to Earle?

On South Beach #MV Waves are getting bigger...precursor to Earle?, originally uploaded by arthennessey.