Recently by Nancy Malitz
I've been working on a spreadsheet to track wage patterns in U.S.
orchestras, mainly to find a context for the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra's headline-grabbing news
as its Sunday night contract deadline looms. The
highest offer on the table, from the Detroit musicians themselves, puts their 2010-11 salary at $22,650 less than they made in 2009-10. That's a cut of 22 percent.
The lowest offer, from management, drops salary by $34,450, a cut of 33 percent
in this automobile manufacturing capital blasted by international economic
trends.
The Detroit orchestra's downturn, combined with recent
salary concessions at most orchestras in response to the Great Recession, might suggest the possibility of a historic
decline for orchestras generally.
1. There will be 10 orchestras in the $100,000-plus group this year, with the top six -- in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston -- well ahead of the pack. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and New York Philharmonic are also pouring money into television, web subscriptions and HD broadcasts to strengthen their appeal to global audiences. (Click charts to enlarge.)
2. The first among peers in the $100,000-plus group enjoy not only higher pay, but also higher growth rates, than the others in this category. Thus salary gaps within this echelon will continue to widen. Here's more on that:
Continue reading Orchestra wages show vitality and volatility.
Men play the roles of women often enough in Shakespeare's plays, a nod to the Elizabethan tradition. It's rare to see the tables turned, but here it is: Seana McKenna, Canada's Stratford Shakespeare Festival announced today, will be Richard III next summer.
Now there's something this great actress can sink her teeth into. A veteran of 19 years on that festival's stage, she is currently playing Paulina in "The Winter's Tale" with her usual crystal clarity for Shakespeare's rhythm and intent. As Phèdre and Medea and Andromache in the past, McKenna has been commanding. But given the festival's recent tendency to program fewer of the great tragedies, not to mention American classics by Albee and Williams that provide such rich material for female actors past the ingenue stage, I was wondering what would become of her.
The best female in a male Shakespearean role I ever saw was a slip of tweenage girl at the Interlochen Festival of the Arts more than a decade ago. She was the sour steward Malvolio in "Twelfth Night."
Her delivery of the letter scene, in which Malvolio convinces himself he's loved by the mistress of his household, had me helpless with laughter. I can't even tell you her name, but I'll bet she finds inspiration in today's news.
McKenna has long held Richard III to be a dream role, according to the director, Miles Potter, who is her husband. There have been a few other female Richards: Pamela Rabe played him in a 2009 Sydney Theatre Company production of "The War Of The Roses," an adaptation of eight Shakespeare's plays; the Globe Theatre's all-female version ran in 2003. But this production will be otherwise conventional, performed in rep with "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "Titus Andronicus" and "Twelfth Night."
Shakespeare's Katherina of Padua is outrageous, hostile and terribly funny, and "The Taming of the Shrew" is a great game of wits as long as the game seems fair. But there's the rub for modern audiences. Never mind that the shrew was a stock character with a stock remedy. You can feel the squirming begin as Kate is systematically humiliated, muddied, starved and sleep-deprived.
Faced with the prospect of half an audience pleading, "Say it ain't so!" as Kate kneels for peace, her hand below her husband's foot, what's a producer to do?
Chicago Shakespeare Theatre has tried something new with Neil LaBute, a playwright who knows a thing or two about sexual politics in the modern era.
Continue reading LaBute's no-surrender 'Shrew'.
Once more there is a conversation in the NYtimes.com ArtsBeat blog between critics of different disciplines, in this case Charles Isherwood and Alastair Macaulay, on the subject of the Broadway dance musical "Come Fly Away," choreographed by Twyla Tharp to music of Frank Sinatra. I have been lapping it up.Isherwood has called "Come Fly Away" a "major new work" of theater, and Macaulay has decried its dance as "intimacy perverted into exhibitionism." I am interested in the discussion that is developing over the nature of Tharp's work, for what it is and what it isn't, breakthrough or compromise, as judged from the perspective of these critics who write about related but different genres. Here's the link to the conversation, best read from the bottom up.
For the record, I saw "Come Fly Away" in one of its last previews. I found it exhilarating, and I would have been happy to tell you why over a bottle of wine after the show. But because I was a
Continue reading Crossing genres: a critical dance.
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