Articles
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Page 427
"Dancing Dead' by Brian Sanders
Waiting for Sanders to evolve
In Dancing Dead, choreographer Brian Sanders has developed a brilliant and original concept. Still, if you've seen one Sanders piece, you've seen the limits of his movement vocabulary.
Articles
4 minute read
Eric Singel's "The Wedding Consultant' at Walnut Studio 3
If you've seen one wedding….
Writer/performer Eric Singel rounds up every warmed-over wedding joke known to Western society to prove that weddings are indeed universally similar affairs”“ even gay weddings.
Articles
4 minute read
The Orchestra vs. the Phillies
Think outside the box (and other advice the Orchestra has ignored)
The Philadelphia Orchestra is losing its audience while other orchestras— not to mention the Phillies— are growing their audiences. So why has the Philadelphia Orchestra board ignored or remained silent about a study that represents the best professional thinking for the future survival of American orchestras?
Articles
4 minute read
Black opera: Struggle and strategy
Beyond Porgy and Bess: Anyone for Amistad or Malcolm X?
Everyone loves Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and the vocalists who've sung its roles for the past 76 years. Will white audiences ever expand their listening menu to operas by black composers? And how can black musicians help push the envelope?
Articles
4 minute read
"The Method Gun' at the Fringe Festival
Eat your heart out, Jesus: What Stella Burden's disciples did for art
The obsessive acting coach Stella Burden once drew five young actors together for nine years to rehearse the bit parts of A Streetcar Named Desire. She went crazy in the process, but her method— as portrayed in The Method Gun— revealed the profundity that often lies behind madness.
Articles
3 minute read
"The Arsonists' at the Fringe (1st review)
A play about Obama (written before he was born)?
When arsonists arrive to burn down your house, should you invite them to dinner and try to dissuade them? Max Frisch's The Arsonists (formerly called The Firebugs), written in 1953, speaks of moral responsibility and action in the face of personal threat. It doesn't seem the least bit outdated in this Fringe Festival offering.
Articles
4 minute read
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Luna Theater's "How to Disappear Completely' (1st review)
Stop the world— I want to get off (again)
Fin Kennedy's How To Disappear Completely is part meditation on selfhood and part how-to guide to changing your identity. Unfortunately, it succeeds at neither.
Articles
3 minute read
"The Help': Racism, or just plain meanness? (1st review)
Sugarcoated segregation
Does The Help resurrect shameful stereotypes or provide worthy human and historical perspective in its portrayal of black maids in 1960s Mississippi? Tate Taylor makes it too easy to detach ourselves from the real problem.
Articles
5 minute read
Parkour: Daredevil movement at the Fringe
Somersault across a dumpster? Welcome to the urban world of Parkour
Dancers who leap off tenement rooftops and parking garages? Don't laugh. Hip-hop transformed dance a generation ago; the new movement style called Parkour may yet do the same.
Articles
4 minute read
The King Memorial fiasco
A monument to bad faith
Martin Luther King spoke of going up the mountain. He didn't speak of becoming one. The new memorial to him on the National Mall is both a moral and aesthetic disaster. The blame lies not in the inadequacy of King's vision, but of ours.
Articles
4 minute read