From the Blogroll V

A shorter update, given that my last one went up two days ago, but my plan is to make this feature a Saturday event, for weekend consumption and contemplation. And as this is Saturday, here we go...

At the Americans for the Arts' Artsblog, Alan Nunez considers art as a shared experience.

At Artsy Schmartsy, Jonathan West does the right thing and backs the petition imploring President-Elect Obama to create a Secretary of the Arts.

At DC Theatre Scene, Gary McMillan adds his critical voice to the many outlets reviewing the Broadway-bound revival of West Side Story.

At Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals, Chris Caggiano looks at the poster/logo for the Broadway revival of Hair and tears his hair out about it. Bosley.com, seizing the opportunity, decides to become his sponsor.

At Extra Criticum, Andrew Altenburg, like many watchers of the fast-fading media, places the embattles Entertainment Weekly on the scary-scary Death Watch.

At Gasp!, Laura Axelrod simply gasps at the interest rate of one credit card in Great Britain.

At The Hub Review, Tom Garvey provides an update on the efforts to raise $500,000 to save North Shore Music Theatre, but the numbers, it seems, aren't adding up as yet.

At The Producer's Perspective, Ken Davenport looks at the gazillions of Playbills that are thrown away every day/week/month/year, polluting precious Earth with their stinky inky badness and thus emphasizing once again why Broadway, Off-Broadway and everyone else ought to go green. Then he considers the revenue statistics for Broadway last year and questions whether times are, in fact, better than they seem.

At Lou Harry's A&E, Lou Harry talks about Sky Arts, the British TV channel, broadcasting the English National Opera's production of La Boheme as well as a simultaneous broadcast of a live, behind-the-scenes, real-time view of the backstage of the production -- and whether this is, in fact, not a one-off idea but very much the wave of the future, as opposed to a gimmick.

At On Chicago Theatre, Zev Valancy discusses the TV broadcast of Cyrano de Bergerac, which ran on Broadway last season and starred Kevin Kline. He's pretty up on the revival, but thinks Jennifer Garner was, um, too much on the nose.

At Splattworks, Steve Patterson discusses Portland's upcoming Fertile Ground City-Wide Festival of New Work (and why, if only by implication, Portland is probably one of the most up-and-coming theatre cities in the nation).

At the Guardian's Theatre blog, Karen Fricker has a screaming orgasm over The Thorn Birds: The Musical. Amazingly, Barbara Stanwyck has announced her comeback from the dead for this event, and everybody will start believing again that Richard Chamberlain is straight.

At On Theatre and Politics, Matt Freeman reveals he's not, unlike Karen Fricker in The Guardian, worried about The Thorn Birds: The Musical, but rather the idea that the New York State Council on the Arts could face a $7 million cut this year.

At Steve on Broadway, Steve Loucks puts up a photograph of George and Wheezy from The Jeffersons and deftly and most impressively relates that sitcom's "Movin' On Up!" theme song to the announcement of the timing of this year's Tony deadline, nominations and awards. Marla Gibbs will not host, bitch.

At What's Good/What Blows in New York Theatre, Rocco puts up a photo of some of the peeps in the now-closed Spamalot and calls it "One of These Marys is Not Like the Others," at which point Clay Aiken jokes flow. Mary McCarthy, insulted, rises from the dead and tells Rocco, "Everything you write is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" Lillian Hellman is still dead.

Sphere: Related Content