Monthly Archives: December 2008

Theaters in Trouble

news, , , , , , , ,

A few articles out there on economic trouble putting theaters in peril and even closing their doors:

On Blog Stage: More Shows Are Closings, But Broadway Is Optimistic 

The list of Broadway shows closing in January has reached double digits, the New York Daily News noted yesterday. Many of those are early curtain calls related to a struggling economy, as we’ve been reporting daily on Blog Stage andBackStage.com, but some seasonal shows with scheduled closings are contributing to the exaggerated stats.

At the Village Voice:Downtown’s Ohio Theatre Likely to Close

Before 66 Wooster Street became the Ohio Theatre and various apartments, it had a former life as a textile factory. Theatrical legend has it that before the first performance–in what was then called the Open Space–the cast and crew went down on hands and knees, armed with magnets, pulling decades of dropped pins and needles from the floorboard. Many years later, the Ohio is on pins and needles again. The building that houses the Ohio is being sold, and in a few weeks or months the Ohio Theatre will almost certainly cease to exist.

And on Bloomberg: Silicon Valley Theater Collapses, Blames ‘Tarzan’ Co-Producer 

Silicon Valley’s largest performing- arts organization is preparing to file for bankruptcy this week and blames a theater in Atlanta, 2,442 miles east, for its collapse.

Art at work: global warming, step off.

news, , ,

 

Dystopia: super motivating, right? Part of why we’re all so excited about green living and moving and breathing is that constant potential for utter global collapse. Ooooh. Potential ecological apocalypse. I gotta get me one of them CFLs.

Artist Petko Dourmana creates this eerie potential future. In Global Warming Survival Kit, he realizes this generation’s “nuclear winter” by setting up a station for a watchman of a border between land and the North Sea. The border lies on an ash-covered future landscape, images of which can only be seen with night-vision goggles. Perhaps the best way to prevent an apocalypse is to change our perspective.

The piece is on display as part of Brand_Dourmana at the Edith Russ Site for New Media Art in Oldenberg, Germany. It was recently nominated for the 2009 transmediale award.

Go to the Green Museum

MOVING ARTS – MOVING GREEN

Announcements, CSPA Convergence, , , ,

MOVING ARTS – MOVING GREEN

The Green Mini-Expo 
 FREE 
The Ford Theatres
December 7th, 2009 1pm-7pm 
 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. EastHollywood, CA 90068  
 Stop by any time during the day for fun,great informationand delicious food provided by Large Marge Sustainables! http://www.largemargesustainables.com

Inspired by the strong environmental themes within Song of Extinction, Moving Arts has begun “Moving Green” by taking steps toward becoming a more eco-friendly company. The Green Mini-Expo is a way to celebrate these changes, as well as connecting audiences with local Green organizations and businesses that provide access to emerging green issues and eco-friendly lifestyle techniques.

Among the vendors participating in the Mini-Expo will be:

The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts
All Shades of Green
Jenneration Fix
Earth Resource Foundation
Large Marge Sustainables
and Smart Car!

Audience members are also welcome to participate in a free panel discussion with a diverse group of local, green professionals.  Among the panel participants will be Ian Garrett from The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, Jessica Aldridge, Zero Waste Event Coordinator/Consultant and Natalie Freidberg of All Shades of Green.

GREEN MINI-EXPO SCHEDULE 1pm-7pm  Expo Open to Public3pm-4:30pm  Matinee Performance of Song of Extinction 5pm Moving Green – Panel Discussion on How to Live a Greener Life (45 minutes)7pm Song of Extinction Pay-What-You-Can-Performance for more information e-mail: info@movingarts.org  

If you haven’t seen the show the critics are calling… 

“Exquisite”  Stage Scene LA 
“Gorgeous” LA Weekly   
“Lyrcial”  Los Angeles Times
“Perfection”  Curtain Up
“Captivating”  LA Taco 
You only have two weekends left!    

byEM LEWIS CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

In the Audience

news, , , , , , , ,

I’ve worked in theater in some form or another since high school. I have had a bad habit throughout my life in theater of being the type who says (or at least thinks) “I don’t want to go watch theater, I see so much of it from backstage, from the booth, I see it in rehearsals all day long…” So, I don’t sit in the audience much.

Now, because of the illness that blindsided me over a year ago, I really feel like a spectator sitting in the audience watching the future of green, eco-responsible theater rushing by in flashes. It’s difficult to do. So much has happened in the last few months, and ecoTheater has missed it. People close to me will roll their eyes when they find that as I write this lament I am sitting in a hospital room in Indianapolis waiting for my second and final round of high dose chemotherapy to commence. “Who cares about green theater?” they will ask.

I won’t lie — it isn’t that difficult to realize that I’ve missed out on reporting on the big Broadway initiative, supported as it is by the mayor of New York City, or the up and coming Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (CSPA) (founded and driven by Ian Garrett, a regularly mentioned activist on ecoTheater), or the fast approaching Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS) at the University of Oregon, or, or, or…

I mean, it’s easy enough to see that there are bigger things to consider in my life right now. But, what can I say? For once, I hate being just a spectator. It’s like sitting through hours of rehearsal, not saying a word to anyone, and not participating in any way in the production.

For now, I have taken a leave of absence from my job with CTM and have done very little “work” of any kind in the last month or so. The only project I have spent time on is The Cancer Stories Project, hopefully the first stage work for the still-being-founded Wisconsin Story Project (WSP), which I hope to be a new model of theater that will take bits and pieces from many idea-makers, heading towards not just ecologically sound theater production, but also aiming to be a model of theater that solves for pattern (or here).

Who knows? Perhaps one day ecoTheater will simply morph into a blog tracking the progress of WSP, and how we’re doing our best to stay green, while tackling other issues that plague today’s so-called regional theater.

But no matter what I’ll be back here writing soon. So, don’t forget about me…

Go to EcoTheater

The Reclamation Project

news, , ,

Now this is just beautiful. Xavier Cortada has helped to instigate waves of tree plantings and land restoration with his piece The Reclamation Project. He begins with legions of mangrove seedlings, artfully arranged in clear plastic cups. The seedlings can be adopted by individual donors or businesses. When they are ready, the teeny trees are then transplanted into areas where they will naturally thrive. In this way each plant begins its life as part of an art piece and matures as an act of restoration.

Begun in 2006 as a program partnered with the Miami Science Museum, the program expanded the following year to included native Florida trees on land. This season mangrove seedlings were adopted by several Florida schools and a host of local businesses. Growing, sprouting, planting as art. Beautiful.

Go to the Green Museum

MOCA faces serious financial problems

news, , , ,

From the LA Times:

Since its inception, MOCA has grown to encompass three exhibition spaces. The “Temporary Contemporary,” later renamed the Geffen Contemporary, opened in 1983 in a warehouse at the edge of Little Tokyo that had been revamped by architect Frank Gehry. Three years later, the museum’s permanent home, designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, opened on Grand Avenue, where it is a mainstay of the planned redesign of the area known as the Grand Avenue project. In 2000, MOCA acquired an exhibition space at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.

Before the national economic crisis hit, Strick said, MOCA was gearing up gradually for its first major endowment campaign since the mid-1990s, when it raised $25 million. Now, he said, there’s no time for that, and the focus is on “immediate issues and how to move ahead in a very different world.”

An irony of MOCA’s plight is that, thanks to the appetite of wealthy international collectors, the market value of its prime pieces has soared. Corporations and individuals routinely sell sculptures and paintings in an economic pinch, but a museum that did so would be violating its reason for existing, which is keeping art in the public domain. The codes of ethics of both the American Assn. of Museums and the Assn. of Art Museum Directors, although not legally binding, specify that the only acceptable reason for selling artworks from a public collection is to raise money for buying other, presumably more desirable, pieces.

As a Native Angeleno and frequenter of MOCA (admittedly primarily the Grand Avenue and Geffen Locations) this is a tragedy to me in my personal arts participation. To me this highlights the issues of reliance on contributed income in the arts world. 

See the Original Article by Clicking Here.

Moving Art, Moving Green Mini Expo Reminder

news, ,

The Moving Arts, Moving Green mini-expo is Sunday, December 7th at the Ford Amphitheater. The mini-expo has been organized as part of the talk-back series for Moving Arts production of Song of Extinction at [Inside] the Ford.

Inspired by the strong environmental themes within this beautiful new play, Moving Arts has begun “Moving Green” by taking steps toward becoming a more eco-friendly company. The Green Mini-Expo is way to celebrate these changes, as well as connect our audience with local Green organizations and businesses and provide access to emerging green issues and eco-friendly lifestyle techniques. Audience members are also welcome to participate in a free panel discussion with a diverse group of local, green professionals on the day of the Green Mini-Expo.

The Expo will be open to the public at 1:00 pm and the talk back will be at 5:00 pm. There are two shows that day at 3:00 pm and a pay-want-you-can 7:00 pm show. 

I will be talking on behalf of the CSPA and as the lighting designer for the show, hopefully providing a bridge between the Art and the Commerce of the green-expo. Myself and Miranda Wright will also be on hand for most of the day with a table in the courtyard to discuss the upcoming EcoDrama Convergence in may. We’ll have copies of the brochure, and both the University of Oregon and our own RFPs.

EXPO INFORMATION 

When: Sunday, December 7, 2008 from 1pm-7pm 

Where: The Ford Theatres, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. East, Los Angeles, CA 90068 

Cost: Admission is FREE to the public