Bloomberg

BP Keeps Arts Sponsorship as Pressure Grows for Spill Damages – Bloomberg.com

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June 18 Bloomberg — BP Plc, which has shed 45 percent of its market value after causing the U.S.’s worst-ever oil spill, said it will keep sponsoring the British Museum, the Royal Opera House, Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery in London.

“These are longstanding partnerships that we have with major cultural institutions in the U.K.,” BP spokesman David Nicholas said in a telephone interview yesterday. “They’re completely unchanged, as far as I’m concerned.”

BP Keeps Arts Sponsorship as Pressure Grows for Spill Damages – Bloomberg.com.

Theaters in Trouble

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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.

NYC’s Great White Way Is Going Green

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NEW YORK (AP) — The Great White Way is going green.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg — with the help of green friends like ”Wicked” witch Elphaba — launched the ”Broadway Goes Green” initiative Tuesday that includes plans to use energy-saving bulbs and recycle stage sets.

The aim of the campaign is to reduce Broadway’s carbon footprint, a measure of greenhouse gases produced by human activity.

Ten theaters already have replaced some 10,000 bulbs with more energy-efficient ones. And within the next 12 months, all of Broadway’s theaters will have made the switch.

”By this time next year, the lights on Broadway will burn just as bright, but the energy bills and our city’s carbon output will be lower,” Bloomberg said. ”This commitment will raise the level of awareness for everyone involved in these shows including the audiences and that’s going to have an impact that reverberates far beyond the Big Apple.”

Under the plan, theaters will strive to use environmentally friendly materials in scenery; recycle and reuse props; and wash costumes in cold water and use rechargeable batteries in sound equipment when possible.

Patrons also will be asked to do their part. Theaters will give out cards with tips on steps they can take at home to help save the environment.

The initiative is part of the mayor’s PlanNYC goal to reduce the city’s carbon footprint 30 percent by 2030.

On the Net: www.nyc.gov

See the Original Article on the New York Times Website by Clicking here.Â