SARAJEVO — Randy Gener — the Nathan Award–winning editor, writer and critic — will serve the U.S. juror in an international jury European artists, top editors and prominent critics for the 51st edition of the MESS Sarajevo International Theater Festival in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the oldest international theatre festival in the Balkans. This year’s MESS Sarajevo International Theater Festival takes place … Continue reading
Can Filipinos overseas and in the diaspora respond to the future development of their homeland? That is one of the toughest questions we had to struggle with when several of us, Philippine Presidential Awardees, were confronted with this question Continue reading
NEW YORK CITY: - George C. Wolfe will be awarded the 2011 “Mr. Abbott” Award for “his incredible breadth and depth of work in the American theatre,” according to a prepared statement from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation. The “Mr. Abbott” Award is named in honor of renowned director George Abbott and is one of the only … Continue reading
An international symposium on the teaching of design, entitled “What is Scenography?”, takes place Oct. 21 and 22 at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD) in Paris. These two days of reflection and debate will not only lead to a review of the status of the profession but also lay down its future prospects. Continue reading
To promote an exhibition of the controversial U.S. photographer Robert Mapplethorphe exhibition, which runs through October 2, the Swedish museum Fotografiska is showing Mapplethorpe works on its Facebook page depicting nudity — but with the offending areas of the body covered by blue rectangles with the text “Facebook-friendly square.” Facebook “dislikes nakedness whether it is in paintings or photography,” said the spokesperson, adding that these blue patches were slapped on partly to stop Facebook from removing the images but also to trigger a debate. Fine. Let me start one… Continue reading
To diffuse the tensions with the rising China, PNoy Aquino III’s administration’s policy clearly aims to navigate those difficult negotiations deliberately through a multi-pronged diplomacy. In effect, the Philippines is engaging with China while tightening its alliances with Washington, D.C., Japan and other Southeast Asian countries. It is instructive that there will be no one-on-one or bilaterial meeting between Obama and Aquino III after the launching of the OGP in New York. Continue reading
NEW YORK CITY: On September 21, the New York-based, Mexico-born performance artist and scholar Pablo Helguera kicks off his ambitious year-long project, The Well-Tempered Exposition, at Location One, located at 23 Greene Street in downtown SoHo in New York City. Location One‘s 2011-2012 Senior Artist-in-Residence, Helguera is putting together a series of 24 events in which … Continue reading
CAMBRIDGE, U.K.: To the Lighthouse has just come out of copyright. Fans of this enduringly popular novel by Virginia Woolf are being invited to come to Cambridge for two weeks this autumn to attend a series of Woolf-themed events that draw on this wonderful novel and its author. University of Cambridge’s Corpus College and Fitzwilliam Museum … Continue reading
GPS | ASIA: In October 2005, I took a bus to Yangtze Island in South Korea and attended a private Daedong Gut (shaman ritual) by the Korean shaman, Kim Keumhwa, a governing official spirit. Shamanism is Korea’s indigenous religion and is very much alive in Korea and where Koreans live, despite the efforts of churches, official … Continue reading
Members of the arts panel play a key role in shaping Washington’s architecture by approving the site and design of national memorials and museums; advise the U.S. Mint on the design of coins and medals Continue reading
XIAMEN, CHINA and PARIS, FRANCE: The International Theatre Institute (ITI) – the world’s largest organization for the performing arts – is holding its 33rd world congress at the Xiamen International Conference and Exhibition Centre in Xiamen, China, from Sept. 19 to 24, 2011. Held under the auspices of UNESCO, the congress will have a strong … Continue reading
In Ghost Light, San Francisco history itself is a ghost machine, and every performance is a nightly haunting that serves to re-construct the recent past through the memories of an American witness who is still living among us. Continue reading
“Ghost Light” is the first play that resurrects the late San Francisco mayor George Moscone as an iconic historical figure, albeit filtered through a deeply personal and artistic lens. Continue reading
GPS | CENTRAL AMERICA: Monkey Island lives up to its name. Located at the Gamboa Rainforest in Panama, a boat ride tour around Gatun Lake, which surrounds Monkey Island, is a fun opportunity to see 4 different species of monkey, all within 40 minutes of Panama’s capital city. I did see many other animal specials such … Continue reading
ACROSS THE UNITED STATES: This past September, National Theatre Live, the popular initiative that offers theatrical performances on film screens, kicked off its third season with Nicholas Hytner’s feel good production of One Man, Two Guvnors, Richard Bean’s new version of The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni, with songs by Grant Olding. The farce, staged by … Continue reading
GPS| EUROPE: Minsk was totally destroyed during World War II and rebuilt in classical social realist style by the Soviets after the war. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, this statue of Vladimir Lenin still stands proudly in front of the House of Government in central Minsk. This statue is both a metaphor … Continue reading
