For the first night of this year’s IndyFringe Theatre Festival (aka IndyFringe or Indy Fringe), I decided to select four showsthat looked to be among the most risk-taking. After all, what’s a fringe without something out there on the fringe? (Skip…
David Amram (recently seen here in town at the opening of the Indianapolis Museum of Art’s Kerouac/Frank exhibition) has been named Composer in Residence for the Democratic National Convention. See full story here.
The story reports that Amram, who has…
Ron Rosenbaum at Slate.com seems think so.
“What always gets to me,” he writes, “is the self-congratulatory assumption on the part of puzzle people that their addiction to the useless habit somehow proves they are smarter or more literate than the…
A positive sign on the local arts scene (and we certainly could use those), is the launching of more professional arts organizations. Community theater is fine, but the more paying work there is for actors, directors, and designers, the better…
Today marks the 175th birthday of our homegrown pres, Benjamin Harrison. The BH home at 1230 N. Delaware is celebrating with free tours today from 10-3:30.
I’m celebrating by trying to think of a list of Best Performance by an Actor…
IndyFringe 2008 launches this week with a kick-off party Thursday and performances beginning on Friday.
This year’s lineup includes 270 performances of 53 shows–including one-act plays, improvisational comedy, dance pieces, magic acts, confessional one-person shows and difficult-to-describe oddities.
As in the past, the shows aren’t…
In putting together this year’s IBJ A&E Season Preview (coming soon to your favorite business paper), I saw a mini-trend emerging.
It starts Aug. 28-29 with “Classical Mystery Tour,” a visit from a quartet of Liverpoolian-look-and-sing-alikes at Conner Prairie.
That same…
I spend more time than I expected to this weekend soaking up Gen Con–including a performance of “Video Games Live” with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. More on the concert–and some great family board games I discovered–in this week’s print column….
So were you there at the IBJ Night at the Movies screening of “American Teen,” the high school documentary shot in Warsaw,
Indiana?
Let us know what you thought of the film.
No, I’m not going to mock the costumed hoards that are converging on the Convention Center over the next few days for Gen Con. Instead, I’m just going to share some observations on the event, its people, and its…
At Switzerland’s Zentrum Paul Klee, an inflatable pile of dog feces the size of a modest ranch home came loose from the museum grounds, knocked down a power line, and broke a window in a nearby children’s home. See the BBC report…
And so the Indianapolis arts community exhales. There’s still $1 million in the budget and there’s less chance of our town being seen as culturally regressive.
But what’s the underlying message from Mayor Ballard’s budget speech?
Is it simply that cuts have…
For me, the weekend was bookended with a Friday trip to Bloomington to see singer Maureen McGovern backed by IU musicians and a Sunday run to Beef & Boards for the opening of The “Producers.”
What did you see, hear, read…
Earlier today, City County Councillor Christine Scales e-mailed me regarding the city arts budget and the rumored threats against it. I’m reprinting the letter here (and posting it with the earlier blog) with her permission. Your thoughts are, of…
With a new season starting on Broadway, I thought it a good time to give a listen to a stack of cast recordings of 2007/2008 shows. More than the original production, I believe, the cast recording is what encourages future…
Some thoughts on recent arts encounters that didn’t make it into my weekly IBJ A&E review column:
— With a trio of young, out-of-town sports nuts in tow, I recently paid my first visit in years to the National Art…
The buzz is growing around the arts community about anticipated budget cuts from the Ballard administration to be announced on Monday. See, for example, Justin Ohlemiller’s commentary at the Hetrick Communications site here and Gracie Communications’ Lisa Sirkin’s “Save the Arts” page…
“American Teen” won the Best Director/Documentary award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Shot in Warsaw, Indiana, it follows a group of teens through senior year of high school. Rolling Stone’s critic said, “If ‘The Hills’ went back to high school and developed…
This weekend, family commitments kept me out of the arts loop–although I did find time to take some sports-crazy out-of-towners through the National Art Museum of Sport and my in-laws to the “To Live Forever” show at the Indianapolis Museum…
An economic dry spell may have corporate America praying for rain, but tough times have led to a bountiful year at the
Indiana State Fair. Two weeks before the fair’s Aug. 6 start date, corporate sponsorships were running 22 percent ahead of
2007, surpassing $1.5 million for the first time.
