bloggie blog

From Rebecca Novick’s excellent article that I recently found over on Grantmakers in the Arts:

“The middle-class dream shouldn’t be out of reach for theater artists, especially when every city now includes several hundred theater administrators who receive the benefits of permanent employment while the artists by and large are still camping outside the gates.”

Let’s aim higher.

From time to time, I feel pangs of missing Boston. Here’s an article that caused a pang! According to Thomas Garvey, a critic I follow online, a critic who is, among other things, very hard to please, “2010 was an extraordinary year.” In fact, 2010 was Boston’s best year for theater in his memory. I read the list of 20 (twenty!) great shows with sadness that I never got to see any of them, but at the same time I’m glad that I can hear about it. It’s great to hear about good work in a good theater scene that I’m glad I got to be a little part of. Go, Bean, go!

I am captivated by this collection.

“The photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) offer a vivid portrait of a lost world — the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming revolution.” The photographs seem “shockingly modern” (per communicatrix), and fill me with yearning to travel in time and space. Or maybe Prokudin-Gorskii just makes me want to get away to the countryside. Whatever that means when you live in Los Angeles….

This iPhone photo provides a glimpse of tonight’s wonderful reading of the new play Tombs of the Vanishing Indian by Marie Clements. A great opportunity for all of us actors. Thank you, Marie. Thank you, Autry.

With my sister Julia in town from Utah and our friend Alyson in town from Boston, I ended up going to the Getty Center and LACMA, a weekend of museums. LA has lots of museums, but I haven’t been to many, so this is good, even if it’s two museums I have visited before … about 10 years ago.

Yesterday, at the Getty Center I didn’t look at all at the art contained within the museum, but at the art of the museum: architecture designed by Richard Meier. (Observe to the right my self-portrait in shadow on Meier.) The building, the view, the gardens — all wonderful. Of note, this is the time of year to go the Getty if you want to experience sunset there. And you do want to experience sunset there. Sunset from a view above the ocean is good anhwhere, of course, but here the setting sun brings out new angles and details of Meier’s work. Go now, before summer comes and they kick you out well before the sun goes down.

Today’s outing to LACMA was free, thanks to Target, and I didn’t take a camera — it was more of a “be here now” moment not taking the camera. Highlights included Smoke by Tony Smith, Edward Steichen photos, Picasso paintings, and Brancusi adnd Giocametti statues. I post here a coupla gems from Steichen: Gloria Swanson and Louise Brooks. Years ago I learned about Steichen from my friend Matt. Thanks, Matt!

You know about the NYT article last week that got the hefty-bonuses story started. It made me extremely upset, and somebody prominent called the year’s bonuses “shameful.”

But you know all that. What you might not know is that my brilliant friends from Massachusetts, triplet performance artists called Triiibe, went to Wall Street a few months back with this intriguing guerilla performance piece on the topic. They stand there asking for dough, in a carefully stylized performance. It’s great. Check it out!