Richard's raw deal

Congratulations

Congratulations are in order for Sarah Bellamy! The co-artistic director of Penumbra Theatre was recently named to the 2015 Bush Foundation Fellowship Program. Bush Fellows receive up to $100,000 over a year or two to pursue learning experiences that can help them further develop their already-recognized leadership skills.

But, it doesn't stop there! Two other Minnesota artists were named as Bush Fellows: Adam Perry of Arts Midwest and Tea Rozman Clark of Green Card Voices.

And while we're praising accomplishments, the New York Times offers its congratulations to Theatre Latte Da for taking a picture of an interesting hat.

Poor Richard

You would be hard pressed to find an individual who was more screwed over by his artistic representation than England's King Richard III. William Shakespeare, in a naked attempt to curry favor with the dynasty that overthrew Richard, turned the man into an evil, cruel manipulator with a hunchback and an unquenchable thirst for power. Shakespeare's smear job of Richard has been further embellished over the years (remember when Dicky was a Nazi?), and he's become the go-to guy to stand in for just about any awful dictator on the planet.

But was that fair? Was Richard really all that bad?. Sure, he may have taken the throne through a little subterfuge and political chicanery (and maybe a dash of murder, though it's never actually been proven), but that was pretty much par for the course for Medieval England. If anything, Richard's was a relatively bloodless coup; and by contemporary accounts, he was actually a very pious and religious man, whose law reforms during his two years in office showed great concern for the rights of the individual and for ending dishonest business practices. Had he not been displaced and killed by an usurper whose own claim to the throne consisted of "Now that I've killed you all, I guess that makes me King," Richard probably would have gone down in history as a fair, civic-minded ruler with a liberal concern for his subjects. 

This week, Great Britain will give the old dead king a proper royal burial just a few years after he was found unceremoniously tossed in a hole under a parking lot. Unfortunately, Shakespeare's politically motivated takedown of Richard will last, since every great actor wants to prove himself by playing theater's greatest villain; but for a moment, anyway, the last Plantagenet king will get back some small amount of the dignity that art and politics snatched away from him.

A dignity that will promptly disappear again once the town where he was buried cashes in on him, because dignity, schmiginity, we get paid!

You Gotta Have a Plan

If you're gonna make it as an artist in this world, you gotta have a plan, and that plan doesn't necessarily involve having any artistic talent whatsoever. (After all, talent is only, like, 7% of casting, anyway.) We can't all be the beneficiaries of a gambling monk, so we've all got to be looking for that certain edge that will keep our names in lights.

And that edge, as it would happen, is middle-aged white women. Wait… what? Seriously? Yes, once again, the stats on who buys the most tickets on Broadway have done nothing but reinforce old stereotypes. Actually, it's even worse when you look at the stats for touring Broadway shows. S

But, is that really art, man? Shouldn't art, like, totally disrupt the hell out of people's sensibilities and really get them thinking about, like, capitalism and meat and stuff?

Maybe, but the so-called "culture wars" in America (the last round of which was helpfully touched off right here in the Twin Cities) left the average American even more scared, pissed off and confused about "art" than ever before. Unfortunately, the Baby Boomers have largely checked out of anything new and scary, and we Gen Xers are just too damn tired, broke and cynical to believe in much anymore. And then there are those darn Millenials, who just wanna stare at their screens all day.

Or maybe we just haven't invited them in. Maybe there is a new audience out there for theater, that we just haven't paid attention to, because we're so worried about losing the dwindling middle-aged white population.

To that end, TCG has been organizing an ongoing series of events called Audience (R)Evolutions, that seeks to gather theater folks from all across the country to discuss how to get at this thorny problem of ginning up new audiences. If you can't make it down to the next big meeting in Kansas City, HowlRound will be live streaming the event.

So, get in on the ground floor. Be a part of the plan. Whatever that turns out to be. Or make your own. It's fun!

One more time for Gen X

Since Hollywood's in the business of endlessly strip mining your nostalgia, it's inevitable that anything that was even mildly popular when you were young will be chopped, channeled and rehashed as a quick grab at your wallet. And you'll pay for it, too. Oh god, will you ever pay for it. You will come to the cinematic altar, dead-eyed and cold, offering up your last dollar in sacrifice to the almighty movie producers, and you thank them for the privelege of watching a sequel to 21 Jump Street inartfully titled 22 Jump Street, at which point we all disappear into the uncaring void.

So, it was inevitable, friends: Kevin Smith is making a sequel to that most '90s of '90s-era Kevin Smith movies: Mallrats. There's no word yet on whether or not the sequel will return to its original Minnesota filming locations, but just in case, you local actors better reacquaint yourselves with Eden Prairie Center.