Live Arts, the local theater group known for offering us Brecht, Mamet, Albee, Sondheim, Aristophanes, and other challenging works, begins the 2008-2009 season with a surprising choice: Disney’s High School Musical. According to artistic director John Gibson, in an interview on the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, this will be Live Arts’ first teen musical. “It’s about the love of theater,” said Gibson. “So it’s right at home here.”
Snap o' the day: Beetnix video
Beside the under-construction Landmark Hotel, Damani Harrison of the loally-based hip-hop group Beetnix prepares to shoot a video tonight on the Downtown Mall. Shortly before 7pm, using a none-too-loud boom box to keep time, the band— “one for the money, two for the brain, three for the pain”— walked the Mall rapping “Citizen Kane.” (0)
Rove's Kaine critique gains new irony with Palin pick
Atlantic Monthly editor Andrew Sullivan points out on his blog today that former White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove’s assessment of Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D) as a vice presidential candidate has new meaning now that Rove’s party will soon nominate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) for the same office. “With all due respect to Gov. Kaine, he’s been a governor for three years,” said Rove of Kaine on CBS’s Face the Nation on August 10. Palin has been Governor of Alaska for 21 months. Rove continued, “[Kaine] was mayor of the 105th largest city in America. And again, with all due respect to Richmond, Virginia, it’s smaller than Chula Vista, California; Aurora, Colorado; Mesa, or Gilbert, Arizona; North Las Vegas, or Henderson, Nevada. It’s not a big town.” Before becoming governor, Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, which had a population of 5,470 in the 2000 Census, compared to 179,790 in Richmond. # (0)
Reservoir logs: 4" rain erases 4' reservoir gap
Why did recent deluges knock less than two feet off the Sugar Hollow Reservoir water deficit while erasing the entire four-foot deficit at the mammoth South Fork Rivanna Reservoir? The latter reservoir can corral so much water because it has a 259-square-mile watershed, with multiple streams and rivers gushing into it. Sugar Hollow, by contract, has less than a tenth of the watershed: just 17.5 miles. Ironically, the 4.37″ of rain, as measured at the airport by the National Weather Service, began falling Wednesday, August 27, just a day after the waterworks, the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority, issued a press release urging conserving but emphasizing calm by noting that there was less than a 1-in-10 liklihood that reservoirs would remain below 80 percent capacity. The waterworks was right. (0)
Snap o' the day: High-rise act
Two construction workers balanced this morning atop the recently poured columns for the third-level deck of the Landmark Hotel on the Downtown Mall. The $30 million 9-story luxury hotel is scheduled to open in July 2009. (0)
Couric ranks 62nd on 'Most Poweful Women' list
In its annual ranking of the “Top 100 Most Powerful Women,” Forbes ranked CBS Evening News anchor and UVA alumna Katie Couric 62nd among all women worldwide. That’s one better than Couric’s previous year standing of 63rd, but still not high enough to top Meredith Vieira (#61), the woman who replaced Couric as co-host of NBC’s Today when Couric quit the morning show to become network TV’s first solo nightly news anchor in 2006. Coming in at #1 for a third year in a row was German chancellor Angela Merkel. # (1)
Live Arts jumped the shark a long time before High School Musical. For the last fifteen years (at least), they have considered themselves to be just a step below professional theater. That is until a negative review comes out. At that point they cry “we’re just community theater!”. You can’t have it both ways Live Arts. While you indeed have a few good productions and actors (Mark Valahovic for one, who somehow got sucked into being part of the High School Musical nonsense), you are basically a step above Four County. So it’s about time you showed your true colors as community theater, and put on such mind numbing material as High School Musical!
IMHO Live Arts jumped the shark when they moved into the new building. At Michie Live Arts was something unique, intimate, and special. At the new building, not so much.
Ha ha ha. Hey, sometimes you gotta fill the seats.
I hate to be put in the position of defending the treacly Disney’s High School Musical, the success of which owes much more to hype than to artistic merit, but …
I saw the national touring company of HSM at the National Theatre in Washington not long ago, and it surprised me as being a well-constructed, multi-layered (in the sense of having jokes for adults as well as children and tweeners), and colorful.
What’s most important, however, is that the audience consisted largely of pre-teen kids who were experiencing, in the majority of cases, their first time inside a legitimate theatre. And you know what? The kids sat enraptured. Far from being the disruption one normally expects when seeing 8- and 10-year-olds in the nearby seats, they were well-behaved as well as enjoying themselves.
During intermission, I talked with the president of the National Theatre, Dr. Donn Murphy, about this very phenomenon. He was delighted to see so many young people in the audience, because he knew that this positive experience would spur them to come back, either on their own or with their parents. (If nothing else, the parents learned that their offspring were mature enough to sit through a 2-hour musical play without squirming. They might not be ready for Sweeney Todd, but why not try Oklahoma! or Annie?)
Dr. Murphy related a story of two adorable little girls who once came to see Cats (another much derided, and deservedly so, musical) and how he knew that their enjoyment of that play would entice them to come back again.
The fact that Live Arts is doing HSM with a cast of high-schoolers should be enough to justify it. But anything that brings younger people — or people of any age — into a live theatre when they might not otherwise come is also justification.
For the performers, it’s a learning opportunity; for parents, it’s a teaching opportunity; for audience newbies, it could be an opportunity that comes along once in a lifetime.