PI ONLINE:
11-12-04

TheIn the end, even the combined efforts of playwright David Hare (Stuff Happens), songwriter Tom Waits (“The Day After Tomorrow”) and filmmaker John Sayles (Silver  City) weren’t enough: You-know-who has won.

Personally, ArtsLine would have preferred nearly any other outcome to another four years of George W., and most artists probably agree. The last six months this column has seen a parade of artists and celebs voicing their opposition to the administration, everyone from the above mentioned Hare, Waits, and Sayles to Bruce Springsteen, Linda Ronstadt… and now, Eminem.

“In a video for his new single, “Mosh,” the singer takes George Bush to task for raising taxes and waging the war in Iraq,” reported the Guardian newspaper, to the surprise of those of us who stopped watching MTV a long time ago. In his video, “The rapper leads a crowd of hooded people, including a mother with an eviction notice and a soldier given orders to return to Iraq, in a march to storm a government building. Once inside, the mob remove their hoods and stand in an orderly queue to vote… The video ends with a black screen and the words ‘Vote November 2.’”

(The Onion, often at its best when parodying the political world, had President Bush and the Republicans “urging minorities to get out and vote on Nov. 3.”)

Artistic opposition to the administration seemed to ramp up in the days before the election—Springsteen, for example, went from performing concerts in support of John Kerry to standing next to him and singing; according to the Wisconsin Times, the Boss “played two songs, ‘The Promised Land’ and ‘No Surrender’, which he dedicated to Kerry,” at a late October rally in that swing state.

Meanwhile, U2 announced the release of their latest album, subversively titled How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb; its anti-establishment character, however, has to be somewhat called into question by the “special edition iPod player” tied to its release. “The iPod U2 Special Edition will sport a black casing and a red scroll wheel,” said Forbes.

Take that, corporate raiders!

GOOD BYE

Music reporters are always in a bit of a tight spot when reviewing the final works from dead singers and songwriters (or dying singers and songwriters—as was the case with the nice but kind of treacly final record from Warren Zevon, who was dying of lung cancer even as he recorded it). Elliot Smith killed himself last year, and his final record From a Basement on a Hill, didn’t come out till October of this year. Luckily for the reviewers, it’s actually pretty good.

The record “stands alongside Smith’s best work,” opines Linda Laban in the Boston Herald. She does, however, conveniently suggest that you “don’t dissect the lyrics” too much—apparently they’re just too sad to bear critical inspection.

But people who do examine the lyrics of final records are always determined to find morbid prescience or eerie farewells. Smith was helpful in this regard by naming one tune “A Fond Farewell,” and the writer for the Canadian Press goes nuts for it: “Perhaps the prettiest song Smith ever wrote, [it] eerily cements his legacy…it’s a haunting lament for someone who’s died…it plays as a teary goodbye to one of his generation’s finest songwriters.”

GOOD MATCH-UP

Theatre is usually thought to have most in common with dance, or poetry, or literature. Very rarely bricklaying. And yet…

“The Shakespeare Theatre has joined forces with the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers to develop a spacious building for its new theater,” reported Jacqueline Trescott in the Washington Post on Oct. 28. “The partnership, announced by both parties yesterday, gives the union a new headquarters and visibility in a prime, expanding downtown location.”

GOOD MOVE

Variety was reporting on Oct. 28 that the new artistic director of New York City’s storied Public Theater (after the pending departure of George C. Wolfe) will be Oskar Eustis, currently of the Trinity Rep. in Providence, Rhode Island. Eustis (perhaps best known for directing the first production of Angels in America, at the Mark Taper Forum in 1992), has lots of experience “on the non-profit job merry-go-round,” writes Robert Hofler in Variety. “Three years ago, he turned down an offer to be dean of the Yale School of Drama and the Yale Repertory Theater. More recently, he was reported to be a finalist for Gordon Davidson’s job at the Mark Taper/Center Theater Group. Michael Ritchie will fill the artistic-director position there.”

The next day’s New York Post had Michael Reidel cruelly noting that Eustis was probably not the theatre’s first or even second choice; the others all turned it down because of money, he says. “The Public…does not want the world to think that anybody would say no to such an important cultural institution. But [Doug] Hughes did. He passed because he stands to make a lot of money as a freelance director. The salary issue has been a problem for several directors who were on the Public’s wish list.” Apparently the Public director takes home $225,000 a year, while a busy director on Broadway can make ten times that.

GOOD QUESTION

Don Shirley, writing in the Los Angeles Times about the success of Take Me Out, Richard Greenberg’s play about a gay baseball player, now beginning to get regional productions: “As Take Me Out journeys farther into the U.S. hinterland, the question arises how far it will get with its scenes of several teammates on a Major League Baseball team showering together onstage. The actors are nude. Will this really play in, say, Charlotte?”

Well, that depends—are we in Bush Charlotte or Kerry Charlotte?

GOOD GRIEF

Stage’ fright aint just for actors anymore. “A northeastern Indiana congressional candidate said she abruptly ended a debate because she got stage fright,” said the Associated Press. “Democrat Maria Parra walked off a television stage Thursday, ending what would have been her only debate with incumbent Republican Mark Souder in the 3rd District congressional race. ‘I’m not used to being in front of the camera...I couldn’t get my words out. I was just overwhelmed.’” Needless to say, Souder won.

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