|
Links
Articles
News
Reviews
Amateur
Theatre
Contact
Other
Resources
|
Bits 'n' Pieces
Dateline: 16th February, 2003
That Name Change
£70,000 for a new name and a new logo sounds steep enough, but
when the name change involves dropping just two words - "the"
and "of" - and the new logo consists of putting the three
remaining words in a circle, one can't help wondering if this is really
how we want the Arts Council to spend our money, especially when they
have already spent what we understand to be a similar sum to get a new
name which they rejected. Not that I personally object to that rejection:
to rename ACE Aesthetica would have made the organisation the
laughing stock of the arts world.
But £140,000 plus! And does "Arts Council England"
sound better than "The Arts Council of England"? Does it give
it a better public image? Does it inspire public trust? Does it raise
the organisation's profile? Or are people going to say "What a
waste of money!" and object even more to spending public money
on the arts? Answers on a postcard to Great Peter Street, please.
Offence Taken
All the publicity warned "Contains strong language" but the
protests are still coming in. Fool's Day, which I reviewed
last week, is set in a decaying tower block inhabited by the rejects
of society - aggressive and violent young people primarily. So they
swear - often and long. This is a fact of life: the F word (this is
not censorship, by the way: if I wrote it in full, some firewalls and
protection programs would not allow the page through) has become, in
this stratum of society, a general purpose, albeit aggressive, adjective,
probably the most used word after "the", "a" and
"is".
If a playwright is to portray this part of society accurately, then
the language will be strong - whether we like it or not. Where I am
beginning to take offence is when people express the notion that, because
their sensibilities are offended by the use of such language, then it
should not be allowed. One person, in a discussion - no, argument -
I had today, more or less said that the taste and sensibilities of the
upper age range of the middle class should determine what appears onstage!
An eternity of Alan Ayckbourn! I'd rather watch a test match, with
England playing!
Well, perhaps it's not that bad....
Too Flash for Me
Yesterday I visited yet another theatre website with a Flash movie intro
page. Not yet being on broadband (I'll be connected next week, I'm told),
I waited a long time for it to download, only to discover that it featured
the group's logo jumping about a bit. It added nothing whatsoever to
the experience of visiting the site: in act, it had the opposite effect,
making me quite annoyed that I had wasted so much time for something
so patently uninteresting to arrive in my machine. Basically what this
said was, "Look what I can do!"
I have seen good Flash intros, which added to the experience of visiting
the site, but they are few and far between. Please, theatre webmasters/mistresses,
spare us the unnecessaries. If your Flash movie gives us a series of
exciting and/or interesting pictures of your productions, products or
whatever, great! But if all they do is say, "I can do Flash!",
then scrap them.
Having Your Cake and Eating It
There are a couple of theatres and publicists in London which will still
not provide press tickets for the BTG or other theatre websites. Philip
recently gave me a list (fortunately a short one) of them and I was
annoyed to notice that one of them sends me press releases regularly.
They obviously work on the principle that I will run their stories because
I want to provide the best possible information for our visitors - which
is, of course, true.
We're good enough to publicise them, but not good enough to review
their shows.
I am reviewing the situation...
Articles Indices:
Articles from 2004
Articles from 2003
Articles from 2002
Articles from 2001
Articles from 2000
Articles from 1999
Articles from 1998
Articles from 1997
|
