Posted on the books blog of the Guardian is a photo of Dallas’ High 5 (“on a beautiful spring day”) by Bernardino Trevilla Langer, whose photography website (meimageination.com)is here. The paper’s “Your photographs” feature has run 210 pictures so far submitted by readers.

Asking foundations or other grant-making organizations to help fund your movie can be an intimidating, mystifying process. The criteria tends to be slippery, and feedback about why you got rejected is rare. The Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund is a refreshing exception.

The Austin-based program, which has awarded $800,000 since 1996, sends artist services director Bryan Poyser all over the state to teach filmmakers how to apply and then provides one-on-one advice in person or by phone before the June 2 application deadline. It also shares notes from the selection committee with unsuccessful applicants. The road show came to KERA last night.

Poyser walked the audience through the application, giving practical tips. If you’re submitting a letter of recommendation, for instance, “don’t make it from your mom unless she’s the head of Sony.” Sample proposals, including budgets, are available on the home page linked above.

Read More »

The DTC threw a party last night to announce its 2008-2009 season, the first from new artistic director Kevin Moriarty. The lineup was of course the main event – next season leads off with The Who’s Tommy and you can read more in Lawson Taitte’s DMN piece.  

But I was equally interested in some of the DTCs goals and plans to support their work:

Moriarty says the DTC wants to engage its audience in conversation. The end product is not the performance on stage, he argues, but the conversation it creates afterward. The DTC will host community conversations after its performances next season – not “Talk Backs” in the traditional sense – an actor answering questions about how he memorizes all those lines –, but attempts to get people talking about what resonated for them in the performances they just saw.  

This is important to us at Art&Seek, KERA’s new arts initiative. In fact, sparking those sorts of conversations is what we’ll be about at the new ArtandSeek.org Website that will launch in late May. We want to create a community where everyone can find, discuss, create and react to the arts in North Texas.  

I’m also looking forward to learning more about the DTC’s plan to form its own company of actors.  Theater friends complain about the lack of steady work and support for actors in our region: it’s tough to find full-time employment in theater and equally hard to find a day job flexible enough to accomodate occasional round-the-clock rehearsal/performance schedules. While the DTC’s 9-person company certainly won’t solve all these problems, it seems a step in the right direction, provided it includes locals.  Curious to hear what others think on this…

The Dallas Visual Artists Association has “Drama in Black in White” at the Plaza of the Americas, while Caruth Auditorium has the St. Lawrence String Quartet and Gini has even more events.

… here’s a pretty good video tour at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (although, as always, online video is no substitute for encountering these impressive pieces in person). As the aw-shucks narrator Steve Smith says about one sculpture, “What does it mean? I don’t know. But is it fricking cool? Yeah it is. Being in the same place with a giant wheel or a giant ladder is kind of a sublime experience.” The video is from WestandClear.com.

Here’s my somewhat more prolix review. You’ve only got another month before the exhibition at the Modern Art Museum closes May 18.

The conventional wisdom is that rock ‘n’ roll is dead, nostalgia for fogeys, passe. At least for one night, a group of grade-school girls rockin’ out down front at Bruce Springsteen’s Dallas concert Sunday — and later pulled onstage by Boss Broooose, a la Courtney Cox in that music video made before they were born — said wait a minute: Loud, melodic, anthemic guitar rock can transcend generations and what’s in or out of fashion.

Thor Christensen of the Morning News and the Star-Telegram’s Preston Jones captured the AAC show in this morning’s editions, including the surprise appearance of Jon Bon Jovi, who plays there tonight to complete a trifecta of Dallas arena shows that started with Mary J. Blige and Jay-Z on Saturday.

Last week, the Observer weighed in on Springsteen’s influence on local musicians. Bruce Blog says the Internet is abuzz with reports on the young fans and provides a set list. My favorite moment was “Trapped,” the Jimmy Cliff tune Bruce has been covering since The River tour.

What was yours?

Van Cliburn plays Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto #1, movement 3

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• Van Cliburn: Concert Pianist, an hour-long documentary, narrated by Dan Rather, will be aired on KERA, Sunday, April 20 at 12 p.m. Video excerpts from the show: Part I  Part II  Part III. 
• Weekend Edition feature on “Treasuring Moscow After 50 Years.”
• To listen to this on-air feature, click here:

• To listen to Bill Zeeble’s on-air interview with Van Cliburn, click here:

• The Newshour interview with Van Cliburn on the 50th anniversary. __________________________________________________

ANNOUNCER: Fifty years ago an extraordinary confluence of international politics and art produced one of the most sensational musical stories of the 20th century. A 23-year-old Texan, Van Cliburn, won the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow.

For anyone born after about 1945, it’s hard to grasp the impact of Van Cliburn’s victory. The world was different back in 1958. A cold war was under way, and it was not entirely clear to many Americans who was going to win it.

The Soviet Union seemed a dark and sinister place. It was mostly closed to outsiders, and to increase Americans’ sense of vulnerability, the Soviets seemed to be surpassing them technologically. Less than six months before Cliburn emplaned for Moscow, the Soviets shocked Americans by launching Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite. Within a month’s time they launched a second. Some feared that intercontinental ballistic missiles might soon follow.

Art was less obviously dangerous, but still it was a political tool in the hands of the Soviets, and when they announced that they were planning a musical competition to be named for Russia’s most famous composer, it was clear that they expected a Soviet pianist to win and confirm superiority in art as well as technology. Read More »

Here’s the Scene segment from tonight’s TV version of Think (which airs Fridays at 7:30 p.m. on KERA 13). William Keyse Rudolph, Ph. D., The Pauline Gill Sullivan Associate Curator of American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, talks with host Krys Boyd about the museum’s current exhibition “Bluebonnets and Beyond: Julian Onderdonk, American Impressionist.”

Rene Moreno (left) and Christine Vela (right) in Richard III. Photo by Matt Mrozek

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Richard Crookback through the years:

• John Barrymore’s film version from 1929’s Show of Shows. Richard III as Bela Lugosi or John Carradine, a creepy, horror-movie monster.
• Laurence Olivier’s “Winter of our discontent” solioquy from his 1955 film version. Olivier reportedly modeled his performance on infamous theater producer Jed Harris.
• Antony Sher’s Year of the King, his published diary and sketchbook recording his award-winning Royal Shakespeare Company performance in 1984. He developed his ruthless Richard-on-crutches after months of studying psychopaths and the disabled.
• Ian McKellen’s opening from his high-style, 1995 film version. Richard III as Sir Oswald Mosley, the British fascist.
• Jonathan Slinger’s acclaimed performance from last year’s RSC production. Richard III as Roy Cohn.
• To hear the on-air feature:

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Actor Rene Moreno plays the king in the current Kitchen Dog Theater adaptation of Richard III – and brings an unusual “quality” to the part: He has been in a wheelchair since 1991 when a five-story fall cost him the use of his legs.

Ian Leson, who directed the production, knew he wanted Moreno to play the evil Richard. But he worried about offending the actor. Richard is a great role. But he’s also one of Shakespeare’s only deformed characters. He’s an infamous hunchback. In the play, he’s called a “lump of foul deformity.”

But, Moreno says –

Moreno: Unbeknownst to Ian, whenever anybody asked me whether there was a role I wanted to do, and especially after my accident, it was kind of a secret to myself that I would actually want to do Richard III. I think the wheelchair made perfect sense.

Since 1993, Moreno has been a rarity – a disabled performer who has succeeded in working onstage. In most cases, his wheelchair hasn’t mattered in his roles – other than the set needing a few ramps.

But in Richard III, the tyrant’s deformities are reviled as marks of evil. And Richard himself exults in them, boasting that if he’s too ugly to be a lover, he’ll be a villain.

The idea of turning these same deformities into physical disabilities began with Antony Sher’s celebrated 1984 Royal Shakespeare performance. Sher used crutches tied to his arms. In the play, Richard is called a bottled spider, and the crutches made him look like one. But they weren’t just a grotesque image. The key to Richard, Sher wrote, isn’t evil; it’s his pain, his bitterness over his condition.

At Kitchen Dog, director Leson agrees that deformities or handicaps hardly explain why anyone would murder his way to power.

Leson: It just didn’t connect for me. He wants to raise hell as a result of that? I just didn’t understand. He seemed bored. I’m bored therefore I’ll do this. And I think there’s a lot to Rene bringing to the table every day what he deals with as a man in a wheelchair and what that must do over time. And I think there’s a point where Richard says, enough is enough.

What Richard III — and Rene — deal with are condescension and barriers. In Leson’s adaptation, the other nobles are all squabbling, partying Eurotrash who disdain Richard. He may be smarter and harder-working, but he’s still ignored.

Rehearsing all this with his fellow actors has been painful, says Moreno

Moreno: One particular time I lost it and went off. I realized that I was trying very passionately to explain to them what sometimes my life is like moving in the world in the chair – and I realized that’s exactly what’s going on with Richard.

A hurt, resentful Richard isn’t necessarily sympathetic, Moreno believes. Just more human. In the end, this Richard III gives us a handicapped man as a cold-blooded killer; it also gives us a handicapped man who can do just about anything – seize the throne or, as in this scene, seduce the widow of a man he murdered.

Richard: Was ever woman in this humor wooed?

Was ever woman in this humor won?

What? I that kill’d her husband and his father,

To take her in her heart’s extremest hate

With curses in her mouth, tears in her eyes …

And yet to win her, all the world to nothing?

Ha!

The Kitchen Dog Theater’s Richard III runs through May 3. This is Jerome Weeks for KERA.

Here’s the Scene segment from tonight’s TV version of Think (which airs Fridays at 7:30 p.m. on KERA 13). William Keyse Rudolph, Ph. D., The Pauline Gill Sullivan Associate Curator of American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, talks with host Krys Boyd about the museum’s current exhibition “Bluebonnets and Beyond: Julian Onderdonk, American Impressionist.”