Word: britishers
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...Artist As someone who supports legitimate artists and is a collector of original art - albeit on a modest level - I am offended how British "Bad Boy" artist, Damien Hirst [Sept. 15] is dominating the art world. He is merely another charlatan who found a gimmick and capitalized on it, suckering in those wannabes who are more interested in bragging rights than promoting a fresh, honest talent in the art world or insightful, subversive ideas in the public arena. Dead animals preserved in formaldehyde and a diamond encrusted skull - is this even legal? Spin paintings done by studio assistants - give...
...British playwright Alan Ayckbourn has long been the theater's champion daredevil, a man who never saw a stage stunt he wouldn't tackle. One of his early works, The Norman Conquests, was a cycle of three plays that recounted the events of a weekend from three different parts of the same house. One Ayckbourn play moves backward in time. Another conflates all the action in a house, from living room to attic, into a single stage space. His ingenious, nearly unstageable Intimate Exchanges has 16 permutations, depending on the choices made by characters at key points in the action...
This mix of emotions, the intricate tightrope walk between comedy and tragedy--Ayckbourn's greatest feat, really--may be why his work has got short shrift in America. Early in his career, after such West End (and occasional Broadway) successes as Absurd Person Singular, Ayckbourn was labeled, patronizingly, the "British Neil Simon." But as his plays have grown darker and more complex, Broadway has largely abandoned him. Although Communicating Doors, one of his lesser comedies, had a successful run off-Broadway a couple of seasons back and Comic Potential, his latest West End hit, will be produced this fall...
...sure, American productions of Ayckbourn are usually botched; directors tend to broaden the comedy and stomp all over the delicate (and very British) nuances. It's as if they still believe that silly Neil Simon tag. Better to compare Ayckbourn--who, at 61, has written nearly 60 plays and directs them himself--to another artist whose work was misunderstood in his lifetime, Alfred Hitchcock. Both worked in popular genres that had few pretensions to art--the suspense thriller and the domestic comedy. Both were technical virtuosos who loved to set themselves challenges in their chosen medium. And both managed...
...influential online news site Malaysia Today, was directed by the Home Minister to spend two years in a detention center for inciting racial hatred. Because Raja Petra's case came under the auspices of Malaysia's draconian Internal Security Act (ISA), a colonial-era relic used by the British to try to clamp down on insurgents without due process, the jail sentence was handed down without trial. International condemnation was swift, with a U.S. State Department spokesperson saying: "The detention of opposition leaders under the ISA would be viewed by the United States and the international community as a fundamental...