News from ArtsJournal.com

"Religions are often built around this heartache for certainty. In the face of sickness, loss and grief, a thousand dogmas with a thousand names have risen. ... [Yet the] world's history of spiritual endeavor contains many beautiful descriptions of authentic encounters with uncertainty. Ironically these often serve as gateways to the most compassionate experience of what can be called sacred in human life."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"Think your flat-screen television is big? You ain't seen nothing yet. ... Tileable, interactive TV 'wallpaper' will dominate the room, with wrap-around screens that recruit your peripheral vision to create a truly immersive experience. What's more, you'll be able to use part or all of the screen for different shows, movies, web pages or Twitter timelines."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"Record numbers of people are subscribing to the Australian Ballet but box office takings have plateaued because the company can't add more performances to its schedules or seats to its theatres."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"In the congested world of subway performers, where dance troupes, conga circles and violin players blur, Ming Liang Lu, 57, is an alluring presence. A self-described 'master paper portrait cutter,' he has the ability to trim facial portraits out of frail paper within minutes, compelling some riders to willingly miss their trains."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"We'll debate about books under-noticed or too much noticed, and celebrate writers we've ... We'll recommend and we'll theorize. Daily essays will be the blog's mainstay, with books as an anchor for wide-ranging cultural comment."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

The monthly's editor, Nancie Clare, says, "I think it's fair to say there were revenue issues ... I don't think they got rid of us because they don't like us." The magazine's seven staffers may or may not be offered jobs elsewhere at the newspaper.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"The Sacramento Philharmonic reached its goal of raising $150,000 by a self-imposed May 15 deadline, persuading the organization's board of directors to vote Tuesday evening to keep the orchestra operating through the 2012-13 season."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"[She] is one of the most controversial women in English history; we argue over her, we pity and admire and revile her, we reinvent her in every generation. She takes on the colour of our fantasies and is shaped by our preoccupations: witch, bitch, feminist, sexual temptress, cold opportunist. ... Much of what we think we know about Anne melts away on close inspection."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"The immediate question is whether Sedaris's stories are, strictly speaking, true - an important consideration for journalistic organizations such as NPR and programs such as This American Life. ... Then there's this: Does it matter whether a humorous writer, working on a news or nonfiction program, makes stuff up?"... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"ANU management has backed down over its plans to 'spill' the positions of 32 of its tenured and permanent academic and administrative staff at the School of Music today ... While this does not change its plans to eliminate 10 of the 32 positions, it gives staff a greater chance to fight for their jobs or a chance at redeployment - as well as access to full redundancy provisions.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"Scott Pask made his entrance and spoke his first line: 'The green needs to be a bit more blue'." The Tony Award-winning set designer was at work at the New York Botanical Garden's Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, helping create the new exhibit "Monet's Garden." "The task: evoking Giverny, the Normandy estate that was manse and muse to one of Impressionism's founding fathers."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"We get that Shakespeare wouldn't be Shakespeare - and unimaginative programme designers the world over would be up the proverbial creek - without Desdemona's handkerchief or Macbeth's dagger. ... But what about the impact prop choice can have within a production? What creative freedoms, extended by the playwright to the props person, can affect the outcome of a show?... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"I am not influenced by other human beings. But I am inspired. If I see a great performance on television, onstage, in the movies, I go to work the next day with a renewed energy and less fear. These great artists take me out of my life and make me want to go there. But I never imitated anyone. I walk out onstage and I'm my own performer."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

The St. Romanos International Composers Competition, launched this year as part of the state-run St. Petersburg International Choir Festival, aims to bring the church's music (more central to worship than in the West) out of the powerful shadow of Russian Romanticism and into the 21st century. Roughly 300 scores were submitted; large, enthusiastic crowds turned out to hear the winning works.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"For centuries, traders in Turkey's covered-market bazaars have been perfecting their pitch - famously hollering, singing or otherwise trumpeting their wares. But now an obscure provision of a new law is seeking to turn down the volume."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"[The] politically engaged Mexican novelist and irrepressible bon vivant ... stood at the forefront of Latin American letters for more than half a century ... In addition to his career as a novelist, Mr. Fuentes led an intellectually restless life as a political provocateur, an essayist, a screenwriter and playwright, an editor, an ambassador and a cultural historian."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"There were no opposition leaders at the head of the vast column of people that peacefully wound its way through central Moscow on Sunday. There was, instead, a corpulent poet ... A bespectacled detective novelist was autographing everything at hand ... People mobbed a diminutive grandmother who has won many of Russia's literary prizes."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"The main reason for these pre-textual prologues, which blur the start time advertised in the papers, is presumably the pursuit of greater realism: a sense that the performance is joining a story that has begun some time before, rather than requiring a sudden suspension of disbelief. However, the strategy is risky because it creates unease in an auditorium."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

The Pritzker Prize winner and his firm, Morphosis, have been named architects of the flagship structure of a major research center and high-tech business incubator planned for Roosevelt Island, the quiet strip of land in the East River between Manhattan and Queens.... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com

"The troupe's first two years didn't do much to dispel the idea that it was a rich woman's whim: there was no headquarters and few performances ... Nearly 10 years later, the 16-member Cedar Lake ... [is] possibly the country's most innovative contemporary ballet troupe with an A-list repertoire, and an accent on creation that few companies worldwide can match."... ArtsJournal http://www.artsjournal.com