By Bill Marx and Wen Huang

Dissident Chinese writer Liao Yiwu lives near the epicenter of the earthquake in Sichuan province. His home is about 17 miles from the school where hundreds of students were trapped. Miraculously, his building survived, though there are several giant cracks in the concrete stairway. In his immediate area more than 1,000 people were killed. Liao says he plays flute in the dark empty building to pass the time.

Author Liao Yiwu

According to Liao, the government has done a good job in their rescue efforts. The fact that the government TV is now broadcasting news of the earthquake 24 hours non-stop has been reassuring. Read the rest »

by Bill Marx

A quiet but insistent source of frustration among some of the authors at the PEN World Voices Festival in New York turned out to be the amount of attention garnered by China and its brutal treatment of writers. All agreed that PEN’s petition to free imprisoned dissenting authors in the country was necessary, but there were those who pointed out that the campaign also fed a fixation on China and the Olympics that played into political fashion and America’s limited cultural attention span.

Somalian writer Nuruddin Farah questions America’s “clumsy self-absorption.”
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By Caldwell Titcomb

A concert in memory of composer-teacher Edward Cohen (1940-2002) took place in the Kresge Auditorium of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on April 27. The participants included instrumentalists, vocal soloists, and the M.I.T. Chamber Chorus, led by Dr. William Cutter, director of choral programs at the Institute.

Eddie Cohen

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By Gary Schwartz

I would not go as far as my travel companion and say that I am sorry that I ever saw the exhibition. But it comes close. In December, at the Sackler Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we went to “Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity.” To shock and awe you unprepared, here is an impression of what greeted us.

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By Caldwell Titcomb

Two important twentieth-century pieces and a work-in-progress made up the final program of the season offered by the New England Philharmonic at the Tsai Performance Center on April 26, with Richard Pittman on the podium.

A painting by E. Prampolini inspired by Bela Bartok’s “The Miraculous Mandarin”
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by Bill Marx

Who would have guessed that a writer who proudly earned the reputation as the Oscar the Grouch of contemporary literature would have so many loving fans? But there were few empty seats two nights ago at New York’s Austrian Cultural Forum, which hosted a PEN panel, proudly entitled “The Art of Failure,” on the Austrian novelist, poet, playwright and novelist Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989), a man who turned his ferocious hatred of his native Austria and obsession with misery and failure into literature.

Thomas Bernhard
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by Bill Marx

I’m down in New York for PEN American’s annual Festival of International Literature, five days of readings, panels, and discussions on writing around the globe that emphasizes the plight of imperiled authors, particularly those that write in languages other than English.

Chinese dissident writer Ma Jian
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By Bill Marx

I narrate disintegration among rulers
And the kindness of the enemy
I report the speed at which fear grips the innovative
And the intolerable loneliness of the habitually free

– From Howard Barker’s poem “Gary Upright”

A Hard Heart by Howard Barker. Directed by Richard Romagnoli.
Presented by Whistler in the Dark Theatre at the Arsenal Center for the Arts, Watertown, MA, through April 26.

Playwright Howard Barker epitomizes his vision of the Faustian urge in the poem “Gary Upright,” whose narrator proclaims himself to be a ‘god unnamed.’ Barker’s art often focuses on the furies of the will-to-power unchained: the consequent construction and destruction ends with the meltdown of an ego blind to its own fallibility. For Barker, the residue of instinct and/or hope that remains after the catastrophe testifies to the elemental vitality, the primal resilience of humanity. Read the rest »

By Bill Marx

“Boston is adrift in the brave new competition among big American cities vying for tourist dollars.” Maureen Dezell, WBUR

Maureen made that charge back in July 2006 in an article that turned out to be one of the last posts on the late WBUR Arts Online. Now that the quote, along with a link to the piece, is part of an invitation to an Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston workshop on April 23 where, for $50, attendees can listen to experts talk about ways that we can “create for Boston and Massachusetts what Philadelphia and Pennsylvania have successfully done” to encourage cultural tourism. The latest news out of Philadelphia is that Boston has its work cut out for it — Philly is surging ahead. Read the rest »

By Bill Marx

The Huntington Theatre Company’s Breaking Ground Festival of new play readings turns five this year. The latest lineup runs through Sunday at the shindig’s venue, the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. Scripts by Melinda Lopez, Ken Urban, Mat Smart and Nathan Louis Jackson, as well as a new musical by Michael Friedman and Daniel Goldstein, are the dramatic ear candy.

Ilana Brownstein, HTC Literary Manager, relaxes

I figured that it was a good time to pose a few questions to Huntington Literary Manager and BG producer Ilana Brownstein about the health of the Festival and on what separates effective play development programs from flashy wannabes. Read the rest »