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Monday Morning Roundup


by Stephen Becker 6 Jun 2011 7:59 AM

Today in the roundup: Cliburn CEO quits, questions over City Performance Hall and big thumbs up for the Kessler.

CTA TBD

CLIBURN FOUNDATION CEO RESIGNS: David Chambless Worters announced on Friday that he is resigning as president and CEO of the Van Cliburn Foundation after only six months on the job. Worters replaced Richard Rodzinski, who ran the organization for 23 years. “I’ve found that I don’t have sufficient passion for this,” Worters tells star-telegram.com. “The Cliburn deserves someone who does.”

MANY QUESTIONS OVER CITY PERFORMANCE HALL: City Performance Hall is scheduled to open in the Arts District in summer 2012. The hall will provide space for around 40 groups. And those groups are starting to get antsy about how this is all going to work. “Who’s going to manage the facility,” Kirsten Brandt James of Junior Players asks in a dallasnews.com story. “And will they manage it in a way that makes it feasible and affordable for 40 small- to mid-sized companies?” The answers to those questions are still being discussed.

UP IN NYC: Lysistrata Jones has opened off-Broadway in New York. You may remember the show as Give it Up! when it debuted last year at the Dallas Theater Center. And you might even recognize DTC acting company member Liz Mikel (above, left)  in the New York cast. So how has the transition gone? Ben Brantley certainly approves. “As directed and choreographed with zippy stylishness by Dan Knechtges, this Transport Group production is also steeped in a giddy appreciation — both starry eyed and savvy — of that sweet spot in pop culture where mainstream blandness turns into so-stupid-it’s-smart camp,” he writes in his nytimes.com review. (Variety review, Backstage review, TalkinBroadway pan.)

THE REAL DALLAS: The New York Times has asked four writers to keep tabs on their local economies, and the paper tapped author Ben Fountain to monitor Dallas. In Sunday’s edition of the paper, Fountain writes that as the Dallas television series gets a revamp, the real Dallas can be found in Oak Cliff at the Kessler Theater. But here’s the real interesting nugget: “The theater has had a spillover effect, too: in the past year, seven businesses have opened within 100 yards of the Kessler, including a barbecue restaurant, a grocery store and a vintage clothing boutique.” More ammo for the arts-boosts-the-economy argument, which will no doubt be made again locally in another two months.


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