Letters, Etc.

Announcements

Eugenio Barba Wins a Big Prize and Gives It All Away!

Congratulations to Eugenio Barba--founder-director of Odin Teatret and TDR Contributing Editor--who has been awarded the Danish Sonning Prize for the year 2000. The DKr 50o,000 prize (about $70,000) is awarded every other year to a person who has made a "significant contribution to European culture." The winner is elected by a committee established by the Senate of the University of Copenhagen. The Sonning Prize committee honored Barba as "a man who is not merely a researcher into the fundamentals of the art of theatre, but is at the same time an outstanding creative artist. There are few who have kept theatre alive and at the forefront of European culture as has Eugenio Barba. In his capacity as theatre pedagogue, researcher, and creator over a period of 35 years, he has succeeded in implementing his ideas in accordance with the changing artistic, political, and social circumstances in such a way that theatre stands out as a vital source of artistic and cultural renewal."

Past winners include Albert Schweitzer, Sir Laurence Olivier, Arthur Koestler, Hannah Arendt, Dario Fo, Simone de Beauvoir, Václav Havel, and Günter Grass.

Now here's the truly rare, generous thing. Barba has given the prize money, every last Kroner, to the following: (1) Holstebro Folkegaven, a project of Holstebro, where the Odin is located, to build a youth club in Tirana, Albania; (2) The Cuban theatre magazine Conjunto, which for 35 years has helped the Latin American theatre's struggle in the face of oppression, proving that theatre is not a luxury, but a necessity; (3) The Danish priest Leif Bork Hansen who, like Antigone, did not follow the laws of the State but obeyed his own conscience by helping to hide illegal refugees who were about to be deported.

As so often in the past, Eugenio Barba has set a high example for the rest of us.

--Richard Schechner

More Bucks for Your Words

Thanks to the strong ongoing support of both the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, TDR is increasing what we pay to authors and translators--for the first time in...well, for the first time that any of us can remember.

Authors will now receive $.04 per word and translators $.05 per word, with a minimum of $50.00. Book reviewers will be on the same scale, with a minimum of $50.00 for reviewing one book and $100 for reviewing more than one.

It ain't much, but if money talks TDR is raising its voice a little. Write well, spend easy.

--The Editors

Special Issue on Broadway & Other "Commercial Theatre"

TDR invites queries and contributions for a special issue on Broadway, the West End, Boulevard Theatre, the Ginza--commercial venues. We want to consider these kinds of performances from a "performance studies perspective." That is, as venues of popular entertainment, entertainment for certain classes of spectators, places for the recycling of film materials, and so on. And to consider the historical and theoretical place of Broadway and other such venues. The special issue will be edited by John Bell and Richard Schechner. Please send all manuscripts and/or inquiries to tdr@nyu.edu; or by snailmail to TDR, 721 Broadway, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10003. See the TDR writers' guidelines before submitting any materials. The guidelines may be accessed online at: <mitpress.mit.edu/tdr>.

--John Bell
Richard Schechner

An Addition and a Correction to the Hijikata Materials

We thank Stephen Barber of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, England, for pointing out that in "On Material II Fautrier" by Hijikata Tatsumi (TDR 44, 1 [T165]:60-61) the painting we were unable to identify is actually Study for a Portrait of van Gogh I, done in 1957 by Francis Bacon. Barber notes that Bacon was one of Hijikata's favorite artists.

Additionally, plate 4 accompanying Hijikata's text "Wind Daruma" (TDR 44, 1 [T165]:71-81...