Archive for Orlando Sentinel
05.20.08
Posted in Ryan, Orlando Sentinel, Blogs at 9:41 am by Ryan
As it is every year, we post dozens of articles on this site, and everyone reads the Sentinel blog… I love what they’re doing over there, I just wish we had a little of their budget, standing in the community, or the built-in reputation that you get from being a year-round player in this game. If I could pay five seven bloggers, this would be a different world indeed.
As long as you’re comfortable with using your real name (and everyone should be by now), you can go participate in some of the conversation over in Maupin-Land, a magical place where they’ve never heard of video or photos.
The best conversations every year take place at the Attention Must Be Paid blog, and there are invariably a few posts with dozens of comments, like this one entitled “From the Fringe: What’s Good?” (24 comments). Then there’s one that’s pretty much the same idea called “What’s Fab about the Fringe?” (15 comments) — I fail to see the difference between the two posts.
Other posts have garnered between 4 and 6 comments, like the reviews of When Pigs Fly, The UnNaturals, Tod Kimbro, Blues: A Handbook for the Future Homeless, and of course Galapagos, which appears to be this year’s “best kept secret”.
Actually, I’m surprised we don’t have an 80-comment war happening - maybe they’ve lost their edge. We never had it to begin with, it seems.
Sure, the Sentinel claims to have a “Complete Fringe Festival Coverage” page, but all they did here was repurpose the same content they created somewhere else (and often not for Fringe), and they don’t even fit all the reviews on one page.
I know they are working with archaic technology, but if you’ve got the budget to hire 8 people to write about it, can’t you get Danny to post a list of all the reviews on one page?
I had some big plans for this year’s Blogging Fringe, but they had to be put on hold while I figure out how to have a full-time job and be “that guy” at the festival. Also, helping out with the actual Fringe website took a few of my ideas and gave them back to the festival, which is as it should be. With any luck you’ll notice Blogging Fringe coming out of the beta-testing period next year with a critical extra feature that I guarantee the Sentinel and the Weekly wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole: publicly editable pages for all the shows so we can have all the videos, links to reviews editable by anyone so we can have a for-real community site.
Actually, next year, there may be a completely different concept out there, but that depends on several factors and some collaborations I have in the works with Katie Ball. Look for some fun stuff on the horizon.
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02.20.08
Posted in Articles, Requests, Orlando Sentinel, Newspaper at 1:29 am by Ryan
Orlando Sentinel - Talk to us. Please. - by Elizabeth Maupin
Arts journalism is being cut back at newspapers all over the country, including the Sentinel, because somebody higher up the chain of command thinks it’s not important.
Now you know and I know that that’s not the case. If arts journalism were to go away, the arts would have a hard time getting their message out. And all of us would suffer.
One suggestion was for the board members and high-rollers at each arts organization to lobby the people they know who run newspapers. Tell them how important the arts are, and how much you want to read about the arts in the paper.
Now, today, the Sentinel’s public editor, Manning Pynn, has made a related suggestion in his Sunday column. The Sentinel wants its readers to tell us what you’re interested in, he says. We’ll shape our coverage to please you.
So PLEASE. If you love theater, and you love the arts, write to Manning Pynn and tell him so. Tell him you want more arts coverage, not less, in the paper. Tell him how important it is to Orlando’s arts community and to our society that the arts be encouraged to flourish.
To write him, just email public@orlandosentinel.com. Of, if you’re a telephone person, call 407-650-6410.
To the editor:
Please take a moment to consider the ramifications of including less arts coverage in the local paper.
First of all, including articles from the associated press or syndicated from other papers is hardly what I’d call original and creative, so please none of that.
Second, on printed or online arts and culture coverage.
A large part of what defines the fingerprint of a community are those things that can only be found in the local area - those who grew up locally or who started working in the local industries (in our case, entertainment, engineering and military) and then branched out to do their own thing. SAK Theatre and Mad Cow are great examples of this, as well as Jester Theatre Company or the Orlando Fringe Festival. The first reason for any of these entities to exist is because of the vision of the founders and organizers - locals who are dedicated to their craft.
There are countless other examples in other areas of the arts besides theatre - take the Broken Speech Poetry Slam at Stardust or Preacher Bill’s songwriter showcase at Taste. Local art at Dandelion and all the cafes in town; shows at Back Booth, Crooked Bayou, Underground Bluz, Orlando Brewing Company and the like.
As the only main stream publication in town, you have a responsibility to the community to help give Orlando’s fingerprint more definition, not only to the locals but to the millions of tourists and passers-by who visit Central Florida every year.
Cutting coverage of Arts and Culture is a step in the wrong direction, and in fact encouraging the homogenization of a city desperately trying to imitate other major cities, thinking that by building some condos, allocating money to new developments and hiring designers who have worked in other distinctive cities that we can catch some of the glow created by these places in some sort of sad mirror. Mirrors, however, are not designed for looking at others, but at oneself. Help this city see the glow we have already achieved, and we may shine all the brighter.
My best wishes to you in a time of transition for the Sentinel and the Tribune Company as a whole.
Peace,
Ryan Price
FloridaCreatives.com
BloggingFringe.com
OrlandoScene.TV
RyanPriceMedia.com
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01.25.08
Posted in Announcements, Quotes, Orlando Sentinel, Dance at 2:42 pm by Ryan
Heard this from a post on Maupin’s blog, why am I not on the Voci press release list?
Voci Dance, celebrating its 8th season as Central Florida’s premier modern dance company announces their move to Winter Garden, Florida. Beginning in February 2008, the company will make The Centre for Dance & the Performing Arts their new rehearsal space. The studio, owned by dance educator Kathryn Austin is located at West Plant Street in the heart of Winter Garden just 15 minutes west of downtown Orlando.
Located across the street from the studio is the newly renovated Garden Theatre where Voci will perform at the grand opening Garden Theatre Gala celebration February 29. Voci Dance is also the first dance company slated to perform at the theater in November 2008.
For the past year, Voci Dance has rehearsed in downtown Orlando at the historic Avalon Island building managed by Artists Registry. Fortunately for the company, Kathryn Austin’s donation of space came at the same time the company learned their lease would not be renewed at Avalon Island. Voci’s Executive Director, Kelli Cummins explained, “As a small non-profit we depend upon people in our community to help us achieve our mission of making the arts accessible. Kathryn Austin has graciously provided us with the space we need in order to achieve that mission.”
Voci Dance was founded in 2000 and became a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization in 2003. The company receives a small amount of funding from United Arts of Central Florida and is also contracted through United Arts and Orange County Public Schools to provide dance education services targeting Title I schools. To learn more about Voci Dance please visit www.vocidance.org or myspace.com/vocidance. To learn more about The Centre for Dance & the Performing Arts, please visit www.dancecdpa.com.
Downtown Orlando is hemorrhaging art, and lots of arts groups are not able to settle in downtown because the city is too busy trying to be like every other city, but they’re not trying to be themselves. Also, I have never had great feelings about Jeff over at the Rogers Building/DMAC - funny thing - as soon as we brought an expensive video camera into his gallery, he was much more eager to speak with us than on any previous meetings. That’s not how we roll at Blogging Fringe or any Liberatr channels. You should pay us some mind (if any) when we bring a point-and-shoot and tell you hundreds of people will see this in the morning as when we borrow the camera from my brother’s company. Please!
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11.27.07
Posted in Ryan, Events, Sentinel, Recommendations, Orlando Sentinel, Fundraisers at 5:16 am by Ryan
Our good friend and the website producer for the Orlando Fringe, Mark Baratelli, has returned from his tour of I Love a Piano, and he’s organizing another night of cabaret to benefit a local charity. I’m so sorry I missed the last event, because I love the female voice, but I won’t be missing this one for sure. Look for some more updates from Blogging Fringe as the event draws closer.
Here’s a copy of the event info from http://feeds.orlandosentinel.com/~r/entertainment/stage/theaterblog/~3/190728002/the-girls-women.html:
Last August a group of pretty swell women got together at Mad Cow Theatre to raise money to send Mark Baratelli and his show to the New York Fringe.
Now they’re back, and this time Laura Hodos, Luerne Herrera, Meghan Moroney and pianist Steve McKinnon are raising money for the Coalition for the Homeless.
Here’s the info:
Cast:
Laura Hodos
Luerne Herrera
Meghan Moroney
Pianist Steve McKinnon
Event Title:
A Night With the Girls 2
Date:
December 12, 2007
Time:
8pm
Show Length:
one hour and thirty minutes
Venue:
The Goldman Theater at the John and Rita Lowndes Shakespeare Center (http://www.orlandoshakes.org/)
Tickets:
$20 suggested donation to the Coalition for the Homeless of Central Florida
Reservations: email@markbaratelli.com
Available at the door
Cash only
Produced by:
MarkBaratelli.com
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07.28.07
Posted in Ryan, Announcements, Sentinel, Recaps, Orlando Sentinel, Orlando Weekly, Newspaper, Blogs at 6:35 pm by Ryan
That’s right. Thursday night, July 26th, 2007 the Orange County Commission met and voted on the building of a new sports arena (for the Orlando Magic, the old one is to be sold and demolished), some renovations on the 70+ year old Citrus Bowl (home of the Capital One Bowl, the Champs Sports Bowl, and… not much else), and of most importance to you, the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center (see if you can get us to stop calling it OPAC any time soon).
“Betsy” Maupin has a bit of news about the PAC in her latest blog. John Kennedy (political blogger for the Sentinel) was giving semi-live updates during the meeting, and my new favorite news aggregator for Orlando, Outside.in, doesn’t have much news at all.
The best coverage of “the venues” by far has been the Orlando Weekly. Searching their site for “Pleasure Dome” or “Venues” will bring up lots of relevant results (including the several reasons why they were not interested in building a new arena or renovating the Citrus Bowl. The Orlando Weekly Blog has also been getting much more frequent updating lately, so if you’re into reading blogs, check out their RSS.
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06.26.07
Posted in Ryan, MySpace, Requests, Quotes, Orlando Sentinel at 3:19 am by Ryan
So believes the person running the Starlight Theatre’s MySpace Blog. Here’s the post where they lay it out.
Of course I understand limited resources, cutbacks, etc. However, to the trained eye, it seems that the Orlando Sentinel is only cutting back on certain theaters.
For the record, the last time someone came to Starlight Theater to review a Starlight-produced show was Betsey Maupin’s visit to us on January 5th, 2007 for our “decadent” version of Cabaret, which is still what I would call a well-known musical.
This is where the Internet proves its worth. Agree? Disagree? Leave comments.
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