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CUNDY'S HARBOR, Maine On the big screen, the leader of the Dead Poets Society at an all-boys prep school was an inspirational teacher played by Robin Williams. In real life, it's a balding amateur poet who drives around in his "Poemobile," visiting and documenting the graves of dead poets and calling attention to their works. Walter Skold, founder of the Dead Poets Society of America, just finished a three-month road trip in which he visited the graves of 150 poets in 23 states. Skold boasts that he set a literary land speed record of 1.66 gpd (graves per day) over...

It seems Rocco Landesman, the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, didn't get the memo, literally. On September 22, stung by controversy over the administration's effort to turn the arts community into proselytizers of its very special brand of hope and change, the White House issued a stern warning to all government agencies: Keep politics out of the arts. White House denied that was ever the intent. Many in the media, as is their wont, took the Obama administration at their word. But not the website Big Government (which broke the story) and the Washington Times. They demonstrated...

Former actor and present White House associate director of public engagement Kalpen Modi was directly involved in planning the controversial conference call hosted by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) flack to encourage tax-supported artists to create propaganda for President Obama, according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The emails reveal that Modi worked with now-former NEA national communications director Yosif Sargant in planning the August 10 conference call that was first revealed by Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood.com web site. Participants in the conference call were encouraged to use their talents...

I'm amazed the NEA Chairman can make such a statement since Obama is hiding everything he published.

Obama 'Most Powerful Writer Since Julius Caesar,' Says NEA Chief Rocco Landesman, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, declared in a speech to art philanthropists in Brooklyn last week that President Obama is the world's most powerful writer since the days of Caesar. By Joseph Abrams FOXNews.com Wednesday, October 28, 2009 Et tu, Rocco? Maybe President Obama will win the Nobel Prize for Literature, too, now that the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts has declared that "Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar." Rocco Landesman rendered unto Obama that considerable compliment in...

Maybe Freepers need a forum devoted to movies, stage, acting, and the arts.

Government watchdogs are blasting taxpayer-funded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities that send college professors on free vacations and pay for programs on topics like the "cultural significance of the circus poster" -- just a few items on an eye-popping list of questionable NEH projects.

ABC News' Yunji de Nies reports: This evening, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman released a statement on the controversial August 10 conference call, led by then-NEA communications director Yossi Sergant. On that call Sergant seemed to encourage artists to help support President Obama's agenda, which has now prompted the White House to issue new guidelines to prevent such a call from ever happening again. At the time Sergant himself seemed to sense he was on shaky ground, telling the group, "This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how...

Last month, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman said that, in American politics, ”the arts are a little bit of a target. The subtext is that it is elitist, left wing, maybe even a little gay.” Well, the NEA has certainly earned that reputation these past few weeks. Just like the LGBT community, the NEA – which purports to help struggling artists of all kinds - is following in lockstep with The One, regardless of whether it’s good for artistic expression, free speech, or real people. Last fall, I was amazed at how many folks in the gay...

Back in the days of Joseph Stalin, that madman and his cabal made good use of the talents of filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, who had a natural ability to take the Soviet inclination to turn art and bend it to the will of the country's communist rulers and produce cinematic works that glorified Soviet accomplishment. ... Now, I'm not saying that Barack Obama is in any way similar to Joseph Stalin or Ivan the Terrible (especially Ivan, who'd have a peasant's head hacked off just for blinking the wrong way), but I'm sure one can see the parallels between Stalin and...

As an update to yesterday’s post, here is the link to the Big Hollywood expose by Patrick Courrielche on the National Endowment for the Arts using federal funds to promote Obama administration policies and projects. Is this a blockbuster? You make the call… From BigHollywood.com…

Should the National Endowment for the Arts encourage artists to create art on issues being vehemently debated nationally? That is the question that I set out to discuss a little over three weeks ago when I wrote an article on Big Hollywood entitled The National Endowment for the Art of Persuasion?” The question still requires debate but the facts do not. The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable.

"They were not going to report this blockbuster unless they were forced to. And they were. What's more, it ain't over yet. Not every hint I dropped in that piece about what was to come has played itself out yet. Stay tuned." ----snip---- "High praise to you, Mr. Stewart. It's nice to see there's someone out there in liberal media-land who would recognize there's something terribly wrong on these videos. And yes, there are more to come." At the very least, filmmaker James O'Keefe and actress Hannah Giles deserve a Pulitzer Prize for their expose of deep corruption and unspeakable...

This is it; the story we were speculating about today. Well, this is the "pre-story" and the rest breaks tomorrow at noon (don't know EST or PST) But, there is even a larger issue that hasn’t yet received much attention in the press. Among the Obama Administration officials on the call were Buffy Wicks, Office of Public Engagement and the lead White House official on the President’s Serve.Gov initiative to promote national service. Also on the call was Nell Abernathy, Director of Outreach for Serve.Gov. One of their mail goals on the call, it seems, was to encourage artists to...

On August 25th 2009, Big Hollywood’s Patrick Courrielche broke the story of a conference call he attended with other “rising artist and art community luminaries”: On Thursday August 6th, I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to attend a conference call scheduled for Monday August 10th hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The call would include “a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how...

Was Fulke Greville really Shakespeare.Solving a Historic mystery between Shakespeare and Fulke Greville with the help of Fulke Grevilles 8th great grandson Christopher Brooke Fulke Greville and his cousin Historian Guy De La Bedoyere.

UPDATE: The National Endowment for the Arts Public Affairs Specialist Sally Gifford contacted The Washington Times and clarified that Mr. Sergant is still an employee at the NEA but is no longer Director of Communications.

Romeo is black. And no one cares. While this might be big news in America, no one in London is making any fuss about Adetomiwa Edun in Romeo & Juliet, playing through August 23 at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Here, it’s just damn good theater. No nuance, no emotional triggers playing on Edun’s ethnicity. I admit that I was excited and skeptical about it, feeling very American in my belief that this was astonishing news and curious about how the Globe Theatre’s audiences would respond. I watched with a grin, caught the Bard’s lines flying and peeped that black man kissing...

The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night "pervert" revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco. ... [S]ome of the NEA's grants are spicing up more than the economy. A few of their more risque choices have some taxpayer advocates hot under the collar, including a $50,000 infusion for the Frameline film house, which recently screened Thundercrack, "the world's only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and...

More than 50 congressmen sent a letter blasting what they called "indecent" and "abhorrent" art projects funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts as part of the $787 billion economic stimulus bill. The NEA may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night "pervert" revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco, as first reported Thursday by FOXNews.com. "These are funds intended to create permanent jobs, not to feed prurient interests," wrote Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., in a...

Editor's note: This story contains descriptions that some may find offensive."Stimulus" funds awarded to the National Endowment for the Arts may be being used to produce pornographic material. The NEA was allotted $80 million out of the $787-trillion stimulus bill approved earlier this year by Congress and President Obama. Alliance Defense Fund special counsel Pat Trueman shares what he found upon close examination of the NEA's expenditures. "The National Endowment for the Arts is using money from the stimulus bill, which was supposed to create economic activity, for the production of pornography," he states. "They've specifically given grants to companies that they...

Stimulus Bill Funds Go to Art Houses Showing 'Pervert' Revues, Underground Pornography Thursday, July 30, 2009 By Joseph Abrams Talk about a stimulus package. The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night "pervert" revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco. The NEA was given $80 million of the government's $787 billion economic stimulus bill to spread around to needy artists nationwide, and most of the money is being spent to help preserve jobs...

The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night "pervert" revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco. The NEA was given $80 million of the government's $787 billion economic stimulus bill to spread around to needy artists nationwide, and most of the money is being spent to help preserve jobs in museums, orchestras, theaters and dance troupes that have been hit hard by the recession.

Tuesday April 7, 2009 Student Producers Cancel Notre Dame Performances of ‘Vagina Monologues’ April 7, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Student producers of The Vagina Monologues at the University of Notre Dame decided to cancel 2009 performances of the often criticized, verbally pornographic play, the student newspaper The Observer reports.  Both Fort Wayne-South Bend Bishop D’Arcy and the Catholic education watchdog organization, The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS), have been highly critical of Notre Dame administrators for past productions of the play.   “It is wonderful news that Notre Dame students will not host the Monologues this year,” said Patrick J. Reilly,...

President Barack Obama has established a new staff position in his White House with the task of overseeing arts and culture, Kareem Dale. Dale, a partially-blind lawyer previously served as national disability director for Obama's campaign and served on the arts policy committee for Obama in Illinois. No details have been provided about the specific job duties as of yet, but it's been described as "a big step forward in terms of connecting cultural and goverment with mainstream administration policy."

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says the theater where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated remains a hallowed space and a tribute to the president who kept the United States whole. Obama visited Ford's Theatre on Wednesday night for a gala rededication. In prepared remarks, Obama says Lincoln was a "singular figure" who guided the nation through the Civil War. Obama told the story of how Lincoln wanted workers to continue building the U.S. Capitol, even though the supplies might have instead been used to make wartime bullets. He says Lincoln wanted a symbol of the future. Obama and Illinois both...

THERE IS nothing new under the sun, says the Good Book, and the plea for a Cabinet-level secretary of arts and culture is no exception. That plea comes most recently from composer-producer Quincy Jones, who has long wanted the United States to establish a national ministry of culture akin to those in Italy, Germany, or France. "The next conversation I have with President Obama is to beg for a secretary of arts," he said in a radio interview shortly after the presidential election. Culture and the arts are "just as important as military defense," Jones argues, and a federal arts...

WASHINGTON - Life in the White House isn't keeping Barack and Michelle Obama from holding onto date night. The president and first lady are attending an Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performance on Friday night at The Kennedy Center. The show is sold out, but that's not a problem. The White House says the Obamas plan to sit in the president's box. The first couple will attend the performance with friends. In an interview before his inauguration, the president said he and his wife liked having Friday date nights.

Several years ago, after I emerged from the fog of knee-jerk Liberalism that envelops most of the entertainment business, I began to wonder why it was that so many of my colleagues remained mired in the magical thinking that so often seems to characterize the Left. After all, many of my colleagues were reasonable, kind, and intelligent people. Among my friends, were musicians, actors, photographers, and writers - all of whom were highly creative and dedicated to their craft yet, as is typical of those on the Left, they couldn’t be swayed by facts if those facts contradicted the prevailing...

A call for President-elect Barack Obama to give the arts and humanities a Cabinet-level post -- perhaps even create a secretary of culture -- is gaining momentum. By yesterday, 76,000 people had signed an online petition, started by two New York musicians who were inspired by producer Quincy Jones. In a radio interview in November, Jones said the country needed a minister of culture, like France, Germany or Finland has. And he said he would "beg" Obama to establish the post. Listening in New York, Jaime Austria, a bass player with the New York City Opera, and Peter Weitzner,...

Harold Pinter, praised as the most influential British playwright of his generation and a longtime voice of political protest, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 78. Pinter, whose distinctive contribution to the stage was recognized with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, died on Wednesday, according to his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser. "Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles," the Nobel Academy said when it announced Pinter's award. "With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from...

LONDON – The wife of Harold Pinter says the Nobel Prize-winning playwright has died after a long battle with throat cancer. He was 78. His wife Antonia Fraser says Pinter, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, died Wednesday.

LONDON (Hollywood Reporter) - No matter how many blockbusters there are, Universal's screen version of the global hit stage musical "Mamma Mia!" is the most fun to be had at the movies this or any other recent summer. Teenage boys may be glued to the latest action adventure, but the rest of the family will have a rollicking good time dancing in the aisles to Swedish pop group ABBA's irresistible songs. It's a delightful piece of filmmaking with a marvelous cast topped by Meryl Streep in one of her smartest and most entertaining performances. After its world premiere in London...

Officials of a north suburban park district say strong racial language in the musical "Ragtime" prompted their decision Wednesday to cancel the show two weeks before it was set to open. Those involved in the production -- set for Wilmette's Gillson Park -- say the decision means the loss of more than a month of hard work by a cast of nearly 40, and a misunderstanding of the show's message and realistic look at race relations in the past century. Wilmette Park District Executive Director Tom Grisamore said he made the decision to pull "Ragtime" 12 days after learning the...

Perhaps it is easier to list what is not attacked in this brutal ridiculing of the Catholic faith. The production is called "Jerry Springer--The Opera in Concert" and it will run from June 26-August 3 at the New Stage Collective in Cincinnati. The so-called opera will also be showing at The Studio Theatre in Washington D.C. from July 16-Aug. 10 The American TFP and its America Needs Fatima campaign vehemently protest this production. The TFP is asking its friends and supporters to send their e-protests to both theaters right away. The TFP is also promoting a protest outside the...

(WARNING: This story contains graphic descriptions of artwork that is offensive.)(CNSNews.com) - Federal taxpayers are subsidizing a college in New York whose art school is currently displaying works that include a drawing of a man with a crucifix coming out of his rectum, a drawing of a man with a rosary coming out of his rectum, and rosaries decorated with penises. Over the last eight years, at least $4.6 million in federal tax dollars have been provided to the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, which is displaying the controversial artworks. Some of the money has come...

NEW YORK - The New York City Opera commissioned Charles Wuorinen to compose an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain," the 1997 short story by Annie Proulx that became the basis for a 2005 movie that won three Academy Awards. ADVERTISEMENT The opera is scheduled to premiere in spring 2013, City Opera said Sunday. It will be City Opera's second Wuorinen premiere, following "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," which was based on a Salman Rushdie novel and opened in October 2004. "Ever since encountering Annie Proulx's extraordinary story I have wanted to make an opera on it, and it gives...

A German opera house is to unveil a provocative new production staged in the ruins of New York's World Trade Centre. It features naked pensioners and Mickey Mouse masks, Hitler salutes and Elvis impersonators. The self-consciously outrageous September 11th staging of Verdi's 'A Masked Ball' has been dreamed up by Austrian director Johann Kresnik. He has described the concoction as a populist critique of modern American society, aimed at showing up the disparities between rich and poor, which attracting a large audience. "It will be a different, a provocative masked ball on the ruins of the World Trade Centre," he...

A German opera house is to unveil a provocative new production staged in the ruins of New York's World Trade Centre. It features naked pensioners and Mickey Mouse masks, Hitler salutes and Elvis impersonators. The self-consciously outrageous September 11th staging of Verdi's 'A Masked Ball' has been dreamed up by Austrian director Johann Kresnik. He has described the concoction as a populist critique of modern American society, aimed at showing up the disparities between rich and poor, which attracting a large audience. "It will be a different, a provocative masked ball on the ruins of the World Trade Centre," he...

Reverend John Jenkins, CSC, and I have been in communication about his decision to allow performances of “The Vagina Monologues” at Notre Dame. I am grateful to Father Jenkins for the extensive time he has put into our conversation and correspondence on these matters over the last two months, and I have taken care in this statement to present his position accurately in order to make a fair response. Father Jenkins has informed me that, while he thinks that this play is a bad play, he believes that permitting its performance under certain conditions, namely, in an academic building without...

"My Name Is Rachel Corrie," a play about the 23-year-old college student and human rights activist who was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza while defending a Palestinian home from demolition five years ago, has been staged in so many places around the world that her parents can't keep track. It debuted at the Royal Court Theatre in London in April 2005. Since then, it's been staged in Peru, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Greece and Canada. Soon it will be seen in Argentina, Africa, Spain, France and Australia. "There are plans for it on all the continents with the...

Here's a TV review of the 2007 Kennedy Center honors. Still we have pics and video you'll find nowhere else on the Internet. Also, a True Crime Book Review of "Unspeakable Acts". This book is more accurately a tome. Half of it could have been deleted. For this tale of two hippie doctors eliciting tales of abuse in a daycare center in the hysteria of the mid-80's is almost entirely fiction. This is a great study of how the Lamestream Media creates a story from thin air.

Follow the link to read about a play making a hero out of Rachel Corrie that is running in Montreal. Corrie was a nitwit, indoctrinated by Israel-hating leftists at Evergreen State College who got flattened by an Israeli military bulldozer. Good riddance to her! Anyone dumb enough not to move out of the way of a slow moving bulldozer shouldn't be using up valuable oxygen. Does the play have a bulldozer come on stage, like the helicopter in Miss Saigon? Because watching a re-enactment of the flattening of the unlamented Rachel Corrie might be worth the price of a ticket.

Columbia Gorge Repertory Theatre/Jesse Merz, Artistic Director and Lisa Dozier announce that The Gospel According to Tammy Faye, a new two-act musical based on the life of televangelist Tammy Faye Messner, will be presented in three special industry readings in New York City, on Sunday, December 16 at 7PM; Monday, December 17 at 4PM and Tuesday, December 18 at 2PM. Mindy Cooper (choreographer for Dracula, The Musical) directs and choreographs and Seth Farber is the musical director. With a book by Fernando Dovalina and music and lyrics by JT Buck, The Gospel According to Tammy Faye is based on a...

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Fireworks explode through the air, women dressed as angels "fly" to herald Jesus' birth and camels make their way to the nativity scene with the three kings. At the First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale's $1.3-million Christmas Pageant - more Broadway extravaganza than local production - hundreds of men, women and children dressed as ancient residents of Jerusalem dance, skip and sing their way into the aisles. There is simulated snow, a horse-pulled sleigh, a kickline of dancers and a jazzed-up version of "Joy To The World." It's a far cry from the modest bed-sheeted wise...

BBC to film all 37 of Bard's plays By Chris Hastings and Stephanie Plentl  Last Updated: 4:36pm GMT 18/11/2007     Boasting one of the greatest casts ever assembled and spanning more than seven years, the BBC's Shakespeare series 30 years ago was a defining moment in British television history.   Helen Mirren in the 1980s version of Cymbeline   Now the corporation aims to upstage its own classics by producing new versions of all 37 of the Bard's plays.It has enlisted Sam Mendes, Oscar-winning director of American Beauty and Road to Perdition, and his Neal Street company to produce...

The first F bomb of the evening came early, followed rapidly by the first insult of President Bush, which, not surprisingly, incorporated the second F bomb. This was not the end of the swearing, but then, this was not your usual book fair speaker. This was Rosie O'Donnell. Or, as she is known to the patient fans without tickets waiting outside in the standby line, just plain Rosie. O'Donnell kicked off the 24th edition of the Miami Book Fair International Sunday night at Miami Dade College, and the audience was smaller than usual on past opening nights. A rough count...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A folklorist with a background in country music, soft-spoken Bill Ivey has helped change the way Capitol Hill regards the National Endowment for the Arts. Lawmakers believe Ivey has brought a more populist approach to the 35-year-old endowment, said Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont. "The big difference was a shift in emphasis from the Metropolitan Opera to the people in real life -- to folk singing and things like that," said Jeffords, a longtime NEA advocate. Ivey became chairman in 1998 after running the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tennessee, for 27 years. He succeeded actress...

...One justification for keeping the arts has now become almost a mantra for parents, arts teachers, and even politicians: arts make you smarter. The notion that arts classes improve children's scores on the SAT, the MCAS, and other tests is practically gospel among arts-advocacy groups. A Gallup poll last year found that 80 percent of Americans believed that learning a musical instrument would improve math and science skills. But that claim turns out to be unfounded. It's true that students involved in the arts do better in school and on their SATs than those who are not involved. However, correlation...

Mozart’s lighthearted opera The Abduction from the Seraglio does not call for a prostitute’s nipples to be sliced off and presented to the lead soprano. Nor does it include masturbation, urination as foreplay, or forced oral sex. Europe’s new breed of opera directors, however, know better than Mozart what an opera should contain. So not only does the Abduction at Berlin’s Komische Oper feature the aforementioned activities; it also replaces Mozart’s graceful ending with a Quentin Tarantino–esque bloodbath and the promise of future perversion. Welcome to Regietheater (German for “director’s theater”), the style of opera direction now prevalent in Europe....