Every day I hear a few seconds of sports news on the radio via NPR. I propose a few seconds of local arts news daily.
But what? Other than an events calendar (“and in arts, last night such-and-such show opened”) of what would this consist?
Sports is easy: “The Sabres lost 3-0”. So what does an arts news snippet sound like? News is when things change, so how does that apply here?
A few ideas:
- Casting announcements / changes.
- “And the cast for Equus has been announced….”
- Contest openings/results.
- “The AV Best of Buffalo nominations are now open.”
- “The international guitar concerto competition semi-finals were last night. Looks like Jane Doe of Iceland is….”
- Review announcements.
- “Today’s Buffalo News features a review of Equus. It says….”
- “the NY Times has a review of author Brian Castner‘s book….”
- Any of the many author visits, signings, lectures.
- “David Henry Hwang spoke at Kleinhans. When asked about his process, he said….”
- Interesting productions of local authors’ works:
- “Donna Hoke, Playwright has another one-act production coming up, this time in Kamchatka!”
- Tour notes:
- “The Albrights played in Brooklyn last night as part of their current tour. According to their Instagram account it was a great show, though the band is of mixed opinions on cronuts.”
- Sold-out shows, unusual shows.
- “Last night, the Kav was sold-out for Equus.”
- “The BPO played Carnegie Hall last night…”
- Business:
- “And such-and-such theater company has a new artistic director….”
- Other interesting oddities:
- “A tumblr post featuring the paper-cutting sculpture of local artist Maude White has over 200,000 notes and shares.”
- “Michele Marie Benzin interviewed by Yahoo for her rendition of….”
I mean, seriously. Like I care how the Bandits did last night. This would take all of fifteen minutes to compile every morning, especially if you set up a news submissions line. There are so many artists with so many amazing accomplishments in Buffalo. This is at least as newsworthy as a sports team practicing.
BUT… is being “in the know” part of the mystique of the arts scene? Even if it is, the good of giving people actual interesting news outweighs it.
One last note — does this actually happen already and I just don’t realize it?