Roundup

-First, the bad news: "Cultural support in New York State would be cut $9.6 million under the 2010-11 budget proposed by Gov. David A. Paterson on Tuesday." NYT has more.


-The oh-so classy sounding Laurence Olivier awards--London's major theatre honors--are introducing a People's Choice-esque category!  You can bet the Tonys are taking note. (The next logical step after barring the critics.)

-Guardian's Michael Billington weighs in on Lady Antonia Frasier's new memoir and what it tells us about Harold Pinter.  Who is Antonia Frasier?  Why, Mrs. Pinter, of course.

-Brook is Back. At 84, Peter Book keeps tinkering with his latest piece, Eleven and Twelve (which toured NY a few years ago as Tierno Bokar) now playing in London.



-The "20 at 20" program is back: starting Monday, for 2 weeks, you can go to select Off Broadway shows at 20 minutes before curtain and buy remaining seats for, yes, 20 bucks.  Unfortunately, most of the offerings are the dregs of commercial Off B'way crap (e.g. Perfect Crime, Awesome 80s Prom).  But there's also the new David Ives play, this dark comedy "Smudge" I keep hearing about, and--best of all--the highly recommended (by me!) revival of O'Neill's Emperor Jones. If you haven't seen that yet, now's your chance.