NAC EVENT: In Conversation with Julie Taymor

Babs Asper Theatre, 1 Elgin St, Ottawa, ON
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Filmaker Julie Taymor will take part on an onstage one-on-one conversation with Craig Offman, Arts editor at The Globe and Mail, in celebration of the National Arts Centre's 50th Anniversary and on the occasion of the publication of the second edition of Sarah Jennings' Art and Politics: the History of the National Arts Centre.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The year 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the National Arts Centre. In this new and revised edition of Art and Politics, Sarah Jennings covers the highs and lows of Canada's most important national performing arts institution over the course of five decades, bringing the story up to the present.

Art and Politics is a riveting tale of Canada's finest musicians, actors, and dancers and efforts to put their art at the forefront of both the national and the international scene. Through over 150 interviews with artists, top officials, senior politicians, and others who affected the fate of the National Arts Centre, the book recounts the organization's early years; the impact of government monies first lavished and then withdrawn, which resulted in its near collapse in the late 1990s; and how over the past two decades, its CEO, Peter Herrndorf, a gifted leader, has brought it back from the brink. The most recent transformations revealed by this new edition include the architectural makeover of the organization's brutalist-style building in Ottawa, responses to the changing cultural milieu in Canada, and the launch of a national Indigenous Theatre Department in the fall of 2019.

Sarah Jennings is a political and cultural journalist who served as the national arts reporter for the CBC for nearly a decade. She lives in Ottawa.