PERFORMING ARTSShakespeare Plans Moving Forward: Shakespeare’s Globe...

PERFORMING ARTS

Shakespeare Plans Moving Forward: Shakespeare’s Globe Theater appointed an actor to be its first artistic director Tuesday as the opening night of the 25-year-old London project appeared in sight. Mark Rylance, 35, a member of Britain’s prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company, will oversee the first three years at the thatched-roof replica of William Shakespeare’s 16th-Century theater on the banks of the River Thames. Rylance, who won Britain’s best actor Olivier Award in 1994 for “Hamlet,” said the $12.8-million, 1,500-capacity Globe hoped to stage its first play in June, 1996--almost 400 years after the original theater burned to the ground. Performances will take place in daylight in the round, open-roofed theater, without stage lights or special effects. The idea of rebuilding the Globe on its original site was dreamed up in 1970 by American director Sam Wanamaker who died in 1993 without seeing the building completed.

*

‘They Really Shot at Me’: Audiences at Puccini’s “Tosca” in Macerata, Italy, witnessed real-life drama when the leading tenor, Fabio Armiliato, was shot in the right foot, apparently by a prop gun, during the opera’s dramatic finale. “At first I thought it was a director’s trick, but it was real blood, and the tenor was crying out in pain,” said soprano Raina Kabaivanska, who played the title role. Kabaivanska broke off her singing after the firing squad scene Sunday night and shouted for a doctor when Armiliato grabbed his foot and yelled, “They really shot at me.” Armiliato, who was grazed by a sword in a recent performance of “Carmen,” underwent surgery Monday for a flesh wound and hoped to be back onstage next week. Macerata police were investigating whether a blank had been too tightly packed into one of the eight Napoleonic-era rifles used in the scene.

PEOPLE WATCH

Christopher Reeve Update: Actor Christopher Reeve is getting around in an electric wheelchair as he undergoes daily therapy following the May 27 accident in which he broke his neck during an equestrian competition in Virginia. The “Superman” star powers the chair by sipping and puffing air through a plastic tube he holds in his mouth, said Kathy Lewis, spokeswoman at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in West Orange, N.J. Doctors still don’t know whether the paralyzed actor will walk again, Lewis said.

*

Hole Performance Disrupted: Controversial singer Courtney Love ended her set midway through after a fan threw a shotgun shell casing onto the stage during her Lollapalooza show in Pittsburgh. Love’s husband, rocker Kurt Cobain, used a shotgun to kill himself last year. “One singular individual with a very sick mind threw something so offensive onto the stage that it was no longer possible for the band to continue,” an announcer told about 15,000 people Monday after Love left with her band, Hole.

*

More Legal Woes: Kirk Douglas’ youngest son is in more trouble with the law. Eric Anthony Douglas, 36, was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport Sunday night for allegedly assaulting a flight attendant, pushing the call buttons and insisting his dog ride in his lap during a flight from New York. Douglas, who was released on $26,000 bond on Monday, had also been scheduled to appear Monday in a Pasadena courtroom for a pretrial hearing on separate drug charges. The judge in that case issued a bench warrant for Douglas’ failing to appear.

ART

Sotheby’s Good News: New York-based Sotheby’s auction house on Tuesday announced what it called its highest art sales totals in five years. Sotheby’s said its art auctions in Europe and North America rose 7% between August, 1994 and July, 1995, bringing in a total of $1.48 billion. The news is even brighter when limited to the first six months of 1995, in which sales in Europe increased 25% over the previous year while North American sales rose 20%. Diana Brooks, Sotheby’s chief executive, said the best performance came from Impressionist and Modern art sales, which rose by 67% this spring.

TELEVISION

Networks Backing Technologies: ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC joined forces Tuesday to announce a $2-million fund to spur the development and production of new devices aimed at enabling parents to limit the viewing of programs or entire channels that they find objectionable. The four networks have opposed congressional proposals for a V-chip installed in new TV sets that would block entire categories of programs rated high in violence or mature content. The networks are instead calling for products that would allow individual control over which programs are blocked from viewing. Some of the alternatives, the networks said, would be available in less than two years and could be used in both new and old TV sets.

QUICK TAKES

It’s official. Pop star David Bowie will launch his first solo concert tour in five years on Sept. 14 in Hartford, Conn. Bowie, who will be joined by Nine Inch Nails, is expected to play in Los Angeles in late October, although no dates have been confirmed. . . . Trimark Pictures’ Vidmark Entertainment has acquired North American home video rights to Shining Excalibur Pictures’ controversial movie “Kids.”