Monster Mash: Old Globe's Craig Noel dies; Bill T. Jones mulls merger; Burj Khalifa deck reopens

-- Theater pioneer dies: Craig Noel, founding director of San Diego's Old Globe, dies at age 94. (Los Angeles Times)

-- Pas de deux: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and Dance Theatre Workshop nearing deal to merge. (Crain's New York)

-- New kid in town: Life is too short -- and a guerrilla street artist is making sure you remember that. (Curbed LA)

-- Taking a back break: James Levine taking leave from New York's Metropolitan Opera and Boston Symphony Orchestra to have back surgery. (Los Angeles Times)

-- Watch your step: Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, reopens its observation deck, which was shuttered for two months after elevator malfunction left tourists stranded 120 stories above the ground. (Guardian)

-- Prison pals: Edie Falco ("The Sopranos") and Alison Pill ("In Treatment") to star in off-Broadway production of Chloe Moss' "This Wide Night." (Variety)

-- To the rescue: Marco Armiliato takes the baton from ousted Leonard Slatkin to rescue Met's "La Traviata." (Associated Press)

-- More, he wants more: Actor John Malkovich challenges court's $670,000 fraud award in Bernie Madoff case, seeks $2.2 million. (BBC) 

-- Tough times: Cleveland Chamber Symphony struggles to stay alive. [Update: An earlier version of this post incorrectly referred to the Chamber Symphony as the Cleveland Orchestra.] (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

-- Big win: Robert Wilson wins the 2010 Jerome Robbins Award and the $100,000 that goes with it. (Theatre Mania)

-- Meeting the President: Cast of "Glee" performs at the White House. (whitehouse.gov)

-- There's arts there?: NEA chieftain Rocco Landesman takes his "Art Works" road show to Boise. (Idaho Statesman Journal)

-- This was a joke, right?: "Wicked" in London has a new rule: record the music, get thrown out of the theater. (Guardian) 

Also in the L.A. Times: Mark Swed reviews L.A. Opera's “Götterdämmerung” (“The Twilight of the Gods”), the fourth installment of Wagner's "Ring Cycle"; "Waking Sleeping Beauty" details how theater helped save Disney animation; Charles McNulty reviews Julia Cho's "The Language Archive" at South Coast Repertory.

-- Lisa Fung

Follow me on Twitter at @lfung

Photos: (top) Craig Noel in front of the Old Globe in San Diego in 1994. Credit: Dave Gatley / Los Angeles Times.

(bottom) The newly reopened observation deck at Dubai's Burj Khalifa. Credit: Kamran Jebreili / Associated Press