Anthony Tommasini: " locks them into standard-issue, week-after-week programs loaded with the classics and sprinkled, at best, with unusual or new choices. … Why can't orchestras be nimble and respond to sudden inspiration, or current events? If the Pittsburgh Symphony has a hit with a premiere, why must audiences in other cities wait years to hear it?" - The...
Social distancing is easier outdoors and there's more air circulation, not to mention the fact that, as one director puts it, "Outdoor arts is more accessible because it's in democratic open spaces." So companies across the UK are getting ready to perform outside their buildings, many for the first time, as soon as weather and health regulations permit. -...
The Wallace Collection "is in internal consultation" about closing the library and archive that was left to the country in 1897. Is that even legal? Will anyone notice during the pandemic? (More than 10,000 people certainly have noticed.) - The Guardian (UK)
If Instagram is about selling your moves - and your clothing line, your toe shoe line, your skin care routine, etc. - then TikTok is about being yourself. Kind of. "Casual, confessional and playful, TikTok offers a release for ballet dancers, particularly students, who spend their days chasing impossible perfection. TikTok is a place to laugh about the impossibility,...
Are we really just pleasure-seeking audiences looking for that instant hit of media indulgence? As the effects of lockdown and zoom fatigue have exposed, society seems to be increasingly experiencing media fatigue. - The Conversation
"In rooms all over the internet, hospital dramas, first-responder shows, situation comedies and courtroom procedurals were having similar debates. To ignore the events of the spring and summer — the pandemic, America's belated racial reckoning — meant placing prime-time series outside (well, even more outside) observable reality. But to include them meant potentially exhausting already exhausted viewers and...
The short answer is that it couldn't work the way it did in the 1930s: the legal and theatrical landscape then was too different. (For a start, there was no such thing as not-for-profit theatre.) But there are certainly possibilities; here are a few of them. - American Theatre
Says classical music editor Zachary Woolfe (who came up with the idea in the shower), "It has doubled our audience for classical music. It's gratifying that whatever we do, people are willing to explore and be into it." - The New York Times
"Over the course of the coming week, it will hold screenings in two urban venues for just one festival attendee. And it has also sent a single viewer to a tiny, barren island in the North Atlantic to watch the 70 films in competition — alone." - The New York Times
Of course, this feeling (and the lack of funding, and alarm about orchestras' survival) started long before the pandemic, and long before the assault on the Capitol Building. But: "The trials of the past year have brought forth many of the qualities we already admired about classical music: its resilience, resistance, persistence and endurance. But permanence? I’m not so sure...
The SETI Institute is ready to take music to Mars, or wherever. While it's a listening project, it's also now a beaming project. A founding astrophysicist and a musician "have devised the 'Earthling Project': a call to people everywhere to upload snippets of song that plans to meld into a collective human chorus. An initial composition will be...
The Vertical Theatre, as it's called, will be modular, with a capacity of 1,200 to 2,400, seated in small groups separated (if necessary) by clear screens. The structure has a roof, but the sides are open to allow airflow. The UK-based creators hope to have at least one Vertical Theatre hosting shows later this year. - WhatsOnStage (London)
Even as the studio insists that its streaming strategy is a one-off response to the pandemic, it might not be able to rebuild those bridges. Seeing the backlash is just another reason the rest of the industry’s major players continue to hold off from anything so drastic. Patience is hard, but it’s Hollywood’s surest path to profitability. - The...
In the interim, expect a flood of cable programming to start migrating over to streaming in anticipation for the day when cable is no longer a viable platform for networks to reach audiences. - Axios
A survey of frequent theatregoers says that widespread vaccines are the only way most people will feel comfortable in the theatre - and, even with that, 94 percent of those surveyed said they still want mask requirement in place. - American Theatre
