"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
To an extent, yes, it has. Reporter Natasha Tripney talks with theatremakers around Britain about the positive developments — the success of streaming, increased engagement with communities, more egalitarian casting, long-distance collaboration — that started to arise during this public health disaster. - The Stage
The survey of 3,300 frequent attenders (most over 60 and almost all over 40) found that, now that COVID-19 vaccines are being given to the public, more than two-thirds expect they'll be comfortable at indoor performances by June. (The rest say not until 2022.) More than three-quarters said they'd be willing to pay more to make up for revenue...
The UK's national broadcaster is funded by mandatory license fees, charged annually to every household that owns a television set. But as more and more Britons, especially younger ones, consume all their video via streaming on their computers and phones, fewer and fewer of them have televisions to pay license fees on. And so, says a report from the...
Yes, it's partly because of TikTok and the world of duets, collaborations, and free-flowing (but in this case, very directed) creativity. But it's so much more: "Averno the setting of a sprawling, cross-platform universe over TikTok (125,000 followers), Instagram (47,000 followers), Spotify (1.4 million streams), YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr. It encompasses podcasts, livestreams, novels and short stories, TV and film scripts, an extensive alternate-reality...
Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning: "I grew up middle class and I went to school, and from the school bus you’d see kids washing plates in the gutter, working at these little roadside eateries. We had to get school uniforms made, and the tailor’s apprentice would be a person your age. Books are very meaningful to me; at...
