Christopher Wu has some ideas to make symphony-going seem less of a chore to newbies. “Culture is always shifting. Everyone is into TikTok now. ... So maybe we need to be open to reimagining the presentation of this music we love, not the music itself.” - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
How did The Great Gatsby get excitement for its cast album flowing? TikTok, of course - and also YouTube, Instagram, and X/Twitter, not to mention a party for influencers on all of these channels. Brand strategy: Snag the kids now, and it’ll pay off later. - The New York Times
Now, on the 25th anniversary of the iconic horror film, Burkittsville, Maryland, the new mayor “thinks the town deserves to see some benefit from the landmark movie’s success.” - Washington Post
The company is really hoping to make enough money to produce As You Like It in September. "The 50th anniversary performance ... is supposed to mark its return to self-produced Shakespeare after operating exclusively as a rental house for other companies.” - San Francisco Chronicle (MSN)
“Only in an era when everything gets politicized would a campaign come out aggressively against boisterous laughter. What next? Running against puppies and ice cream? Laughter transcends party politics.” - The New York Times
TV show memes lit up Instagram, texts, and group chats when President Biden stepped down. “One thing someone on text thread said is that Aaron Sorkin could never have thought this one up. … This is beyond what we were capable of imagining.” - Washington Post
These movies, made outside the the big studio systems, usually in languages other than Hindi, forgo Bollywood's song-dance-melodrama formula in favor of stories about ordinary people's lives. Since the pandemic, theaters avoid these films in favor of crowd-pleasers, while Modi's government has intimidated streaming services away from them. - The Washington Post (MSN)
For the fiscal year just ended, US visitors totaled 5.5 million, slightly above the (pre-pandemic) figure for 2019. What's more, just over half of those visitors were nonwhite, the highest level ever. The attendance totals for those from abroad, however, are still half of what they were before COVID. - Hyperallergic
Millennials and Gen Z are taking over now. "The KHive has ditched the bee and gone coconuts now that Joe Biden has dropped out of the 2024 election and endorsed Kamala Harris. What’s more, Harris’s laugh is getting remixed into songs by just about every pop diva.” - Vulture
One, “the Village Theatre, is expected to close only temporarily, thanks to a high-profile effort by director Jason Reitman and others to save the once stately 170-foot white Spanish Revival-Art Deco ‘wedding cake’ tower that has beckoned Westside moviegoers since 1931.” - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo)
Lesley Dumbrell "was shocked when the head of the painting department blithely told her that he was happy to have women in his class ‘because no doubt they’ll get married, and if they marry well they will become very good collectors of art.’” - The Guardian (UK)
"The new programme, called Refúgiate en la cultura (Take Shelter in Culture), offers free flamenco shows – in the Prado, the Reina Sofía and the Thyssen-Bornemisza museums, and the Royal Collections Gallery – as well as free comic monologues in libraries and discounted cinema tickets for screenings before 5pm." - The Guardian
"The global popularity of Turkish TV dramas — dizi in Turkish — has thrust Turkey into the position of a leading exporter of television, greatly bolstering the nation’s international image and drawing millions of viewers and tourists worldwide to its historical and cultural sites which are backdrops to many of the shows." - AP
