"Before West hit the big-screen, she was prosecuted for staging not one, but two scandalous plays. In this episode of Decoder Ring, we look at how West honed her persona when she was under the bright lights of Broadway and the flashbulbs of the tabloids — and briefly behind bars." - Slate
For the last few years, I have felt the inescapable disappearance of music from my friends’ lives. Even people with whom I have longstanding relationships that were born from a shared love of music have simply let it go, or let it fade deep into the background. - The Guardian
" Movies like Soylent Green abandon such messiness in favor of predictive certainty as they set out to shock people into action. ... And as predictions fail to materialize, shock and concern risk turning to cynicism and doubt." - Slate
In the ’80s and ’90s the arts were ascendant here, and Seattle was well regarded nationally as an up and coming arts town. Then poof, much of that energy melted away. Why? - Post Alley
"Journalists at NPR and Minnesota Public Radio say they are seeing the payoff from a heightened focus on tracking the diversity of their sources, with reporters more keenly aware of the need to expand their pools of interviewees." - Current
During the worst days of lockdown, some artists who couldn’t afford rent squatted in empty theaters to save money. Others left the art world entirely, unable to justify creating artworks that no longer had an audience. - Artnet
Edinburgh Fringe comedians from Japan, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, Argentina, and Denmark talk to a reporter about establishing connections with a foreign audience, differing styles and subjects of comedy in different countries, and carrying jokes conceived in one language into another. - The Guardian
“The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.” - MediaPost
"Rushdie helped change how ... Europe and North America saw desis. He defied stereotypes and resisted all assumptions. He became, through no choice of his own, a hero for free expression and courage in the face of oppression. That role opened up possibilities" for other desis in the West. - The New Republic
The feature on the San Francisco mansion of Roger and Sloan Lindemann Barnett includes an image of an interior courtyard with empty pedestals. Those pedestals aren't actually empty: they hold Khmer statuary that the Cambodian government says was looted in the 1990s. Here's how they identified it. - The Washington Post
The list ranges from a small watertower in England converted into a home to a steel mill in Shanghai transformed into an eco-park to the enormous grain silo at Cape Town's old port remade into the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. - BBC
"(She) is endeavouring to become a senator with the Sovereign and Popular Italy party (ISP), a new Eurosceptic, anti-Mario-Draghi political alliance that opposes sending arms to Ukraine and 'warmongering Atlanticism'." - The Guardian
It especially seems like behavior's gotten worse in Britain, where complaints have soared and one hears and reads stories about groups chatting with each other loudly, drinking too much, and even bringing takeout food to eat ("pass me a fork") during the performance. - the i (UK)
The new two-year, ten-dancer program will run parallel to the Joffrey’s longstanding Trainee Program in classical ballet, with the primary difference being in the movement styles included in the curriculum and the goal being to expand ideas of who can work as a professional ballet dancer. - Chicago Tribune
The exterior balconies overlooking the main entrance to North America's oldest purpose-built opera house — "still the city's formal parlor for everything from Broadway shows and The Nutcracker to college graduations," writes Peter Dobrin — have been gradually crumbling and are being rebuilt. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
