She traveled to the Low Countries and Suriname on missions for King Charles II, and she took up writing to support herself because he never paid her. She went on to become one of Restoration London's most popular, and most controversial, playwrights and poets, using her work to argue against slavery and forced marriage and for women's right to...
"The decades-long interdependence of PBS decision-makers, philanthropists, and corporate funders with one white, male filmmaker highlights the racial and cultural inequities perpetuated by this system. The amount of broadcast hours, financial support (from viewers like who?), and marketing muscle devoted to one man’s lens on America has severed PBS from its very roots," said Grace Lee. - The Hill
"I should say that a raga is not a tune. It's not a note, not a scale, not a composition — although the raga is sung in the framework of a composition. But you can identify the raga from a particular arrangement of notes that have to do with the way they're ascending and descending; a particular pattern in...
The story of the concept of ‘meritocracy’ has been well rehearsed in recent times, largely because of the way in which inequality and precarity have exposed its weaknesses. But some are still surprised to learn that the idea was conceived in the spirit of social satire, not the spirit of idealism. - Sydney Review of Books
"It was supposed to be a murder mystery: two couples, four motives, one gun. What it became was a different kind of mystery entirely: a musical that got prominent pans, alienated much of its audience and lost most of its investment — yet survived. Not only is Follies, which opened on Broadway on April 4, 1971, still here 50...
"I can't pretend I'm 20. No one's going to believe it. But I can feel that I'm 20. … One advantage is, when I was starting out as a young actor, I often played old men. Well, I didn't know what it was like to be old, but being old, I do remember what it's like to be young."...
Eric Nuzum: "The average number of unduplicated shows aired over Saturdays and Sundays is 25. Do all those programs help build audience? Station listeners — including even core listeners who love your station and are its heaviest users — usually listen for a total of one or two hours every weekend. By scheduling so many programs, most stations are...
"New York City is heading into one of its most consequential elections in decades. … For the purposes of this inquiry, we asked eight leading Democratic candidates to spell out their specific proposals for arts and culture in New York City." - Artnet
In January of 2017, a group of skilled, acrobatic robbers began a series of daring break-ins — climbing walls, breaking through skylights and barriers, lowering themselves dozens of feet with ropes, never setting off alarms — to steal shipments of rare books worth millions from storage facilities around London. Here's the story of how Scotland Yard, working with detectives...
"It sounds like an April Fools joke, and it both is and isn't. Author and art historian Ben Lewis has created a real non-fungible token (NFT) of Leonardo da Vinci's Salvator Mundi — and, like the original, he's hoping to auction it for $450 million. Okay, he's not really expecting to sell it for that much." Because it makes...
"For years, campaigns to oust cruise ships from the lagoon have been gaining traction, with locals claiming that the ships' massive structures erode the seabed, effectively turning the lagoon into an offshoot of the Adriatic Sea. And now, finally, the Italian government has agreed with them, passing a decree to ban cruise ships and other large vessels from the...
Shakespeare’s Globe has announced a mid-May reopening, albeit with a capacity of up to only 500 in a popular auditorium that can hold as many as 1,700. The coveted standing places that allow the so-called Globe groundlings to jostle one another, and on occasion the actors, will be replaced by seats; a lack of intermissions will further limit unwanted...
“We were demonstrating that we were still there, that we were still dancing, that we still wanted to dance, that we were still those people that engage in practices that are not Zoom-able, and that the things that we offer the world are not essential. We’re demonstrating that our bodies are these things that are meaty and fleshy and...
Certainly with international travel likely to be restricted in some form for a while, the chances are that international and local demand for festivals will still not be the same as they were pre-COVID. - The Conversation
Every day I’m thankful for the work I get to do. I am paid to watch, to think, to write. But this week, like so many others recently, it has felt pointless, even silly, to analyze fictional stories when real people are dying." - The New York Times
