"Start with Pride And Prejudice and Dickens's A Tale Of Two Cities. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Think about Hardy. Think about Trollope. "On January 4 you will tell me what you have read and I will test you on it." - BBC
Previously, the regime has expressed official concerns and cracked down on youth online gaming, boy band culture, gambling, cryptocurrency and sports. The moves are part of discouraging what it sees as unhealthy attention to celebrities and certain distracting activities. - Deadline
Early in the 2000s. the People's Republic created a string of new mega-developments — building much faster than people were moving in. Images of wide boulevards and flashy architecture completely devoid of people spread worldwide. Finally, folks are arriving and the cities are showing some life. - Bloomberg Businessweek
Fran Drescher has been elected president of SAG-AFTRA and, in a split decision, her opponent’s running mate, Joely Fisher, has been elected national secretary-treasurer. - Deadline
Justin Davidson profiles Will Livermore, a 33-year-old baritone who'd been specializing in comic parts such as Papageno and Figaro. Now he's taking on the role of the furious Charles in composer Terence Blanchard's adaptation of Charles Blow's memoir Fire Shut Up in My Bones. - New York Magazine
Legislation proposed on Aug. 26 by Adams and New York City Council Members Keith Powers and Mark Levine would “end the city’s zoning laws over dancing and entertainment, so establishments would be regulated based on capacity venue, rather than zoning” reads a New York City Council press release. - New York Post
"By translating literature about same-sex love from 15 Indian languages composed over more than 2,000 years," the anthology he co-edited "challenged the modern homophobic idea that homosexuality was a foreign import. Homosexuality wasn't a foreign import. Homophobia was." - The Washington Post
"The pride-in-resilience, show-must-go-on attitude has started, at last, to be paired with other questions: Whose show? Why must it go on? Last year's reckoning revealed the shoddiness of the American theater system: baked-in racism, pay scales that undershoot the cost of living, a rigid gerontocracy." - New York Magazine
At the end of the day Wednesday, a museum email arrived in my inbox with the almost-but-not-quite-news — along with a certifiably crazy list of demands for how the story must be covered by the Los Angeles Times. - Los Angeles Times
Joanna Burton joined the Wexner in early 2019 after its longtime director, Sherri Geldin, retired. In May, she hired Kelly Kivland away from the Dia Art Foundation in New York to be the Wexner’s chief curator and director of exhibitions. - ARTnews
Maya Cade, by day the audience development strategist at The Criterion Collection, built up a full register, with synopses and links, of about 250 Black films dating from 1915 to 1979 that are available to stream — a body of work that's often forgotten today. - Vulture
"Some are imposing restrictions on performers and audience members under 12, who remain ineligible for vaccines. Others are trying to minimize contact between young artists and other dancers, by holding auditions over Zoom or equipping costumes with face masks." - The New York Times
"Making History: Kansas City and the Rise of Gay Rights" opened last weekend and was supposed to be there through Christmas. It lasted four days. The State Senate's only gay member is furious. - The Kansas City Star
After last month's announcement that the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities is moving $5.3 million in grants from large, traditionally dominant institutions to smaller, often minority-focused ones, the big guys are starting to fight back. - Artnet
