Actress Seyi Omooba had been engaged to play Celie in the musical adaptation of Alice Walker's novel in Leicester, England in 2019 — but she was let go when a 2014 Facebook post of hers containing anti-gay comments became public. She's suing for breach of contract. But testimony before a tribunal revealed that Omooba had previously told her agents...
In fact, he recorded his new album of duets with Lady Gaga in sessions spanning 2018 to 2020, and he was first diagnosed with the condition in 2016. And though he is quiet most of the time these days and frequently disoriented, he still sings through his 90-minute set twice a week and was even performing right up until...
In a long career spanning stage, film, and television, he was known for roles ranging from John Adams to Abraham Lincoln to Deep Throat to Willy Loman to the Stage Manager in Our Town. But he was most famous for his one-man show portraying Mark Twain — a role he played for more than 60 years, considerably longer than...
The Spanish government has concluded what is, in effect, a 15-year rental agreement with Baroness Carmen Cervera, the widow of Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza: in exchange for an annual payment of €6.5 million, she will allow her collection of 400 artworks — which range from Rembrandt and Caravaggio through van Gogh and Monet to Roy Lichtenstein, and estimated...
"India began allowing 100 percent occupancy in cinemas on Monday, lifting a 50 percent cap on seating capacity that had been in place since October 2020. … Various COVID-19 prevention measures remain mandatory for both cinema staff and patrons, including staggered show times and bookings, mandatory social distancing, and the use of face masks and hand sanitizers." - The...
"The most important promise underlying much of the canon inaugurated by Future Shock is that with the right foresight, readers can not only prepare for what’s coming, but also profit from it. This whiff of insider trading presents the future as a commodity, an exercise in temporal arbitrage in which knowledge of new developments yields a financial edge." -...
It has been educating future artists and entertainers for 47 years. It also ranks in the top 7 percent of U.S. schools in challenging its students academically. Few campuses nationally have students as enthusiastic about their school. Yet Ellington officials say the people who run D.C. public schools have failed to honor promises they made in 2017 to put the...
Derek Thompson: "Last year, I wrote about how even a modest remote-work revolution—no more than 10 percent of Americans working remotely full time after the pandemic is over—could affect the U.S. labor force (e.g.: fewer hotel workers) and party politics (e.g.: more southern Democrats). But the more I researched remote work and spoke with experts, the more I realized...
"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
There are early signs that new president Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, "could provide a much-needed boost for cultural scene hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and focus attention on the District of Columbia’s (DC’s) long campaign for statehood." - The Guardian
They have YouTube channels, they expand repertoire, they perform in unconventional places. These are musicians who are building the future of classical music. - USAToday
"The arts in the past four years have evolved in ways that are as broad and powerful as they are now commonplace. Many artists and arts groups seem determined to do nothing less than change the world. As one example, there’s probably not a single major museum, orchestra, or arts center that isn’t thinking about inclusion in everything it...
Understandably, much of the energy directed toward the problems of pandemic social life has been spent on keeping people tied to their families and closest friends. These other relationships have withered largely unremarked on after the places that hosted them closed. The pandemic has evaporated entire categories of friendship, and by doing so, depleted the joys that make up...
A book critic considers. "Relative to the amount of space it takes up in the collective and capitalist imagination, the internet has had less of an impact on contemporary fiction than one might expect. It is increasingly acknowledged in novels, but it seems oddly difficult to represent well. I don’t know whether that’s because most of us have been...
