In a feature interview for The New York Times Magazine, the co-founder of the famed, and now troubled, improv company and school said, "It’s been brutal for us. We're basically using the fire of COVID to start some new version. We're changing our school and our theater to not-for-profit." (She and her co-founders have said they'll give up leadership...
A writer and director as well as an actor, he wrote a 1966 New York Times Op-Ed titled "American Theater: For Whites Only?" that inspired the Ford Foundation to fund the creation of the Negro Ensemble Company, with Ward as artistic director. Both he and the troupe amassed nominations and awards, and the NEC counts some of the world's...
"The French government is appealing for corporate help to acquire the manuscript of the Marquis de Sade's notorious The 120 Days of Sodom, valued at €4.5m (£3.9m), for the National Library of France." - The Guardian
"A nearly-life-size depiction of a kangaroo — realistic genitalia included — is the oldest known rock painting in Australia. Scientists recently pinpointed its age to 17,300 years ago with a technique that had never been used on Australian ancient art before: measuring radioactive carbon in wasp nests from rocks near the artwork." - Live Science
The the government may not apply the code to Facebook if the company can demonstrate it has signed enough deals with media outlets to pay them for content. The government has also agreed that Facebook and other platforms which would be subject to the code would be given a month's notice to comply." - The Guardian
During the pandemic, Darrah’s affinity for film allowed him to pivot to digital content with ease. Over the last six months, the director has worked with LA Opera, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, Boston Lyric Opera and others to produce visually compelling screen experiences hailed by the New Yorker as “arresting” and by the Boston Globe as “ambitious...
When the Australia Council announced its latest four-year funding winners in 2020, Restless was a shock omission, as were La Mama Theatre in Melbourne and The Blue Room in Western Australia. It means a $1.2 million shortfall over three years — a nightmare scenario at any time for an arts company, let alone during a pandemic. - ABC News...
Anthony Lane: "Many folk, less deserving than Stoppard, and with scarcely a whit of his charm, are greeted with godsends. What marks him out is the unusual thoroughness with which he has probed the mechanism of fate, as if it were his moral duty—shaded, perhaps, with a touch of guilt—to understand why he, of all people, should have got...
"From the first-person stance, you navigate the world as an agent trying to realise your projects and satisfy your desires. From the second-person perspective, you understand yourself and the world through the lens of other people, who are a locus of projects and preferences of their own; projects and preferences that make legitimate demands on your time and attention....
As we are now experiencing in new ways with COVID-19, we cannot have a just arts sector within an unjust world. And moreover, we do have the means and the agency to make change, not just for the arts sector, but for our global community. What we need is a new narrative. - HowlRound
To Musa Mayer’s dismay, her father, an antiracist and the son of immigrants who had fled antisemitic persecution, was now having his complex images misrepresented and their subject matter rendered simplistically provocative. - The Guardian
Somewhere, in an attic or a music library or maybe hiding in plain sight, are pieces by non-white-male composers that, with the right kind of attention, will open our ears to genius. - Philadelphia Inquirer
The pandemic has wrecked an already vulnerable jazz industry by forcing live music shows to halt. Musicians and club owners have turned to online fundraisers for survival, and point to the music's connection to civil rights as a need to keep its legacy alive. - Axios
Another way the pandemic has had an impact on the economy is by making people bored. By limiting social engagements, leisure activities and travel, the pandemic has forced many people to live a more muted life, without the normal deviations from daily monotony. The result is a collective sense of ennui — one that is shaping what we do...
The museum in Washington, DC, founded by Duncan and Marjorie Phillips, was a sensation when it opened as a museum of modern art, and it's been a refuge and inspiration since, including, at times, during the pandemic. "Dorothy Kosinski, director of the museum, tells a story: 'I was standing outside of the Phillips in the fall when we were...
