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Why Is The Turkish Government Trying To Sue This Cultural Organization Out Of Existence?

"While art philanthropist Osman Kavala has been jailed in Turkey for more than three years without conviction, the country has now filed an unprecedented lawsuit in an attempt to dismantle his Istanbul-based arts organization Anadolu Kültür. … Kavala's various initiatives to support cultural memory projects for Kurds, Armenians, Yazidis, and other marginalized groups in Turkey have long made Anadolu...

Getting At What Truth Really Is (Not That Simple)

"True seems to be that which is in accordance with the facts or reality, the way things simply are. But it is not as simple as that. For there are not only ‘brute facts’ (eg whether Germany invaded Belgium in 1914), but also more complex phenomena, where interpretation and the weighing of evidence apply (eg, the causes of World...

Using Social Media To Preserve The Uyghur Language — And Keep It Up To Date

Uyghur, a Turkic language that uses the Arabic alphabet, has about 10 million native speakers, most of them in the Xinjiang province of northwestern China. With the Chinese Communist Party engaged in a campaign to suppress the Uyghur minority and their language (including scrubbing Uyghur websites based in China from the Web), a WeChat group of academics, translators, and...

Star Soccer Star Touts Ballet Training For Performance

The images shared by the ballet company had soccer fans’ heads turning when they emerged. Such a sports star dabbling in ballet may have seemed unheard of, but it wasn’t a new trend. - Irish Times

How To Design A Memorial For The COVID Pandemic?

Several places in Italy and Great Britain are considering the question, and a few memorials have already gone up. " are not intended as sweeping monuments to the historical moment, but simple places to grieve and reflect." - The New York Times

Why Joffrey Ballet Is Only Now Making Work To Stream

Staging a full-length performance digitally "would break the bank," says artistic director Ashley Wheater, who doesn't really like streamed dance much. "I'm embracing it because there's nothing else, but it wouldn't be my choice. … if it's the right content, it can be really powerful." - Chicago Magazine

Will Upright Citizens Brigade Ever Reopen? ‘I Don’t Know’, Says Amy Poehler

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...

Douglas Turner Ward, Pioneering Black Theater Artist, Dead At 90

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...

France Is Trying To Raise Millions To Buy De Sade’s Filthiest Manuscript

"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

It’s A 17,300-Year-Old Kangaroo: Australia’s Oldest Rock Art Identified

"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

Facebook Ends Australia News Ban After Deal With Government

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

Long Beach Opera Hires James Darrah As New AD

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...

Australia’s Restless Dance Company Faces A Funding Crisis

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...

Inside What Makes Tom Stoppard Tick

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...

Defining The Struggle Inside to “Do The Right Thing”

"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....

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