He had to walk and play at the same time, which was difficult with his impaired sight and depth perception. The orchestra had worked out a plan to cover for him should he suffer any sudden problems onstage. Law and Tyan sensed that, given the importance he attached to “Fiddler,” his decline might accelerate once the play was over. Six weeks after the last performance, he went into hospice care and, less than forty-eight hours later, died
The Great Alan Sokal/Social Text Hoax: An Oral History, 20 Years On
Now that we’re in the “post-fact” era, here’s the story of the paper “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” how it got past peer review and into an academic journal, and how Sokal revealed his caper: “Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the window of my apartment. (I live on the twenty-first floor.)”
Oskar Eustis On Protecting America’s ‘Ramshackle Ecology’ For Developing New Plays
Says the director of the Public Theater, “I feel like I’ve spent the last couple of years outlining very big problems that American theater has to tackle and now we’ve moved into an environment where it will be more difficult to solve those problems.”
This Year’s Edge Question For Smart People:
Each year John Brockman poses a question to a broad cross-section of some of the smartest people in the world and publishes their responses on The Edge. This year’s question is: “What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?”
The Brilliant European Musicians We (Almost) Never Get To Hear In The States
“During a short, pre-Christmas week in Paris, I heard one performance after another of artists barely known in the United States. They included significant, even towering figures.” David Patrick Stearns reports on several of them, including one conductor whom some call the next Carlos Kleiber.
Conductor Gets Mad At Audience Of Young Kids, Tells Them Santa Doesn’t Exist
It was late in a performance of “Disney in Concert” performance of Frozen at the Parco della Musica in Rome when angry maestro Giacomo Loprieno yelled “Babbo Natale non esiste!” (Yeah, he got fired.)
The 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World: 2016 Edition
This New Year’s list is headed by the citizens of New Orleans, but it includes some perennials (adjunct professors) and at least one very small group (the “two or three bummed Helsinkians” who supported the now-dead Guggenheim proposal).
French Novelist Michel Déon, 97
“To French readers, Mr. Déon was a complicated and contrarian figure: a political reactionary whose work evolved from experimentalism to more traditional forms, and an enthusiastic champion of young renegade writers.” Almost as renegade, perhaps, he was a member of the august Académie Française who made his home in the far west of Ireland.
Bill Marshall, 77, Founder Of The Toronto Film Festival
“He was a pioneer in the Canadian film industry,” said TIFF director and CEO Piers Handling, in a press release announcing Marshall’s death. “His vision of creating a public festival that would bring the world to Toronto through the transformative power of cinema stands today as one of his most significant legacies.”
Sales Downturn And Scandals – Art Market Enters 2017 On An Uncertain Note
“In 2016, the art market received what it had purportedly wished for – some of the speculative froth came off the top of the market, easing fears that a bubble would burst and hurt the industry. But it also received much of what it probably did not forecast or desire: a 30% drop in overall market volume, a series of high-profile disputes, court actions and authenticity issues that resulted in substantial payouts, and a fall-off in attendance at some art fairs that read to some as cultural cooling-off at the bling end of the contemporary art business.”
In 2016 Movie-Goers Went For Fantasy Over Reality
Unlike in recent years, when films like “American Sniper” and “The Hangover” broke through, not one movie rooted in a real-life setting was among the top 10 box office performers.
The Top-Grossing Movie In 2016 Made $463 Million In A Record-Setting Year
“The North American box office closed out the year with $11.4 billion in ticket sales, ComScore said Sunday. That marks a new record for the industry, bypassing the previous high-water mark of $11.1 billion that was established in 2015.”