“Although the sea witch is singular among Disney villains, there is a person behind this character. She is [sic] a real-life Ursula with a crimson mouth, eyebrows sharp as switchblades and a homicidal gleam in her eye. She is Divine.” Yes, John Waters’s Divine.
How We Made The High Line
Two of the designers involved in creating the popular park talk about what the elevated railroad was like before they started working on it, what made their proposal for the project successful, and what they do when a client asks for “another High Line.”
Al And Tipper Gore Didn’t Inspire ‘Love Story’ – Here’s The Woman Who Did
“‘What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?’ reads the opening line of Erich Segal’s 1970 best-seller Love Story. Well, for starters, Jenny – or the real-life model for Segal’s fictional tragic heroine – didn’t die. Her name is Janet, she’s Jewish, and she’s alive and well and living in New York City.”
When Does A Lie Not Count As A Lie? 10,000 People Weigh In
Last month, Gerald Dworkin posted a list of ten lies he considered justified and asked readers to respond. They “brought forth almost every position that has ever been put forward by philosophers on the subject.”
Photographs Have A Point Of View. So Why Do We Pretend They Don’t?
“The camera is an instrument of transformation. It can make what it sees more beautiful, more gruesome, milder, darker, all the while insisting on the plain reality of its depiction. This is what Brecht meant in 1931 when he wrote, ‘The camera is just as capable of lying as the typewriter’.”
Conductor Bernard Labadie Makes His Way Back After Stage Four Lymphoma
After the diagnosis in May of 2014 began “a grueling convalescence that included bouts of chemotherapy so violent that the founder of Les Violons du Roy was placed in a coma the following November. Only last month, more than a year after awakening, did Labadie return to the podium.”
Medieval Britain’s Version Of A Trash-Talking, Shade-Throwing Rap Battle
It was called flyting – “a stylized battle of insults and wits that was practiced most actively between the fifth and 16th centuries in England and Scotland. Participants employed the timeless tools of provocation and perversion as well as satire, rhetoric, and early bathroom humor to publicly trounce opponents.”
The Birth And Life Of Modern Sculpture: Rodin, Picasso, Calder, Stella
Jed Perl: “We are at a moment in the arts when historical reckonings, involving as they do considerations of precedent, genealogy, and chronology, can too easily be dismissed as reactionary gestures, canonical considerations to be tossed aside. There is all the more reason to press for a reconsideration of the tradition that begins with Rodin.”
The Internet – Plus Dance Apps – Spread New Dances As Fast As They’re Invented
“It isn’t easy for aspiring music stars to stand out from the pack, but Daryon Simmons has a gift that record labels covet in the Internet era: The 20-year-old performer can start a dance craze.”
Remembering The Fierce, Kind, Elegant Poet C.D. Wright
“She’ll be grieved in the public ways well-known writers are, but within the poetry community — on Facebook, Twitter, via text and email and phone — a kind of keening wail has sounded since the news of her death began to spread. Wright was beloved to many of us, a model poet and person.”
The Three King Georges Of ‘Hamilton’ Give The Royal Lowdown On The Show
“Here, the trio” – Brian d’Arcy James, Jonathan Groff, and Andrew Rannells – “explain what it’s like to play George, how they developed their own interpretations, and how heavy the head wearing the crown actually is.”
New Database Reveals Historic Casting Disparities In British Theatre
The British Black and Asian Shakespeare Performance Database details the casts of 1,189 Shakespearean productions dating back to 1930. “Anecdotally, we’ve talked about it, but seeing it in that official way is a reassurance that we’re not imagining our ghettoisation into the more minor roles.”
Ticketholders For “Billy Elliot”‘s Last West End Performance Complain After They’re Booted For Celebrity Guests
“Ticketholders complained that they were being moved to other parts of the theatre to make way for celebrity guests attending the last performance. Customers who had booked seats in the stalls on April 9 were subsequently offered tickets in the Grand Circle instead.”
The Greatest Cocktail Pianist Who Ever Lived
“It’s the grossest of understatements to say that cocktail pianists get no respect. … On the other hand, it’s also true that most cocktail pianists aren’t worth listening to, at least not very closely. … But a few such folk are true artists, and one of them, Cy Walter, was a very great one, among the finest popular pianists of the 20th century.”
Audience Member Steps In After Actor Taken Ill And Makes Her Theatre Debut
In what has been described as a “fairytale in itself”, Melissa Bayern put herself forward for the role of the Witch in Into the Woods after attending a performance in which Gillian Bevan, who should have been playing the role, was taken ill. Bayern subsequently found herself making her professional stage debut in the musical.
How Do You Paint A Boeing 737? It’s ‘A Ton Of Effort’
“As the time-lapse video above shows, a lot more work and craftsmanship goes into painting a factory-fresh Boeing 737 than one might think. It’s an expensive process, with an estimated cost between $100,000 to $200,000, depending on the colors and level of detail involved.
Humans May Really Have A ‘Sixth Sense’ – One That’s Actually Smell
“[Research findings] suggest that a second language, spoken in scent, might be passing (as it were) right under our noses. Body odours are in the background of all our interactions. And the clues about relationships and emotions that we sniff out from these odours might be a crucial element of human society.”
Misty Copeland’s Story Of Success Is A Difficult One To Tell
“A young African-American woman from working-class roots knocking down obstacles in an old system, while broadening ballet’s mass appeal, makes for a pretty fantastic, ennobling story. But it’s a complicated story that requires digging deep into uncomfortable questions about ballet’s rigid aesthetic standards and the economics and availability of training.”
Philip Pullman Quits Oxford Literary Festival Because Guest Authors Don’t Get Paid
“The best-selling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy said he had ‘had enough’ of writers being expected to work for nothing. He announced his decision on Twitter and revealed he had long tried to persuade the Oxford festival to change its policy ‘but they won’t. Time to go.'”
Could More American Newspapers Decide To Become Non-Profits?
The tax agency approves nonprofit status for a relatively circumscribed number of organizational aims: Only sports leagues, cruelty-prevention advocacies, public-safety organizations, and groups with a “charitable, religious, educational, scientific, [or] literary” purpose can secure a 501(c)(3) exemption.
Making the Most of Stakeholder Revolt: The Recapturing of San Diego Opera and Sweet Briar College
The two cases turn out to be quite similar: shutdowns announced seemingly out of the blue and with little consultation; institutions, with challenges but no immediate financial crisis, in fields (opera, single-sex colleges) with lots of doomsayers. Here’s a look at four key factors in how these cases shook out.
Facebook Nudity Day (That’ll Show The Censors)
The Jan. 14 protest “call[ed] for Facebook users to post an artwork depicting the naked body to protest the social media website’s ‘continuing censorship of artists, curators and critics who have been censored for posting art and images that depict the nude human body.'” And they did – “from Egon Schiele’s painting of himself masturbating and a phallic photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe to Japanese erotic prints and the accursed Courbet.”
L.A. Opera Names Its First Artist-In-Residence: Matthew Aucoin
“The three-year post, created specially for Aucoin, calls for him to conduct some L.A. Opera performances and write a full-scale opera for its main stage.”
Lois Weisberg, 90, ‘The Most Significant Architect (Or Savior) Of Cultural Chicago The City Ever Has Known’
“Consider the evidence: No Weisberg means, arguably, no Taste of Chicago. No Chicago Blues Festival. No Chicago Gospel Music Festival. No Cows on Parade (those cows were copied everywhere; I saw some in France last summer). No After School Matters, surely the most successful arts-education initiative in the history of the city. No Storefront Theatre. No South Shore Line. Maybe no Millennium Park.”
Minnesota Opera Names Its Next General Director
A former baritone and an alumnus of the company’s young artist training program, Ryan Taylor, 43, is currently chief at the Arizona Opera, which he’s credited with turning around after a financial crisis.