“Children’s museums have led the way in the museum field regarding play and its positive effects on brain development – and now all types of museums are using play and touch to engage children and adults in interactive learning.” – Christian Science Monitor
Community Youth Theater Ordered To Pay $450K For Copyright Infringement
A U.S. federal court in Virginia ordered Theaterpalooza Community Theater Productions, Inc. to pay damages and and attorney fees to Music Theatre International, the major licensor for musicals, after Theaterpalooza staged at least 16 musicals (including Matilda, Seussical, and Little Shop of Horrors) without licensing and the company’s owner ignored repeated cease-and-desist letters. — Playbill
How To Create A “Viral” Play (What Is That?)
Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour: “Marketing-wise at the time I didn’t have anyone helping me, so I put my email address in the show. I urged people to write to me. I asked a random audience member to keep the script after the show; it’s my way of spreading the word. It was a strategy and it worked.” – American Theatre
Using Virtual Reality To Design New Musical Instruments For The Disabled
The leader and a researcher from the Performance Without Barriers project write about how, always working with disabled performers themselves, they’ve adapted VR technology to augment the instrument of a blind clarinetist and create an entirely new instrument for a musician with cerebral palsy. — The Conversation
What Does It Mean To Be A “National” Theatre?
Put the word “national” in your name and you become a receptacle for a country’s values. In what you do, the nation will seek to see the very definition of itself; a definition perhaps vaguely articulated, but intensely felt. Change your priorities, by being too regal or not regal enough, and you upset the nation’s sense of its own identity. – Irish Times
Portland For Dance (No, Really)
In the past few years numerous choreographers and dancers have moved to the city. There’s space and audiences. And now there’s an interesting dance scene. – Oregon Arts Watch
Are Some Ideas Too Extreme To Be Expressed?
Which beliefs exactly should be judged as “out of bounds”—and who gets to be the referee? How wide is the circle of ideas that are not even worthy of discussion? Such questions are themselves open to debate, and the judgments we make about them in particular cases will tend to be provisional. Still, this is preferable to the alternative. For there is a growing cost to pretending we’ve arrived at a settled consensus about their answers, or to denying that they are even real questions. – The Point
Playwright Ishmael Reed’s Problems With “Hamilton”
It’s a global phenomenon, and people ask me, “Why take on a global phenomenon?” You know what else is a global phenomenon? Gone With the Wind. I think Hamilton is probably the biggest consumer fraud since The Blair Witch Project. – The Observer (UK)
Generational Change: Regional Theatre Pioneer Emily Mann Leaves McCarter
Mann didn’t just lead Princeton’s $23 million theatre from a respected regional outpost to a Tony-winning incubator of new work and new talent. While there she also built on an already ground-breaking career as a documentary-play creator and feminist director to create signature American works as Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years. Her stamp is on not only generations of theatre artists but creative administrators as well. – American Theatre
New Film Shows Us An Actual Soviet Show Trial
In The Trial, Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa and his team use only rare, recently-discovered film (with sound) of a full 1930 show trial in Moscow. Masha Gessen explains just how fitting the term show trial is: “the judges, the prosecutor, the court clerks, and the defendants are all members of the cast. They are performing their assigned roles. The rest of the people in the hall — men and women of different ages, some dressed in military uniforms and some in civilian suits, but all wearing their best — are the audience, and their job is to believe everything they see.” — The New Yorker
UK Think Tank Report: Restrict Access To “Low Value” Arts Degrees
Low value? The right-leaning group says that some arts degrees offer poor income prospects for graduates and little economic return for the government that supports such degrees. This thinking, of course, assumes that “value” is purely economic… – The Stage
How Four Guys Who Thought They’d Be Playing Cymbals In Orchestras Turned Into Sō Percussion
A look into the backstory of a quartet that became two rare things: a star classical percussion group and a genuinely hip chamber ensemble. — Ludwig van Toronto
Comedian Excluded From Performing At Montreal Club Because His Hair Style Is “Cultural Appropriation”
Even if the person wearing dreadlocks is not racist himself, the group says, the chosen hairstyle “conveys racism.” It calls cultural appropriation “a form of passive oppression, a privilege to be deconstructed and in particular a manifestation of ordinary racism.” – Toronto Star (CP)
Why Carol Channing Was Unforgettable
Charles McNulty: One of a kind, Channing was a like a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Gracie Allen, with a personality voice that could make a tune completely her own. When she sang, pixie dust shot into the air. She was an Al Hirschfeld cartoon sprung into swooning life. – Los Angeles Times
Why We Need Theatre That Hurts, That’s Unpleasant, That’s Uncomfortable
“I don’t fault my friend for fleeing the theatre. This is art that hurts, though, to me, the pain seems entirely appropriate, even welcome. It’s not art of the cloying variety; it doesn’t depict pain that is pity-seeking, or that aims to emotionally hijack an audience on a ride through some dreary personal catharsis.” – The New Yorker
Orange County Has Changed Politically. Its Stages Don’t Seem To Have Kept Up Demographically
“While our political transformation was reflected emphatically at the ballot box in 2016 and even more so in 2018, the effects of O.C.’s increasing diversity haven’t been felt everywhere. The local theater scene, for example, reflects only part of the new demographic reality.” – Voice of Orange County
Winston Churchill, Artist
Of course he was better-known as a politician. But he was also a considerably accomplished amateur artist. His artistic work has had relatively little notice next to his political career, but his work is worth examining. – The American Interest
Conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto Faces Storms At Mexico’s National Symphony Orchestra
The 53-year-old Mexico City native, who is also music director of the Louisiana Philharmonic, is accused of paying exorbitant fees to foreign soloists, something both he and his manager insist is a currency conversion mistake. And musicians from the orchestra are reportedly urging Mexican officials to fire Prieto for poor leadership. — The New Orleans Advocate
On Balanchine’s ‘Apollo’ (Alastair Macaulay Is Back)
With observations from three New York City Ballet alumni who learned the title role from Mr. B himself, the recently-retired chief dance critic of The New York Times looks at what makes this ballet different from the rest of Balanchine’s oeuvre. — The New York Times
An Existential Threat To The Baltimore Symphony?
Gregory Tucker: “What has long been hailed as Baltimore’s ‘other major league team’ is about to risk losing its major-league status. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Board of Directors, of which I was a member until this past June, has decided that Baltimore and Maryland can no longer afford a major league symphony orchestra, given what are real and persistent financial challenges. It is proposing cutting the season by 12 weeks.” – Washington Post
Why The National Theatres In The British Isles Are So Fraught (And Fought Over)
“In London, it is possible to stage a state-of-the-nation play while remaining vague about the nation you mean. Not so elsewhere.” Just ask the folks at the national theatres of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland — the latter two of which are currently caught up in arguments that go right to the heart of their “national” status. — The Guardian
Consider The Lowly Pushbutton – A Challenge To Our Humanity?
And yet, that’s what some thought when push buttons first appeared on machines: “Do you not think that this prodigious diffusion of mechanism is likely to render the world terribly monotonous and fastidious? To deal no longer with men, but to be dependent on things!” Pushing buttons made life too easy, too simplistic, or too rote, when a single finger-action could conjure one’s desires. – Aeon
Russian Filmmaker, Facing Censors And Vigilantes, Puts Comedy On YouTube Instead Of Cinema Screens
When word got around that Aleksey Krasovskiy’s Holiday was a comedy about the Siege of Leningrad, the outrage came thick and fast. So did the threats, all from people who hadn’t seen the movie. So he gave up on distribution and put the film online — where viewers understood just what he was up to. — The New York Times
Carlos Acosta Named Director Of Birmingham Royal Ballet
The 45-year-old Cuban was one of the (London) Royal Ballet’s most popular stars in his 17 years with the company, from which he retired about three years ago. He says he hopes to “look for choreographers that the Royal Ballet isn’t looking at, people and ballets that might not be obvious.” — The New York Times
Vandal Attack At Denver Art Museum: Damage Estimate Reduced From $1.93 Million To Less Than $100,000
Last month, an 18-year-old allegedly ran through the museum’s “Stampede: Animals in Art” exhibit, knocking over a display case and smashing centuries-old sculptures and objects from China and the Mayan Empire. Fortunately, the museum has announced that almost everything he broke can be repaired and the financial hit taken by the museum will be much lower than feared. — Denver Post