Michael Andor Brodeur: “There is really no playlist to match this unstable, uncertain moment. And, honestly, right now I’m less interested in rummaging through the past for reference points. I’m just trying to find my way forward. In that spirit — and since we’re feeling all inaugural — please find below the first-ever class of 21 for ’21.” – The Washington Post
The Playwright We Need To Snap Us Out Of The Past Four Years Is Brecht
“Telling a lie over and over can make it seem true. It can also remove agency from the viewer, ceding the individual’s judgement over to the expectations of the story being told. Brecht refused to let his audience lose themselves in the funhouse mirror of such representations. ‘Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it,’ he wrote.” – Zócalo Public Square
André Gregory: What I Learned From Brecht (And His Wife)
“As I was at the beginning of my education as a young director, as well as a nervous, nerdy intellectual, I asked Helene Weigel about the Verfremdungseffekt, Brecht’s famous ‘alienation effect’ theory. … Weigel laughed and said something like, ‘Don’t pay any attention to Bert’s bullshit and theoretical nonsense. Just look at the work. Look at the work, and see what you see.'” – American Theatre
The Biden Administration Gives Hope, And Attention, To The Arts
Despite the fact that the previous president was, himself, the product of show business, the arts seemed to mean nothing to him. “If artists were hostile to Trump’s policies, Trump’s White House — perhaps from a self-protective attitude of ‘If I can’t have it, then I never wanted it’ — was unusually inhospitable to or at best uninterested in them, routinely dropping the National Endowment for the Arts from his proposed budgets. He was the first president to skip the Kennedy Centers Honors.” Things have changed. – Los Angeles Times
Before Coming Back To Live Interior Performances, Theatre Audiences Want Vaccines And Masks
A survey of frequent theatregoers says that widespread vaccines are the only way most people will feel comfortable in the theatre – and, even with that, 94 percent of those surveyed said they still want mask requirement in place. – American Theatre
Italy’s Anarchist Architects Warned Of Endless Building Expansion
And, ironically, they might also have inspired Saudi Arabia to try to make a 100-mile-long building. – The Guardian (UK)
What Novelists Can Learn From Playwrights
Brontez Purnell: “All good theater and literature should run the zodiac of feelings: Some of it should be sad, some of it profound; some of it should be boring and some of it should jump completely off the cliff. Whatever vehicle I’m using, I’m always trying to arrive at a certain sense of balance.” – The Atlantic
What It Took To Program Robots To Dance The Twist And The Mashed Potato
A video which became a viral hit last month “shows two of Boston Dynamics’ humanoid Atlas research robots doing the twist, the mashed potato and other classic moves, joined by Spot, a doglike robot, and Handle, a wheeled robot designed for lifting and moving boxes in a warehouse or truck. … [It took] almost a year and half of choreography, simulation, programming and upgrades that were capped by two days of filming to produce a video running at less than 3 minutes.” – AP
The Lonely, Mysterious Death Of A Science Fiction Pioneer
“This past Saturday, about a dozen people from across the United States and Canada held a Zoom memorial for a man whose remains have been lying in an unmarked grave in Nova Scotia since last spring. He was Charles R. Saunders, and his lonely death in May belied his status as a foundational figure in a literary genre known as sword and soul.” – The New York Times
Pandemic Lockdowns Were Supposed To Be A Chance To Rethink The Ways Theatre Operates. Has That Happened?
To an extent, yes, it has. Reporter Natasha Tripney talks with theatremakers around Britain about the positive developments — the success of streaming, increased engagement with communities, more egalitarian casting, long-distance collaboration — that started to arise during this public health disaster. – The Stage
Audiences Won’t Come Back Until Folks Are Vaccinated (But They Still Want Masks): Study
The survey of 3,300 frequent attenders (most over 60 and almost all over 40) found that, now that COVID-19 vaccines are being given to the public, more than two-thirds expect they’ll be comfortable at indoor performances by June. (The rest say not until 2022.) More than three-quarters said they’d be willing to pay more to make up for revenue lost due to social distancing. – American Theatre
Manet Painting Unseen For 140 Years Headed To Auction
“The oil on canvas painting, named after the dog, a griffon called Minnay, is one of a series of eight dog paintings Manet produced between 1875-1883. The animal belonged to Marguerite, whose father was Gauthier Lathuille, the owner of a cabaret and later restaurant that featured in other Manet paintings.” – The Guardian
Salonen And San Francisco Symphony Open Streaming Platform
“The new on-demand streaming service, dubbed SFSymphony+, is scheduled to launch on Feb. 4 with a chamber program curated by Salonen as part of the orchestra’s SoundBox series. … Membership is priced at $120 for the entire season, or $15 for individual episodes. Some of the programming … will also be offered for free.” This is planned as a long-term part of the Symphony’s activities, not just a substitute for the live concerts cancelled due to the pandemic. – San Francisco Chronicle
Biden Axes Trump’s ‘1776 Commission’ On History Curriculum
“President Joe Biden on Wednesday issued an executive order to dissolve the 1776 Commission, a panel stood up by President Donald Trump … as an apparent counter to The New York Times’ 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning project aimed at teaching American students about slavery that Trump, speaking last fall, had called ‘toxic propaganda.'” – CNN
Art Basel Postponed To September 2021
“In another blow to Art Basel and its owner, MCH Group, the art fair’s organizers have postponed its flagship edition in Switzerland for the second year straight due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Basel fair, which usually takes place in June, is now scheduled for September 23 through 26.” – Artnet
Cannes Film Festival 2021 Will Happen, But May Be Postponed To July
“With the Cannes Lions [advertising convention] still on track to run June 21-25, it’s feasible that the Cannes Film Festival could be assembled in time to roll out in early July. One industry insider says it would take only a few days or roughly a week to set up the film festival.” – Variety
‘Moulin Rouge!’ — An Oral History Of A Broadway Smash Snuffed Out By Disease
“Set in fin de siècle Paris but supercharged by 75 pop songs, it opened to a rave from The New York Times (‘This one’s for the hedonists,’ exulted Ben Brantley), and it was regularly selling out all 1,302 seats, even during a holiday season when it cost $799 to watch from a cafe table encircled by cancan dancers.” Then came COVID, of course: not only did the show have to close, 25 (!) members of the company, including all three leads, got sick. – The New York Times
Google And France Make Deal To Pay News Outlets For Content
“Google and a French publishers’ lobby said on Thursday they had agreed a copyright framework under which the U.S. tech giant will pay news publishers for content online, in a first for Europe. The move paves the way for individual licensing agreements for French publications, some of which have seen revenues drop with the rise of the Internet and declines in print circulation.” – Reuters
Glastonbury, UK’s Largest Rock Festival, Cancelled For Second Year In A Row (Thanks, COVID)
“In spite of our efforts to move heaven and earth,” the organizers said in a statement, “it has become clear that we simply will not be able to make the festival happen this year. We are so sorry to let you all down.” – Rolling Stone
The Prado Will Re-Hang Its Collection To Feature More Work By Women And Non-Spaniards
“[Madrid’s flagship museum] has announced plans to make [itself] a ‘far more inclusive’ place by reordering its permanent collection to ensure greater representation of works by female and foreign artists. Miguel Falomir, the Prado’s director, said ‘one of the few positives consequences’ of the COVID pandemic had been the time the museum’s enforced closure had given staff to re-evaluate its treasures and how they were displayed.” – The Guardian
Composer Ryuichi Sakamoto Reveals Second Cancer Diagnosis
The Oscar-winning electronic music legend was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014, though he was back to making records by 2017 and the disease had gone into remission. This week, however, Sakamoto announced that he is being treated for rectal cancer. – Pitchfork
Reasoning Behind Tories’ Protect-Monuments-From-Mobs Law Is Rubbish
Charlotte Higgins: “What is happening in reality – and to a greater or lesser extent has been happening for years – is a reappraisal of what and who is celebrated in Britain’s public realm, as Britain gradually, painfully, and often inadequately, examines its colonial and imperial past. … What the Conservatives doggedly refuse to acknowledge is that a community deciding – or even a pressure group demanding – that a figure should no longer be revered on a plinth in the public realm has nothing to do with ‘censoring’ history or pretending the events of the past did not happen.” – The Guardian