At Chez Panisse, no less. They talk about where in their lives their novels The Color Purple and Brooklyn came from and what it was like to see them made into movies.
Kamasi Washington’s Giant Step
“With his popular, political, uncategorizable jazz, the young saxophonist has become something his genre rarely produces anymore: a celebrity.”
Those Guys Who Knocked The Beard Off King Tut’s Mask And Epoxied It Back On? They’re Going On Trial
“King Tut hasn’t been around for a few thousand years, but his power remains: after a botched repair job of the famed pharaoh’s beard left scratches on his burial mask, Egyptian prosecutors have ordered eight museum workers to a disciplinary court for ‘gross negligence.'”
Can Shame Be A Positive, Useful Thing? Under The Right Circumstances, Definitely
“Modern American culture is down on shame – it is, we are told, a damaging, useless emotion that we should neither feel ourselves nor make others feel. This is particularly the case when it comes to drug and alcohol addiction. … But in fact, the experience of shame – the feeling that one has failed to live up to one’s own standards – can play a positive role in recovery from addiction, as well as from other kinds of destructive habits.”
Oscar Voter Says Academy’s Diversity Push Is “Insulting” To Black People
“What bothers me most is how insulting this is to black people. I’m also shocked at the presumption of the president of the Academy to meet with David Oyelowo to explain to him “what went wrong” because he wasn’t nominated last year for his portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. I’m sorry, but are we missing the 800-pound gorilla in the room?”
Does A Writer Have A Responsibility To Anything Other Than Her Art (Like Being A Decent Human Being)?
Zoë Heller: “The belief that artists are entitled to be morally careless – that great art excuses everything – has proved to be one of the more tenacious parts of our Romantic inheritance.”
Francine Prose: “The landscape of literary history is littered with the wreckage of writers who thought they were on a mission.”
Shouting “Kill The Playwright” In A Crowded Theatre
In which one unhappy patron, while his fellows are applauding, calls out, “Booooo! Kill the playwright!”, and another patron – herself a playwright – takes umbrage: “I imagined myself confronting the man who’d shouted for Annie Baker’s death. Calling him on his privilege; his insistence on making his experience everyone else’s.”
Opera: Not Snobby, Not Elitist, Not Expensive (Says Comedian)
Chris Addison: “It seems mental to me. … People imagine it is all dickie bows. I have seen great stuff here; paid £6 and sat at the back. True, there are top price tickets I would never buy, but there are super-expensive seats at Arsenal too. You could come to four operas for the price of an Arsenal ticket and have two quid over for a lovely cup of coffee.”
Should Public Transit Pay Pacific Northwest Ballet School To Relocate?
“The Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Eastside school features studios framed in soaring glass and steel, ‘floating’ floors to absorb dancers’ leaps and pirouettes, expanses of mirrors, and barres to give even the youngest girls in leotards the surroundings of a professional ballerina. But the industrial warehouse building the ballet has so carefully transformed is directly in the path of Sound Transit’s East Link route through Bellevue.”
Banksy’s Newest Work: A Protest Of France, On The French Embassy In London
“The artwork, which depicts a young girl from the film and musical Les Misérables with tears in her eyes as CS gas billows towards her, appeared overnight on Saturday. In a first for the elusive graffiti artist, the artwork is interactive and includes a stencilled QR code beneath.”
Amazon Beats Movie Companies In Bidding War At Sundance
“Amazon will bring on a theatrical distributor and many suitors are circling. The move follows a trend this Sundance of streamers stepping up with huge offers and outbidding traditional theatrical distributors.”
What’s Up With The Philadelphia Orchestra And Yannick Nézet-Séguin?
“What I’m most convinced about is that we need to do things more than once to create new traditions, new expectations, new habits, and we can’t backtrack if something isn’t on the box office level we want. Our composer festival sold well, but it didn’t sell out. That doesn’t mean we stop doing it.”
Broadway Went Dark, But (The First) BroadwayCon Kept Rolling Along
“Despite the massive storm that shut down Broadway on Saturday and forced the cancellations of appearances by several high-profile celebrities at BroadwayCon, including the actors Darren Criss and Jeremy Jordan, the show went on, with panel discussions, singalongs and a Saturday night cabaret that turned a ballroom into a theater camp-style slumber party.”
The Experience Of Being Featured On ‘Humans Of New York’
“He was super nice, full of energy, and took two to three pictures of us before handing us his card. It all took less than five minutes. We thanked him and continued on our walk as if nothing happened. (This was, after all, New York!)”
What ‘Maverick’ Architects Do (And Why We Don’t Have More Of Them)
“Is there no architecture that can bare its soul without simultaneously crushing you with its ego, that stirs, moves, troubles, provokes, inspires? And is there no way of being controlled and passionate at the same time? Is there no other choice but blancmange or dry biscuits?”
Can This Theatre Be Saved?
If the idealistic side can come up with $5 million in the next few days, maybe.
The Subversive Awesomeness Of ‘Fancasting’ Movies And TV Shows
“In fancasting, imagination is alive and well. In fact, that’s all it is: fans imagine their dream cast for the movie version of some media they love—think comics, books, video games, etc.—on social media to share with their fellow fans.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs For 01.24.16
FIVE PICKS: Stories From This Week’s ArtsJournal
Welcome to our weekly “best of” ArtsJournal. These aren’t necessarily the most important of the 156 stories we found, these particularly caught our eye. Your #AllWhiteOscars Controversy Primer The biggest flurries of stories this week… … read more
AJBlog: DiacriticalPublished 2016-01-24
Kapusta!
[Or Polish cabbage soup from a Ukrainian Jew] I haven’t posted for a while, I know, but changes in my life urge me to find that thread that leads to writing. I’ve had trouble cooking,… … read more
AJBlog: Out TherePublished 2016-01-24
Carl Weissner: Master Writer, Cherished Friend
A great one died four years ago today. Nova BroadcastSan Francisco, 1970Doll No Mori2012Milena Verlag Vienna, 2010Milena Verlag Vienna, 2011Milena VerlagVienna, 2013 Carl was also a “little magazine” editor, a radio playwright, German translator… … read more
AJBlog: Straight|UpPublished 2016-01-24
Exploding the House of Atreus
Ann Liv Young’s Elektra at New York Live Arts, January 20-30 Ann Liv Young’s Elektra. Foreground: Marissa Mickelberg. At back (L to R): Lovey Ailish Guerrero, Vanessa Soudan, Daniel Borg, and Nessa Norwich. Photo: Yi-Chun… … read more
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2016-01-23
Recent Listening: Pelt, Vitchev, Feather
Continuing the struggle to keep up, the Rifftides staff once again plunges into the accumulation of more or less recent albums and selects a few to tell you about. The stacks you see below include… … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2016-01-22
Sotheby’s Eats Crow from the Taubman Sales: $6-Million Guarantee Loss & $6-Million in Expe…
It’s official: Sotheby’s assumption of the risk for the consignment of more than 500 works from the estate of its former chairman, A. Alfred Taubman was no coup. It was a flop. Glum crowd leaving… … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2016-01-22
Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers in the Caribbean
On a recent Saturday afternoon in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic a group of people from all walks of life assembled in a movie theater. Some of them knew each other – I watched as people… … read more
AJBlog: Creative DestructionPublished 2016-01-22
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The Philly Art Museum Steps During #Blizzard2016
It wasn’t just sledding: “Early Sunday morning, the Action Cam caught a pair of ATVs riding down the steps.”
A House Of Respite And Inspiration For Young Artists
“Stephanie Littlejohn, whose grandchildren are dancing in an impromptu talent show, says the block still has plenty of crime, prostitution and drug dealing — but German’s presence has changed its tone.”
Broadway Ticket Holders Kept From The Room Where It Happens By Blizzard
“This weekend’s closings were striking for their last-minute nature — at the Metropolitan Opera, audiences were already in their seats for Puccini’s ‘La Bohème,’ while on Broadway, actors were backstage and audiences were on their way.”
Why Do We Keep Describing Early-Music Voices As ‘Pure’?
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim: “Where does this emphasis on purity come from? What does it mean to singers and conductors? And to writers: As a critic who is compelled to use metaphors to describe the intangible qualities of a performance, I also wonder about the assumptions I’m making when I use certain words. … In the course of phone interviews with performers and scholars, I received an invigorating plurality of points of view – and a sobering reminder of the gap between the way critics and singers talk about the same voices.”
Trisha Brown’s Company, Without Trisha Brown
“For dance companies that seek to exist beyond their founding choreographer, there is the inevitable conundrum. How does a company exist without new works? The Merce Cunningham Dance Company disbanded when faced with that prospect; others, like the Martha Graham Dance Company, evolved into repertory groups. But the Brown company, which has seven members, is trying something different: remounting Ms. Brown’s works in site-specific locations all over the world.”
Oscars So White? Or Oscars So Dumb? NY Times Critics Discuss
A.O. Scott: “The nominations are a numbers game, and in each case you can offer a nonracial explanation for the oversight. Other movies and actors just had a few more votes.”
Wesley Morris: “But I also don’t think any voter wants to be told that he or she has to vote for a predominantly black film or: racism!”
Manohla Dargis: “The lived, embodied experiences of the membership greatly matter and that sometimes even the most well-intentioned white people just don’t see the racism and sexism in front of them.”