“She imagined herself a woman of stern integrity: a playwright who would speak truth to audiences who would pay attention because the magic of the theatre would draw them in. But to attract audiences, she resorted to the kinds of tactics that could make critics shudder.” Alice Kessler-Harris looks at where Hellman pulled the balancing act off and where (and why) she failed.
Simon McBurney Suggested Adapting This Novel For The Stage, And The Artistic Director Said ‘Eeeuwww … Putrid’
But he did it anyway. The visionary theatre artist and director of the company Complicité writes about why, and how, he staged Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity.
Why Are There So Many Words Of The Year?
“Started in 1990 by a small group of linguists, Word of the Year has spread like a video of an anarchist punching a Nazi that’s been set to music.” Stefan Fatsis explains how it happened.
After Three-Year Search, Vancouver Symphony Finds Its Next Music Director
When Bramwell Tovey steps down after 18 years at the end of next season, stepping up will be Dutch conductor Otto Tausk.
One Of Bolshoi Ballet’s Biggest Stars Is Retiring
After 20 years at the theater, including 13 as a principal, Maria Alexandrova has resigned. Bolshoi management says “This was Ms. Alexandrova’s personal decision,” and that they asked her several times to stay on. She herself posted on her Instagram page, “I’ve made a decision and I’m turning this page.”
Cultural Center At The Site Of The Bamiyan Buddhas Finally Underway
“Formed by a ‘system of negative spaces’ carved into the ground, the complex will house two galleries dedicated to Afghan archaeology, a performance hall and a tea-house. … UNESCO experts are still debating the controversial plan to rebuild the pair of rock-cut Buddha statues demolished by the Taliban in 2001.”
Budweiser Superbowl Ad Sparks Debate On The American Dream
“While Budweiser’s ad represents a glowing representation of the American dream, the truth is more complicated and, in fact, reflects a history of immigration that reverberates today.”
Toronto’s Live Music Crisis
“Most of the venue closures that have lately bedevilled the local music scene stem from similar circumstances, highlighting the downside to Toronto’s cultural communities of the city’s ongoing growth and economic prosperity. In North America’s third-largest music market, venue proprietors — who, in most cases, don’t own their buildings — are suddenly hit with 300-per-cent rent increases or browbeaten out of existence by complaints of noise, congestion and insufficient parking as condos spring up on all sides.”
Canada’s Shaw Festival Posts A $780K Deficit
Attendance for last year’s varied playbill – which included admired productions of Engaged and “Master Harold”… and the Boys on the festival’s secondary stages – was 237,471. That was up almost 5,000 from the year before, but still the second-lowest ticket sales in Jackie Maxwell’s 14-year tenure as artistic director.
Great Artist Friendships/Rivalries And How They Worked Psychologically
“When one of them enjoys a coup or some kind of breakthrough, you feel the other man brood and take stock: how did he do that? It is not about admiration expressed through gritted teeth – there seems a genuine urge to absorb the other’s example, and then adapt it.”
Deborah Borda Speaks Out: New Administration’s Policies Are A Disaster For Our Culture
“As the chief executive of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, it is the rare occasion that moves me to comment on the actions of our federal government. However, in less than two weeks, our new president has attempted to limit public discourse, diminish cultural exchange and bully our neighbors. The executive order that temporarily — for now at least — bars entry into the U.S. of individuals from seven Muslim-majority nations is a terrible thing for America’s creative community, in whose work we find our common humanity. I must step forward.”
How To Best Celebrate Mondrian: With A Building-Size Replica
That’s not the only plan in The Hague for the 100-year anniversary of the founding of Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg’s De Stijl: “Brinkman said the city planned to adorn other buildings with similar Mondrian-inspired works, including floating cubical pontoons on the Hofvijver, the small lake in front of the centuries-old Dutch parliament.”
Art Stealing ‘Spiderman’ Says The Paris Museum Of Modern Art Was Easy To Rob
Though he’s famous for scaling buildings to steal from wealthy owners’ apartments, this was easier: “During several scouting visits, he discreetly sprayed the window’s mounts with acid so they could be easily dismantled later. Then, around 3 a.m. on May 20, 2010, he disassembled the window, removed the glass, cut the padlock and the chain of the metal grid behind it and entered the museum. The alarm systems remained silent.”
Classical Music Station Added – Well, Restored – To The FM Dial In New Orleans
The classical station has been purely HD, and the FM station will share its programming, but it’s now back to standard receiver land. The station’s general manager: “We have been waiting several years for the opportunity to restore classical music to the FM band. … As resources grow, we aim to record and broadcast local performances by New Orleans-area classical music organizations.”
Local Music Somehow Survives, And Occasionally Thrives, In The Face Of Globalization
That’s partly because of “the wild dispersion of technology and musical ideas that creates surprising scenes all over the world. … Moroccan Berber folk-pop expresses traditional conservative values while being ‘saturated with full-on cyborg Auto-Tune’ – applied to singers’ vocals in the same ramshackle studios where they’re recorded.”
A Brief Discussion Of ‘Chick Lit,’ A Genre That Deserved More From The Industry
“Given that so many women writers and readers currently feel that, once again, we are fighting for our basic liberties, might a new category of women’s fiction, more overtly feminist than its predecessor, be on its way? Instead of women searching for sex and love with the opposite sex, perhaps the genre might revolve around women simply trying to survive the opposite sex. “
A Berlin Orchestra Creates Love Letters To The Sounds Of The City
Never let it be said that German musicians have no sense of humor: “In the first video, the musicians imitate sounds such as the sizzling of fries and sausages getting cooked and the ketchup squirted over them at one of the most popular eating spots in town.”
Why Can’t Hollywood Get Boston Right?
First, there are the long, slow pans of the skyline. Then there’s the accent. And then, the people. “More often than not, either the portrayal is lazy, played out and riddled with cliches, or it’s broadened into a comedy routine to go down more easily.”
Suddenly, We Have Tons Of British Historical Dramas Again, But Why?
And what does The Crown, for instance, have to do with “the long history of Brexit”? “If its creators are up to the task, the series might well end up less a chronicle of a ruler than a dramatization of the referendum’s long history.”
MoMA Joins The Resistance, Hangs Art From ‘Travel Ban’ Countries
Damn, MoMA: “Alongside each painting, sculpture, or photograph is a text that makes no bones about why it has suddenly surfaced: ‘This work is by an artist from a nation whose citizens are being denied entry into the United States, according to a presidential executive order issued on January 27, 2017. This is one of several such artworks from the Museum’s collection installed throughout the fifth-floor galleries to affirm the ideals of welcome and freedom as vital to this Museum, as they are to the United States.'”
Marta Becket, Dancer Who Built An Opera And Ballet Theatre In Death Valley, Dead At 92
Wow: “It was there, amid the alkali flats, whistling winds and triple-digit heat of the Mojave Desert, that Ms. Becket and her husband resettled and built the Amargosa Opera House, where she performed her ballets and pantomimes for the next 40 years. Ms. Becket turned the Amargosa into a cultural institution in a desolate area, an attraction to tourists, ranchers, farmers and even prostitutes from a local bordello.”
Streaming Is Really Killing Sony (Or Is It A Few Big Flops?)
But the current “distant” fourth-place studio isn’t alone: “It is a crisis Sony shares with its Hollywood peers. In the UK and the US, revenue from streaming and downloads of films and TV shows passed sales of DVDs and Blu-ray discs for the first time last year.”
Ten Longform Literary Essays About That Most Unliterary Of Sports, Football
You can prepare for the Super Bowl or you can avoid it – these pieces will help you either way.
The World Has Gotten Exponentially Scarier, So Take Refuge In Abstract Art
It’s simply a relief: “Freed from the world, all you sense is your body moving through water and all you hear is the sound of your pulse inside your head. Contemplating abstract sculpture, you enter a relationship bereft of language, of story and of illustration; you have to simply measure yourself against the object and admire its intrusion.”
Dore Ashton, Chronicler Of The Abstract Expressionists And So Much More, Has Died At 88
Ashton was an art historian and thinker who didn’t simply observe. “She recorded the scene, and she inhabited it. She made a point of visiting artists in their studios, drinking with them at their favorite haunts and talking philosophy and aesthetics into the wee hours in downtown cafes.”