“This is 9/11 meets The Great Recession meets the snowstorm,” Randy Engstrom, director of the city’s Office of Arts and Culture (OAC), said during an online public meeting Tuesday afternoon. “We know we’re going to get through this together — and this is our time.” – Seattle Times
Which Language Is Most Difficult To Lipread?
“This last question, though seemingly simple, resists every attempt to answer it. Every theory runs into brick walls of evidence, the research is limited, and even the basic understanding of what lipreading is, how effective it is, and how it works is laden with conflicting points of view.” – Atlas Obscura
Why Still The Idea That Theatre Is Best In New York?
” It’s time to get our heads out of our collective asses and wake up to the fact that having a New York zip code does not make you a better actor by default. Nor does wanting a better quality of life mean you’re less ambitious. The industry has changed, and it’s time to put those outdated stereotypes to rest.” – Onstage Blog
Report: Arts Drive Tourism In Australia
Australians took 12.3 million daytrips and 13.4 million overnight trips within Australia that included arts activities in 2018 – an increase of 14 percent and 20 percent respectively since 2014 – with increases found across visiting museums and art galleries, attending performing arts, visiting art or craft workshops or studios, attending festivals, and experiencing First Nations arts and craft. The report also flagged an increasing interest in First Nations arts tourism. – Limelight
Another Job In The Arts You Hadn’t Thought Of: Narrating Porn For The Blind
Pornhub launched this particular initiative in increasing access for the disabled to the arts four years ago, hiring professional freelance writers to produce text and professional voice actors to read it. Here’s a Q&A with Kathryn Simpson, an art history Ph.D. who has written the narration for 35 Pornhub videos. – Slate
How Can Theatre Work On Climate Change?
Theatre has always paid attention to political and social issues. So what does working on climate change look like for theatre? American Theatre presents a collection of stories exploring how. – American Theatre
How A Show About, Of All Things, Cambodian Surf Rock Became One Of This Season’s Most-Produced Plays
“With the Off Broadway production of Cambodian Rock Band now in performances at Signature Theater, [playwright Lauren] Yee and director Chay Yew appeared on Stagecraft, Variety‘s theater podcast, to talk confronting history, rocking out, and why they think audiences have responded so enthusiastically to a show that Yee said her husband didn’t believe she would actually write.” (includes text and audio) – Variety
Royal Philharmonic Research: How Technology Is Bringing Classical Music A Bigger Audience
‘Technology is playing a huge role in shaping the future of how people engage with orchestral music,’ says James Williams, managing director at the RPO. ‘At the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, we see it as an essential role to respond to this change, and to evolve and develop – be it through online content or programme notes that appear live on your phone. Indeed, last year we reached around 17m people worldwide through Spotify alone, and these numbers continue to grow each year.’ – Rhinegold
He Was One Of Sudan’s Most Beloved Musicians — Then He Went Silent For Decades And Was Even Thought Dead
In the 1970s and ’80s, Abu Obaida Hassan’s singing and skill on the Nubian tambour thrilled Sudanese listeners and even gained attention overseas. Then the imposition of a stern version of Sharia law and the 30-year dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir squashed the country’s music scene, and Abu Obaida withdrew from public view. In 2016, a Western record producer went looking for him and found him by sheer dumb luck, and with Bashir now ousted, fans are rediscovering Abu Obaida’s sound. – The Guardian
Indian Cinema Is Finally Starting To Get Comfortable With Same-Sex Romance
Until just a few years ago, the very few times queer characters were shown at all in Bollywood movies were as figures of mockery. Now, very occasionally, a film with a sympathetic portrayal of same-sex couples or trans characters does come out of the big Mumbai studios. And more progress can be seen in India’s “regional” (non-Hindi-language) cinema. – BBC
Why An ‘Old-Timey Gothic Typeface’ Became ‘The Nazi Font’
Blackletter, or Fraktur (as it’s known in German), was used all over Europe during the Middle Ages and through the early years of the printing press. As the rest of the continent gave blackletter up, though, Protestant Germans held on to Fraktur (Roman type was Papist, you understand), and, by the early 20th century, the font had become a symbol of German-ness. You know where that led — and the association, even though it’s not really accurate, remains powerful to this day as the German alt-right rises. (includes text and audio) – 99% Invisible
Revealed: YouTube’s Most-Watched Gaming Channels Are Infested With Bots
In January, all seven of the most-watched YouTube Gaming channels weren’t run by happy gamers livestreaming the game du jour. They were instead recorded, autoplaying videos advertising videogame cheats and hacks, sometimes attached to sketchy, credential-vacuuming websites, according to one analytics firm. – Wired
Meet The Workers Who Inspect The Sistine Chapel’s Frescoes
The BBC was given rare access to the preparations and spoke to three experts involved. – BBC
Allentown Museum Painting Discovered To Be A Rembrandt After It Was Sent Out For Cleaning
The scientific analysis “showed brushwork, and a liveliness to that brushwork, that is quite consistent with other works by Rembrandt,” said Shan Kuang, a conservator at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts who restored “Portrait of a Young Woman.” – Toronto Star (AP)
Has Netflix Reached Its Max Audience?
“Our research shows that most pay TV households already have Netflix so even if cord-cutting accelerates, Netflix won’t get a whole slew of new customers. In [other] words, people are cutting the cord because they have Netflix. They don’t cut the cord and discover Netflix for the first time.” – Fast Company
One Of Britain’s Top Dance Companies, Tired Of The Money Struggle, Gives Up And Packs It In
Marina Harss: “Imagine if one of America’s most respected modern-dance companies realized that its funding model was no longer sustainable and had to cease operations. This despite having name recognition and a highly identifiable style, and still regularly producing new work. That, in a nutshell, is what has happened to the Richard Alston Dance Company, in England.” – The New York Times
“No matter what happens tomorrow”
It struck me the other day that ever since Mrs. T went into the hospital, our life has come to resemble Groundhog Day, an endless succession of repeat performances. I am, like Bill Murray, stuck on hold, the only difference being that I know what has happened to me — and that, sooner or later, it will end. In the meantime, we’re clinging to our memories, but we’re also doing our best to get what’s to be gotten out of the slow-moving present. – Terry Teachout
Opera Performed By And For The Deaf? These Folks Are Giving It A Try
Victory Hall Opera in Charlottesville is working on a production of Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites with Deaf performers acting the roles in American Sign Language alongside singers. The first workshops are happening at the end of this month. Reporter Thomas Floyd talks with the leader of Victory Hall Opera and stage director Alek Lev. – The Washington Post
End Of The Big Glamorous Cities?
Since 2010, urban inner rings, including central business districts, accounted for barely 10 percent of population growth in the nation’s 53 largest metropolitan areas. More revealing still, the country’s three largest metropolitan areas — New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—are now losing population. Since 2012, suburbs and exurbs, which have seven times as many people as the core, are again growing faster. Suburbs are also seeing a strong net movement among educated people, those earning over $75,000 and especially those between the ages of 30 and 44. – The Daily Beast
Tough Talk On Theatre Diversity Efforts
I am a white, male, liberal administrator working in New York’s nonprofit theatre community. I see firsthand how the word “diversity” has kicked up a lot of dust throughout the industry. Yet for as long as we’ve been having conversations, and task forces, and panel discussions, and industry-wide conferences, I’m still struggling to see how this word aligns with clear, intentional, or lasting change. – Howlround
La Scala Ballet’s New Director: Manuel Legris Of Vienna State Ballet
As rumor has had it for months, Legris, a 55-year-old former étoile at the Paris Opera Ballet who has been at the helm of the Vienna State Opera’s ballet company since 2010, will become ballet director at Milan’s opera house at the end of this year. – Gramilano (Milan)
Can A Theater Function With Four Artistic Directors? Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater Will Try It
Blanka Zizka, who founded the company with her ex-husband Jiri about 40 years ago and has been sole artistic director since a couple of years before his death in 2012, “has recruited three new co-artistic directors — noteworthy local playwright/director James Ijames, Russian-born director Yury Urnov (who’s had a long association with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington), and Morgan Green of the New Saloon theater in Brooklyn — to share the AD responsibilities with her starting this summer.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Will UK Have To Return Elgin Marbles To Greece To Get Post-Brexit EU Trade Deal?
“That’s the message embedded within a clause recently added to the E.U.’s negotiating mandate, which says the British government should ‘address issues relating to the return or restitution of unlawfully removed cultural objects to their countries of origin.'” – ARTnews
Actress Zoe Caldwell, Four-Time Tony Winner, Dead At 86
She began her professional career in her native Melbourne at age 9, went to England and joined the RSC at 26, and was a founding member of Tyrone Guthrie’s theatre company in Minneapolis. Though she appeared occasionally in TV and film, she was most famous for her stage performances. She won Tonys for playing Miss Jean Brodie, Medea, Maria Callas (in Master Class), and (her first) for a double-bill of Tennessee Williams one-acts that ran for a week. – The New York Times
Arts Council England Warns Organisations: Get More Diverse Or Give Up Government Funding
“Arts organisations and museums in England are being warned they will lose public funding unless they meet ‘stretching’ targets to create and attract more diverse workforces and audiences. … ACE has been publishing diversity data for five years but has often been accused of merely talking instead of taking strong action. The language this year is significantly more robust.” – The Guardian