“We want to see them fight because, to an unusual degree even for comic books, the fights mean something. That is, they are about something – or some things. Namely: how to make a better world, with Superman operating through hope and inspiration, and Batman through fear and intimidation. As the villain Lex Luthor puts it in the new movie, it’s ‘god versus man, day versus night.'”
Claim: Dressing Formally For Opera Is A Plus, Not A Minus
“People like to dress up. My grandfather started that off because he thought the audience ought to show respect for the artists on the stage, and that’s a nice reason to do it. People like to dress up, they like to make an effort and they don’t have to do it very often these days.”
Violin-Making Is An Old, Traditional Craft From A Long-Gone Century. Who Still Does This Work?
It’s a slow, patient, calming craft that has largely remained unchanged since the 1800s – much like the wage, Richard Wilson jokes – but why are people still drawn to it? And do they make any money?
Did ‘American Psycho’ Predict The Future?
“Its detractors loathed it, and even its fans would agree that its anti-hero, Patrick Bateman, is one of the most unsavoury creations in literary history. So what does it say about us that we’re now willing to whistle along to his depravity? Have we inched closer to Bateman’s way of thinking over the past 25 years? Or has the story told in Ellis’s novel been diluted with each subsequent retelling? The answer is somewhere in between.”
How Western Theatre Has Historically Engaged With Islam
“There is still a long history of playwrights attempting to engage with Islam in ways that might make us uncomfortable today.”
You’ve Seen Pseudoscience, Now Have A Look At Pseudolaw
“These days, we are distressingly familiar with alternative, conspiracy-theory versions of science and medicine. Less well-known is the legal version of this phenomenon, not as visible as creationism or anti-vaccine activism but in many ways as destructive.”
An Entire Festival Of Plays That Pass The Bechdel Test
“Bechdel Theatre Festival has been created by Beth Watson, the founder of Bechdel Theatre, which began life as a Twitter campaign last year. It promotes and celebrates plays that pass the Bechdel Test – which asks whether a play has at least two women in it, who talk to each other about something other than a man.”
Is This The Best New Opera House In The West?
“Chapman University opened what might have been a modest, multi-purpose 1,044-seat facility. Instead, thanks to Toyota, the city of Orange now houses an ideal opera house, potentially the best in the West and maybe even something more.”
Study: Group Drumming Has Mental Health Benefits
An “exploratory examination” found 10 weeks of group drumming provided significant benefits for a group of people who had sought help for mental-health issues. What’s more, the improvements persisted for at least three months after the sessions concluded.
Twitter At 10 – How Should We Take Stock?
Robinson Meyer: “After all, there’s been no shortage of chances over the last decade to note How Twitter Has Changed Things. Infinite comparisons can be drawn between Twitter and any other social network. … It also doesn’t seem worth dwelling on Twitter’s shortcomings. (For that, I can wait for earnings day.) Instead, it’s worth seeing Twitter not just as a 10-year-old social network, but as a product of its time.”
Cliburn Winner’s Estranged Wife Charged With Murdering Their Daughters
“Authorities believe Sofya Tsygankova, 31, killed her daughters and stabbed herself before her husband” – 2013 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition winner Vadym Kholodenko – “was scheduled to pick up his children for a regular visit.”
Survey: Arts Leaders Say They’re Suffering From Information Overload
“Perhaps the single most important finding from the survey document is the number of arts administrators who view the increase in the volume of communication – to and from others – as a real or potential problem; one that is a threat / drain to their most important resource – time.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.21.16
The Value of Intrinsic Value in the Arts: A Guest Post by Carter Gillies
In recent years an artist named Carter Gillies has written to me with some regularity in response to Jumper posts. I have always valued his letters, which are invariably insightful, provocative, warm, and encouraging. Recently, …read more
AJBlog: Jumper Published 2016-03-20
Historic days for US and Cuba, accompanied by jazz
Congratulations to the U.S. and Cuba for advancing our long overdue reset. It’s about time. Jazz at its best has linked our nations for decades, through the tangled history of corrupt dictatorship and revolution, missile crisis, failed invasion, bad relations and … read more
AJBlog: Jazz Beyond Jazz Published 2016-03-21
Taking Folk Dancing into Today’s World
Tina Croll + Company performs in New York with Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-03-21
Thad & Mel: The Tradition Continues
You may recall that a couple of weeks ago the Rifftides Monday Recommendation was an album of recently discovered recordings by the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. This evening, the PBS NewsHour closed with … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-03-21
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Like Many Former Actors, The Writer Of ‘The Waitress’ Understands The Show’s Subject On A Visceral Level
“At a moment when the question of female creative representation has come to a head, Nelson offers a template for how some of those issues could be solved, if also a less-than-overt interest in being a poster child for the cause.”
The Live Theatre Craze Meets Religion As Fox Hypes Jesus’ Last Days
“One musical number stood out: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 showstopper ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone,’ which got a loud response from the live audience even though Ms. Yearwood’s voice wasn’t nearly big enough for it.”
Paul McCartney Wants The Rights To His Songs, But Will He Get Them?
“The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 gave songwriters the ability to recapture the publishers’ share of their songs, and in the case of titles written before 1978, writers can recapture songs after two consecutive 28-year terms, or 56 years.”
A TV Show Escapes Trouble For A Swear Word Because It Was Said With A Scottish Accent
“ITV admitted the speaker’s accent had meant the word had not been ‘understood’ prior to broadcast.”
How We Got To America’s ‘Post-Fact’ Politics And Society
“Somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, fundamentalism and postmodernism, the religious right and the academic left, met up: either the only truth is the truth of the divine or there is no truth; for both, empiricism is an error. That epistemological havoc has never ended: much of contemporary discourse and pretty much all of American politics is a dispute over evidence.”