“That liberal literati in the US were, and remain, singularly un-shocked by so much that was awful pre-Trump is troubling. Neither historical accuracy nor political realism is well served by harping on ideals that are blatantly at odds with the actual deeds of a country Martin Luther King once called ‘the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.’ In 2017, we retain this distinction, with a military budget roughly the same size as the next seven largest combined.”
Dame Vera Lynn, Becomes Oldest Musician To Have A Top-10 Hit
“She is the first ever centenarian to chart in Britain. Dame Vera beats her own record from 2014, when she became the oldest living artist to reach the Top 20 with her National Treasure album. She still holds the record for the oldest living artist to score a No. 1 album, when her Very Best Of collection hit the top in 2009, at the age of 93.”
Jesse Green Had *Not* Planned On Being A Critic, Let Alone A Theater Critic (And Now He’s Headed To The New York Times)
Rob Weinert-Kendt talks to Green about how he got into criticism (sideways and reluctantly), all the things he did before, and how even he had hoped the Times wouldn’t hire another white guy.
Mock Trial In Chicago Debates Fate Of Parthenon Marbles
“The opposing forces were represented by two powerhouse teams of Chicago attorneys: former U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick M. Collins, and Tinos Diamantatos represented the British Museum; former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, Sam Adam Jr., and Robert A. Clifford argued for Greece. And each side produced an expert witness.”
Donald Judd, Persistent Disbeliever And Committed Skeptic
With Judd, to put it mildly, “He had not the slightest appetite for polite back patting. … Doubt always came first.”
Toronto Gets Its Own Superheated Real Estate Market That Forces Artists And Musicians Out
Some predict a hollowing out of the downtown core in Toronto, with basically only bad traffic left. Right now, “Landmark musicians are leaving for more affordable regions in unsettling numbers and, with them go songs and culture.”
The Pleasures, And The Pressures, Of Being A 20-Year-Old Demi-Soloist
Bridget Kuhns of the Houston Ballet isn’t one of the ballet dancers who uses the pre-show ritual of “‘brush your shoulder, touch your toe,’ she says, laughing as she mimicked those movements. But Kuhns does have a thing about fresh breath onstage, she explained. She always brushes her teeth and then chews on a piece of gum until the stage manager delivers the two-minute warning call.”
The Cleveland Orchestra Has Cut Its Miami Residency In Half
Or at least that’s how it appears from the press release about the short 2018 Miami season, which “contains no statement or explanation about why the orchestra has shortened its season or even any acknowledgement that it is doing so.”
Tracy Moffatt Is The First Indigenous Australian To Exhibit At The Venice Biennale
Photographer and filmmaker Moffatt never wants to repeat herself. The pavilion “will feature two new large-scale photographic suites and two films. Commissioned by Naomi Milgrom and curated by Natalie King, the exact nature of the works in this exhibition is still a tightly guarded secret, but Moffatt says she used a lot of natural light – often shooting directly into the sun.”
A New Ballet That’s Most Definitely Not About ‘Relationships’
Unless one considers the relationships among the criminally insane and their terrible “care”-givers a traditional ballet subject, a new ballet inspired by Frederick Wiseman’s 1967 long-censored documentary “The Titicut Follies” will likely be a bit of a surprise. “Adapting the film’s troubling message has been a challenge for every artist involved in the new ballet.”
An Unslakable Thirst For David Hockney Paintings Means Tate Britain Will Stay Open Until Midnight
No, seriously. People love their Hockney, and he returns the favor: “The vast audience that his retrospective has attracted is sure to please Hockney, who has always been an advocate for his art being not for a small elite.”
This Actress Uses A Wheelchair And Is Playing Laura In ‘Glass Menagerie’ – Exploitation Or Progress?
Broadway audiences are used to perfectly abled bodies, as are reviewers, which might be why some reviewers are having a hard time with Madison Ferris’ Laura. But, despite a few Off-Broadway and other companies having better representation, on Broadway, actors with visible disabilities “remain a rare occurrence, and as a result Broadway remains unrepresentative of the full range of humanity.”
Elfriede Jelinek Is A Nobel Laureate – And Her Latest Play Takes On The Notoriously Thin-Skinned Current President Of The United States
The Austrian playwright and novelist wrote a new play (“an attack on the Trump aesthetic: the gold, the plush furniture”) for the times. It’s coming to NY, and here’s the description, from the play’s translator: “This seer with bleeding eyes sends Trump through a shattered looking glass where Jelinek examines him through the distorted mirrors of the heroes of Western culture: from Oedipus to Abraham, Isaac and Jesus, to Martin Heidegger, who attempted to lead the Führer.”
People In Theatre Say They Can’t Talk About Mental Health Issues, Or They’ll Lose Work
One director says that “The industry needs to begin addressing it very seriously, so that we all have decent guidelines, and so that performers who do have a history of mental health issues and may enter a crisis during the time they’re spending with you have some recourse.”
The Eerie Perfection Of ‘Annie’
A theory about why the 1982 movie, which is considered “bad” by most film critics, fascinates and educates young children, even though the themes are hardly childlike: “The possibility of being a single being, alone in the world, was deeply fascinating to me. Annie, the protagonist of the film, makes hard decisions several times in the movie. She’s the moral center of a film that is deeply, complicatedly female driven.”
The Africa Center Is Finished, But It Can’t Open Its Doors Without A Lot More Money
With a new board president, the former Museum for African Art is also pitching a new simulation of what it will look like inside – if it can raise the money.
Will Hollywood’s Writers Strike Again?
The Writers’ Guild of America has asked its members to authorize a strike, but that doesn’t mean one will happen. “The move came after what the committee described as an “unacceptable” series of ‘noes’ from AMPTP studio negotiators over the last two weeks of talks about a new three-year deal.”
The Man Who Discovered That Hemingway Spied For The Soviets
“I was a traditional product of the Cold War. … There was little sympathy for Communism in our house. So I felt like le Carré’s character George Smiley, who learns of yet another betrayal: I felt like I had taken an elbow deep in the gut.”
Do The Blues Still Stand For Authenticity? A British Novelist Wants To Know
Hari Kunzru takes a road trip through the Deep South to figure it out. “It is extraordinary music, if you can really hear it. I’ve been making playlists of songs originally recorded on 78rpm shellac discs in the years before the second world war, songs that sounded like the work of ghosts. The voices of the old singers were distant in time, muffled by crackle and hiss, and yet somehow immediate.”
That Time They Cancelled A Reality TV Show But Just Didn’t Tell The People In It
They only showed four shows – the last in August. But ten people just emerged from “an uninhabited private estate that the Ministry of Defense used as a training ground during World War II, The Radio Times of London reported. A six-foot fence was erected on three sides of the estate, with the fourth side bordered by the sea.”
How A Small Kansas Town Promoted The Arts Without Government Funding
“Hays, a college town with about 21,000 residents, is a case study of how the arts can continue to thrive when public funds dry up. But it is also a cautionary tale of the sometimes-hidden costs.”
How Would You Define American Music? (And, BTW, Why Do You Care?)
What is American music? And, perhaps more to the point, why do we care so much? “I remember being asked in Prague not so long ago, ‘What is your obsession, you Americans, with American music?’ ” said Robert Spano, the music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which will perform at SHIFT on March 31. “The only answer I could give . . . was: It’s because we don’t know who we are, and so we’re endlessly fascinated, because there are so many things that make up America . . . so much to wrestle with and balance and try and understand. . . . I was kind of defending our self-obsession.”
While US Considers Killing Federal Arts Funding, Canada Proposes $1.8 Billion Increase In Arts Budget
“The federal government will devote $1.8-billion more to culture and recreation spending over the next decade, “modernize” the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act, and spend more on official and Indigenous languages, according to the budget delivered on Wednesday by Finance Minister Bill Morneau. But anyone looking for details of the extensive cultural-policy overhaul promised by Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly since the government took office in 2015, will find scant evidence for it in the budget papers.”
Looking For A Theatre Response In A Time Of Trump
“Since the election, I have been urgently seeking direction from dramatists in the way a cardiac patient might turn to nutrition and meditation after a heart attack. I have been thinking not just of Chekhov but of Harold Pinter, who is an even better guide to Trump’s brutal relativism and canny opportunism. Pinter’s plays throw into relief the territorial nature of human beings — the way reality, both present and past, is a turf war in which the will to dominate supersedes all other considerations.”
Performance Artists In Exile In Britain Fear They’ll Be Forced To Return To Poland
Władysław Kaźmierczak and Ewa Rybska face charges, which they insist are politically motivated, of financial malfeasance from the 2000s, when Kaźmierczak was director of the Baltic Gallery for Contemporary Art in Słupsk. The pair’s work has been critical of the right-wing-nationalist Law and Justice Party, which is currently in power in Poland.