“As we grow older the balance between men and women actors never changes, but the opportunities for men somehow far outnumber those for women. As a result of this imbalance, women have become disposable in the modern theatre.”
Why Aren’t More Broadway Plays Live-streaming?
“At first glance, theater productions seem like a good fit for the streaming-platform models established by Netflix and Hulu and Amazon, since Broadway fare appeals to a passionate niche audience that can’t always make it to New York to catch a show. But there are a slew of hurdles, including negotiations with stage unions and rights holders still fairly new to working out their positions on digital distribution, and the fact that many of the productions most likely to arouse widespread interest among viewers — “Hamilton,” “The Lion King,” “Wicked” — won’t allow a capture of an entire performance to hit the Internet until after the production has closed.”
The Weird And Wonderful Stave Churches Of Norway
“Stave churches are wooden houses of worship that combine the austere, peaked architecture of Christianity with the Nordic designs and motifs of a Viking great hall. … Using the same woodworking prowess that made the Vikings such adept shipbuilders, traditional stave churches were often built using nothing more that expertly crafted joints and joins, with no nails or glue.”
Five New American Operas Telling American Stories
“Anew crop of commissions for U.S. opera houses are focusing on the home front, adapting works that are distinctly American in scope and are set in the country.” Commenters offer a few more candidates. (includes video clips)
Watching ‘Batman V. Superman’ In 4D So You Don’t Have To (And It’s A Good Thing You Don’t)
“4DX purports to further immerse you in your film experience with these physical effects. Why simply watch Superman get rained on when you can get uncomfortably wet at the same time? Why just commiserate with Batman when he’s punched in the back by an evil henchman, when you can get punched in the back by your very own chair? Genius!”
The Bolshoi’s Backstage Wizards
“Whereas 240 years ago the Bolshoi company consisted of just 43 members. Now the theater’s staff numbers more than three thousand. Not just performing artists, [Bolshoi director Vladimir] Urin says, but ‘a whole army of skilled technical staff – stagehands, makeup artists, costume designers, and lighting technicians.'”
Ten Surprising Facts About The Bolshoi Theater
For instance, it was once owned by an Oxford mathematics professor, and at one point Stalin had to talk Lenin out of tearing it down.
A Brief History Of Ventriloquism (It Freaked Out The Ancient Greeks)
“You might not think of Lamb Chop, the adorable hand puppet that graced the appendage of world-famous ventriloquist Shari Lewis, or the impertinent wooden dummies operated by Edgar Bergan as having ancestors, but they do. One of them is a snake in a human mask. But let’s back up.”
Could Morris Dancing Become Cool In The 21st Century? (It’s Trying)
“There are some interesting changes afoot within the Morris community as the tradition has adapted to remain relevant in modern times. Among those changes: the inclusion of women, the adoption of Steampunk aesthetics, and the blasting of Guns ‘n’ Roses.”
How Learning The Tango Taught A Man To Walk Again
After a few months of “dancing” in a close embrace, Gabriella Condrea started to slowly pull away from Tho Nguyen so he could stand for a little while on his own, his posture primed and his confidence up. It took just over a year, but one day when Condrea pulled away, Nguyen looked at her and said, “Watch this,” then took three steps without support. It was the first time he had done so in 20 years.
Google’s Machines Are Making Art. Will They Also Change Art?
“Developed at Google’s Zurich office in 2014 and released to the wider world last summer, Deep Dream uses artificial neural networks, a style of computing inspired by the brain and nervous systems, to learn to recognise shapes in pictures.”
William Randolph Hearst Really Did Try To Ruin Orson Welles
“Previously unpublished documents have revealed the scale of a plot by the media mogul William Randolph Hearst to discredit Orson Welles and destroy Citizen Kane, the 1941 film about the rise and fall of the fictional newspaper proprietor Charles Foster Kane.”
The State Of Palmyra’s Great Ruins After ISIS Fled
“There remained little hope for the heritage site amid fears that if ISIS ever retreated, its militants would rig bombs to the ruins as they fled.”
As Machines Become Smarter, Will We Get A Universal Translator? (Here’s Why It’s Difficult)
“It’s so difficult for computers because translation doesn’t—or shouldn’t—involve simply translating words, sentences or paragraphs. Rather, it’s about translating meaning. And in order to infer meaning from a specific utterance, humans have to interpret a multitude of elements at the same time.”
Critics Hated “Batman V Superman” But It’s A Box Office Smash. So Who Cares About Critics? They Don’t Matter
“The results are a devastating rebuke to the power of mainstream American critics at a time when many newspapers have already outsourced their reviews to wire services and the rise of bloggers has de-professionalized the practice of assessing a film’s attributes and demerits.”
So The Public Disagrees With Critics? Sorry, But It Doesn’t Matter (And That’s Not How Criticism Works)
“Why this apparently overwhelming, unquenchable urge to argue that box office receipts prove the irrelevance and impotence of criticism? Could it be that the movie business feels defensive, maybe even ashamed, of peddling so much profitable dreck, and—whatever the numbers may say—a critic’s reproaches still have the power to sting?”
ISIS Is Driven From Palmyra; Archaeologists Think Some Of The Destruction Can Be Reversed
“Syrian troops on Sunday regained Palmyra, and for the first time since May 2015, when ISIS took the city famed for its 2,000-year-old temples and Greco-Roman ruins, the extent of damage inside the UNESCO World Heritage Site became apparent. ‘We were expecting the worst,’ Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s antiquities chief, [said]. ‘But the landscape, in general, is in good shape.'”
Library Scofflaws – Why Some Get Fined, Some Get Forgiven, And Some Get Arrested
“Over the years, libraries have fined patrons for not bringing back books and offered no-questions-asked return periods. They’ve published the names of book scofflaws in local newspapers. They’ve paid personal calls on people who hold onto books past their due dates, and even sicced the police on particularly recalcitrant readers. And they still don’t really know how to get their books back.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 03.28.16
The Old and the New Dancing Together
In a program essay by Susan Yung for the Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance season (through April 3), guest choreographer Doug Elkins mentions that Taylor’s Esplanade was the first dance he ever saw on PBS’s Dance in America and … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-03-28
Once in a lifetime
I went to see the Paul Taylor Dance Company (it’s changed its name, but I can’t get used to the new one) at Lincoln Center on Saturday afternoon. Regular readers of this blog may recall … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-03-28
Indy Decides to Outsource Exhibition Decisions
For the last few years, the Indianapolis Museum of Art has, it seems to me, been on a crazy trajectory. As soon as it does something smart, it turns around and undermines itself. Now it… … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2016-03-28
The Strange Case of Orwell’s Typewriter
My curiosity was aroused by this sentence: His manual typewriter — rather suitably, in the light of his faint anarchist leanings — was later bestowed by Sonia on the 1960s hippy-radical news-sheet, the International Times.… … read more
AJBlog: Straight|Up Published 2016-03-28
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A Tenor’s Rare Met Encore And What It Means
“We did five performances and right from the first one you could actually see what was happening with the public,” he says. “And as we say in the theater, ‘What the public demands, you give.'”
The Play That Succeeds By Actively Anti-Marketing Itself
“There’s something slightly perverse about a play that asks you to attend simply on faith and not to reveal its secrets, because most any arts marketer will tell you that word of mouth is essential for sales.”
She May Just Be The World’s Foremost Stage Designer
She works on everything from West End plays and musicals to opera at the Met and Covent Garden to rock stars’ arena tours to the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics. Says one director, “[She] doesn’t design plays. Or, at least, she doesn’t design the locations in which they’re set. Instead, she designs the ideas, the thought structures, the systems in which the characters operate.”