“Laundry literacy programs have recently sprung up all over the country, … and thousands of children have benefited from the chance to hone their early-literacy skills in an everyday setting, often with their parents participating, often on a regular basis, and always for free. Can’t these children simply go to a branch library instead? Not necessarily.” – American Libraries
Perhaps The World’s Biggest Theatre Empire? Cruise Ships
Consider: Royal Caribbean International’s cruise line directs 134 shows in 50 theatres on 26 ships around the world, including seven Broadway-originating shows, eight aqua shows, 18 ice shows and dozens of original musicals. It’s an audience of 100,000… every night. – Toronto Star
When Classic Broadway Stories Meet Modern Gender Politics
“Empowering the female lead may be a celebratory hook for selling a show, particularly given that women buy the bulk of Broadway tickets. But on closer inspection, it is rarely the women that require revision. … No, the real problem with these stories is the men. They are terrible, and yet they have the audacity to believe they can teach these women lessons, and to come out on the other side looking like plausible romantic leads. A modern production’s success rests on how it tames its man.” – The New York Times
What Is The Power Of Bodies — Naked Ones — Walking And Running In A Circle?
“ALL — a physical poem of protest … explores what [Mia] Habib refers to as ‘the protesting body.’ It can be performed for up to 12 hours, though the New York iteration will clock in at a brisk 45 minutes. And there’s one other integral component — all the performers are nude. For Ms. Habib, a Norwegian-Israeli choreographer based in Oslo, the result illustrates group strength: What is the power of bodies meeting together in a public space?” In a Q&A with Gia Kourlas, she explains what that power is. – The New York Times
Do Indie Bookstores Really Need To Pay Their Workers So Badly?
As Sarah Malley discovered while working at an independent bookshop, some routine practices legally qualified at least in her state) as wage theft. And it’s far more common for indie bookstore employees to skip vacation and sick days because they can’t afford to take them. “Does a business that can’t afford to pay its employees a living wage deserve to be in business? … I have no idea. I haven’t the faintest idea at all.” – Popula
Professional YouTubers, The Protestant Work Ethic, And The Future Of Employment
“If YouTubers represent the epitome of the uphill battle to create stable employment and meaningful connection all in one place, they may also offer clues to an alternative approach to work … [and] a different way of looking at work and status.” – JSTOR Daily
Here’s The Anjelica Huston Interview That Has The Internet Abuzz
The Oscar winner and third generation of a four-generation movie dynasty (so far) speaks very plainly about her complicated relations with her family members and romantic partners (i.e., Jack Nicholson), getting thoroughly snubbed by (an evidently jealous) Oprah Winfrey, and defends (sort of) Roman Polanski and (definitely) Woody Allen. – New York Magazine
Dance Magazine Editors Dish The Tony Award Nominations
Among the questions: whether Oklahoma! choreographer John Heginbotham was snubbed, why Casey Nicholaw (The Prom) was nominated for Best Director but not Best Choreography, the wonderfulness of Hadestown, and whether or not the Best Choreography award will make the telecast. – Dance Magazine
Creative Versus Not Creative? Start With The Culture
“Why does it actively hurt to work in some places?” I have asked myself. “And why doesn’t it hurt to work in others?” I wanted to know what the organizations behind the positive spaces were doing that made me feel valued, respected, and like my presence mattered. How have these places reinvented what professionalism means under the confines of the non-profit industrial complex? – HowlRound
Me, John Kander, and the opera/music theater coup d’état
Here’s some history of a 1980s funding coup pulled off by opera companies, theater companies, and Broadway producers — one that made a huge difference for some great artists who had been caught between the funding silos. – Greg Sandow
The Comma Queen And The Internet’s Copy Chief Talk Grammar And Style
“We asked Mary Norris, The New Yorker‘s ‘comma queen,’ and … Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief of Random House, … about their love of editing, the mistakes people make, and whether or not this intro has too many commas. (It probably does, doesn’t it?)” – Literary Hub
A Scientific Attempt To Study And Explain How Style Works
We believe that the social sciences would benefit from taking a more systematic look at the structure of culture, that is to say how the elements of culture are interrelated, and what really sets some apart when it comes to human attention and selection. In as much as this is relevant in fashion or music, it might be even more useful in the study of ideologies and political movements, topics that have taken a much more serious tone in recent years. – Aeon
Phil Solomon, Experimental Maker Of ‘Visionary Cinema’, Dead At 65
“His films, usually relatively short, did not have stars or plots in any conventional sense; he was after something more cerebral.” Said one colleague, “Phil considered the film frame as a painting — a rectangle full of tensions, textures and pulls — rather than as a window through which to daydream.” – The New York Times
Too Damn Cheerful! Our Obsession With It Is Nuts
The Ancient Greeks named four virtues: temperance, wisdom, courage and justice. Aristotle added more, but cheerfulness wasn’t one of them. The Greek philosophers didn’t seem to care about how we felt compared with how we acted. – Aeon
Now Up: “Bootleg” Copies Of Famous Art
And they’re going to be auctioned at Christie’s. “They’ll fool you from a distance. They won’t fool you close up.” – The New York Times
Pam Tanowitz, Perhaps ‘The Busiest Woman In Dance’
Just this year so far, she’s made high-profile work for the Martha Graham and Paul Taylor companies, New York City Ballet, and Ballet Across America at the Kennedy Center — and her own company is about to make a major appearance in London. “I’m nervous, and I’m worried, and I stay up at night,” she tells Gia Kourlas, I have so many steps in my head. … Sometimes I think, am I making the same dance over and over again?” – The New York Times
Meet The Choreographer Of One Of The Tony Nominees For Best New Play (Yes, Play)
Ink, a London transfer, starring Bertie Carvel and Jonny Lee Miller and directed by Rupert Goold, about Rupert Murdoch’s transformation of Britain’s The Sun into the notorious tabloid it is today, features several dance numbers choreographed by Lynne Page. Sylviane Gold talks to Page about the movement she devised for the show and how it’s different from what she’d do with a musical. – Dance Magazine
Will Theatre Ever Again Be At The Center Of Our Culture? Wrong Question
“[Stage plays] once entertained the tired businessman, and also somehow managed to stir hearts and minds with piercing social critique. Eugene O’Neill made the cover of Time four times in his career! How will we ever get back to that halcyon age, which was — well, when was it, exactly?” People have been asking that question at least since the advent of moving pictures, and it may not even be an apt question about, as Rob Weinert-Kendt puts it, “an art form expressly built to die and be reborn.” – American Theatre
How Do You Move A 20-By-11-Foot, $30 Million Painting Across The Atlantic?
Very carefully, of course. As for how, specifically, you go about it, reporter Ted Loos looked in on the handlers and shippers of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s La Jeunesse de Bacchus (1884) as it made its way from Paris to New York. – The New York Times
Student Activists Demand Camille Paglia’s Dismissal
The ever-controversial writer and social critic has been teaching at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts for 30 years and is one of the few faculty members there with tenure. Now, a petition begun by a group of students declares that “Camille Paglia should be removed from UArts faculty and replaced by a queer person of color” because of opinions she has expressed on transgender issues and campus sexual assault. (Paglia identifies as transgender.) Others, including writer Conor Friedersdorf, argue that the activists’ demands pose a danger to freedom of expression. – The Atlantic
Backlash After Turner Prize Accepts Sponsor Who Campaigned Against Marriage Equality
Britain’s highest-profile art prize is getting heavy criticism for taking as a lead sponsor the bus company Stagecoach: its chairman, Brian Souter, was a leading opponent of extending marriage rights to same-sex couples in the UK and fought repeal of a law which banned discussion of homosexuality in schools. – The Independent (UK)
Gaia, Healthcare, and the Arts
This post responds to three things I’ve read recently that have me stewing (again) about the future of big- (and medium-) box nonprofit arts organizations, the ones that bear the DNA of the European aristocratic cultural tradition. – Doug Borwick
Recent Listening: Linda May Han Oh
Linda May Han Oh, Aventurine (Biophilia)
There’s plenty of adventure here in the bassist-composer’s instrumentation, textures and rhythmic values. The name was suggested, however, by a certain shiny translucent mineral that seems to glow from within. – Doug Ramsey
It’s The Avengers’ World Now; We Just Live In It (A Roundtable)
“We asked five people who cover pop culture for The Times — Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, chief film critics; Wesley Morris, critic at large; Kyle Buchanan, pop culture reporter; and Aisha Harris, assistant TV editor — about the [Marvel Cinematic Universe] legacy and how it’s changed Hollywood and us. Here are excerpts from the conversation.” – The New York Times
The Guardian Posts First Operating Profit In 20 Years
In 2015-16, just as new leaders were taking charge, the newspaper/website lost £57 million; three years later, operations are £8000,000 in the black — even as management has resisted instituting an online paywall. – BBC