“Sometime after 1 a.m. on New Year’s Day, while fireworks were blasting and revelers carousing in the surrounding streets – a thief successfully carried out his plan to steal Paul Cézanne’s View of Auvers-sur-Oise from the University of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum.”
Canadian Comedy Comes Into Its Own With The Trump Era
“In Canada, humor has become a way of pushing back against America’s cultural and political dominance, like a class clown subtly undermining the teacher. Its changing comedy offers a lens into how the nation is changing, too.”
New Mexico Philharmonic Names Its First Music Director: Roberto Minczuk
“Minczuk was appointed music director of the Theatro Municipal Orchestra of São Paulo earlier this year. He is also the music director laureate of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra in Canada and conductor emeritus of the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira in Rio de Janeiro. He recently completed a 10-year term in Calgary, becoming the longest-running music director in its history.”
A Convicted Murderer Making His Debut As Published Author
Curtis Dawkins began as writer, earning a Master of Fine Arts degree before he committed his crime. And while his book, “The Graybar Hotel,” has received early praise from writers like Roddy Doyle and Atticus Lish, its release has also raised uncomfortable questions for the publisher as it tries to win over booksellers and critics to rally behind a work by an unknown debut writer — who is also a convicted murderer.
A British Poet Wants To Change The Discussion Around Motherhood
Hollie McNish, Ted Hughes Award winner: “It’s just to get rid of that shame. Like, be ashamed of things that you should be ashamed of, like being horrible to someone, but don’t be ashamed of these natural processes in your body.”
The 29-Year-Old Woman Who Now Heads The Cartoon Department Of The New Yorker Has A Tradition To Shepherd, And New Voices To Find
Emma Allen’s “ability to find new voices for Daily Shouts is what first drew the attention of The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick. ‘She was bringing in people and things that I hadn’t heard before, and sometimes you need to reinvigorate parts of the magazine,’ he said by phone, adding, ‘We need to have a deeper exploration of the web, as far as cartooning.'”
A Fundamental Shift In How Philanthropy Works?
“Over the past decade, as groups have become more sophisticated at assessing the impact of their work, and as digital payment systems have advanced throughout the developing world, a number of carefully designed field experiments have affirmed the effectiveness of unconditional cash transfers to the poor. Such charitable transfers challenge assumptions, dating back centuries, that impoverished recipients will squander money given directly to them. It turns out that the poor often know much better than outside experts how to improve their own condition.”
A Sea Change In Theatre (Maybe)
Vicky Featherstone, artistic director of The Royal Court: “People feel they have much more right to put complex female characters on stage. I think that’s really exciting. Flawed women on stage, women that are asking questions that previously men would ask, about sex, about pornography – there’s really been an opening up about that. But I still feel we have a way to go.”
The Generation(s) That Came Of Age With ‘Legend Of Zelda’
Basically, “Zelda” taught people how to grow up: Link and Zelda “navigate spaces that over time have become more difficult to traverse and more populated, just as the real world expands as one ages. And so, it’s dawned on me: With its young characters, its longevity, its accessibility, and the evolution of its gameplay, The Legend of Zelda is hands-down the best franchise about the joys and frustrations of leaving youth and facing the challenges of adulthood.”
Open-Air Dance Party In New York
Two American Ballet Theatre dancers learned and choreographed a rumba routine between ABT duties. “Their routine, peppered with dramatic pauses, tricky partnering moves and quick, flashy turns, opened with a comic flourish. She stumbled on, teetering in her high heels, pretending to be drunk. He acted the part of the overbearing roué, dragging her onto the dance floor.”
Why Did This Guy Want To Take On The Job Of Artistic Director At A Theatre That Had To Hold An Emergency Fundraising Campaign?
David Ivers, who’s taking on the role at the Arizona Theatre Company (which runs both in Phoenix and Tucson): “When I became the unanimous candidate — the board’s words, not mine — I felt I had the opportunity … to say ‘I would like to fight on behalf of the staff before I take this job. So if you are serious about me doing this, we have to raise some money before we start. I won’t take the job unless we start to equalize cash flow problems. I’ll help, and I’ll do that even as a candidate, but I can’t in good conscience ask myself and my family to move here, or these families who live here, to continue if you aren’t serious about saving the theater.'”
What Happened To The Big Business Of R-Rated Comedies?
This summer has seen a string of utterly failed attempts to get adults into the theaters for raunchy, semi-dark comedies. Why? It might be that “the definition of what makes a good comedy has changed quickly and dramatically in the past year.”
A Netflix Movie That Everyone (In The U.S. And U.K.) Needs To Watch
Hollywood plus Afghanistan equals … nothing. “Hollywood movies do not ask the difficult strategic questions. Should the US invade or interfere in countries it knows little about, how do US troops win over local support, is nation building and promotion of democracy feasible by one part of the US government while another part pursues a war strategy? Can the US ever understand tribal societies through the barrel of a gun? Hollywood has left us devoid of any understanding of the escalating global chaos. That is, until now.”
Top AJBlog Posts For The Weekend Of 07.02.17
Riddell’s Tower
Clocking in at a mere seven hundred pages, give or take, The Communist Movement at a Crossroads: Plenums of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, 1922-1923, the eighth volume of John Riddell’s awesome edition of documents … read more
AJBlog: Quick StudyPublished 2017-07-02
Shoehorned at Hirshhorn: Imprisoning Ai Weiwei’s “@Large” Alcatraz Installation
I can understand why Philip Kennicott felt unenthusiastic about the Hirshhorn Museum’s Ai Weiwei: Trace at Hirshhorn (to Jan. 1), which riveted me when I saw it to best advantage at its original venue—Alcatraz. The … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2017-07-01
Assessment, Resilience & Consensus
Happy New (Fiscal) Year to those who celebrate! So, how will you work differently going forward? Here are 3 questions to help you get started: What have you learned from the year just concluded? … read more
AJBlog: Audience WantedPublished 2017-07-01
Recent Listening: Broadbent’s Developing Story
Alan Broadbent, Developing Story (Eden River Records) Broadbent’s title composition is in concerto form, although it is not described as a concerto. His piece combines jazz and classical sensibilities in a flow … read more
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2017-06-30
Dancing with Lou Harrison
The Mark Morris Dance Group celebrates the centennial of composer Lou Harrison’s birth. Mark Morris dancers in Morris’s Numerator. (L to R): Noah Vinson, Sam Black, and Brandon Rudolph. Photo: Christopher Duggan In 1991, the … read more
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2017-06-30
Why Do Most Of Us Have Such Intense Intellectual And Emotional Reactions To Music?
Music isn’t like natural sounds, and it isn’t like speech. “Music conveys meaning since all its constituent sounds – notes – elicit tiny emotional responses, and these are locked together in a coherent narrative through imitation.”