“Jenet Le Lacheur — a transfeminine Brit who earned recognition, before coming out, in the West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — has … [recently starred] as Hamlet in Daniel Winder’s dystopian production of the Shakespeare play … The fact that Winder’s Hamlet was nonbinary and transfeminine was largely subtextual — a subtle but important thread running through the production.” – HowlRound
Facing “Severe Cash Flow Issues”, Nevada Public Radio Lays Off All Staffers In Reno
The Las Vegas-based network, which operates a classical station in the city and a news station which is re-transmitted throughout the state, expanded into Reno (a market that already had two NPR affiliates) when it bought an available frequency in 2017 and operated it as a “music discovery” station. (That station, NV89, will now air a direct feed from the Las Vegas news station.) Nevada PR CEO Flo Rogers, an 18-year veteran, has resigned. – Reno Gazette Journal
People Are Moving Out Of America’s Largest Cities
There’s little mystery about where people are heading, or why: They are mostly moving toward sun and some semblance of affordability. The major Texas metros—Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin—have collectively grown by more than 3 million since 2010. The most popular destinations for movers are now Phoenix, Dallas, and Las Vegas, which welcome more than 100,000 new people each year. – The Atlantic
Susan Kamil, Beloved Editor Of Famous Authors, Dead At 69
Among the writers she worked with, first at Simon & Schuster and then at Random House, are Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ruth Reichl, Salman Rushdie, Lena Dunham, Gary Shteyngart, Allegra Goodman, Tom Rachman, and Elizabeth Strout. Says Random House editor-in-chief Andy Ward of her work, “It was like a magical transference of belief, and I’ve never seen anybody do it better. She made writers believe in themselves.” – The New York Times
Toronto International Film Festival’s Stellar Record At Predicting Hits
Since 2000, movies that won the People’s Choice Award at TIFF earned in total more than $3-billion US worldwide, compared to films that won Cannes’ Palme d’Or, which made over $815-million, according to the movie industry database The Numbers. – CBC
50 Years Ago: Pittsburgh’s Big Bang Of Dance
What was happening here 50 years ago that sparked the creation of two of the city’s biggest and oldest forces in professional dance? – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
What Robert Frank’s Camera Saw: A Legacy
Frank’s images weren’t exclusively solemn, but a person could nonetheless get lost in them, trying to figure out what was going on. – The New Yorker
Riccardo Muti On The Post-Strike Chicago Symphony
“You cannot say, ‘They don’t work enough,’ ‘What do they want?’ and all these kinds of phrases,” says Muti. “I think still in Chicago people have not realized what they have. What the world knows about the Chicago Symphony is still maybe – how do you say in English? – taken for granted.” – Chicago Tribune
Recent Listening In Brief (really brief)
Rondi Marsh, The Pink Room
Bill O’Connell And The Afro-Caribbean Ensemble,
Wind Off The Hudson (Savant)
– Doug Ramsey
New Canadian Indie Press Isn’t What It Seems
“We do not have a diverse literary ecosystem in Canada; its diversity has shrunk rapidly in the past two decades. Two recent accounts amply demonstrate a narrowing of Canada’s publishing activity.” – The Conversation
How Local Dialects Work
Remember how you learned about swearing? It was probably from a kid around your age, maybe an older sibling, and not from an educator or authority figure. And you were probably in early adolescence: the stage when linguistic influence tends to shift from caregivers to peers. Linguistic innovation follows a similar pattern. – The Walrus
An Israeli TV Series Shows The Jewish State Locked In Civil War
“In [Autonomies], set in the near future, civil war has cut the land into two countries. The coastal State of Israel is nonreligious, with the cosmopolitan city of Tel Aviv as its capital. Jerusalem is a walled, autonomous city-state, run by [ultra-Orthodox] Haredi rabbis. At first glance dystopian, the show is in fact an artistic extrapolation of real-life rifts in Israeli society.” – The Guardian
Art Institute Of Chicago Plans Major Long-Term Makeover Of Its Campus
“For its first North American commission, the prize-winning firm Barozzi/Veiga … has begun formulating ideas aimed at making an inward-looking museum rooted in the 20th century more extroverted and modern via methods that could include adding new buildings, reconfiguring existing ones and rethinking the presentation of art within them.” – Chicago Tribune
Ex-L.A. Opera Staffer Gives Eyewitness Testimony Of Plácido Domingo Kissing And Groping Women
Former production coordinator Melinda McLain: “In rehearsal I saw him, at least once, grab one of the supernumeraries and just lay a kiss on her. … I also had young singers come and seek advice about how to repel his advances. And older singers, more principal singers, were concerned about their own marriages because of the inappropriate touching — some of which I saw myself, but also was reported to me by these singers so that we could figure out how to keep them out of his way.” (audio) – KCRW (Los Angeles)
Robert Frank, Influential Photographer Of Postwar America, Dead At 94
“[His] book, The Americans, published in this country in 1959, inspired generations of photographers, writers, filmmakers and musicians and made Mr. Frank one of the most important visual artists of the 20th century. … His images of lonely people, lonesome roads and smoldering tensions of urban life were a riposte to the honey-hued picture essays of popular magazines of the time such as the Saturday Evening Post and Life.” – The Washington Post
Let The Uproar Begin: English National Opera To Take Away Critics’ Companion Tickets
“Financially it is not sensible for us. And a lot of people criticise the critics, so it will be quite good to let others have a go and, I suspect, find out that it is not as easy as it looks.” – The Guardian
Do Arts Organization Boards Need To Be Battlegrounds?
Darren Walker: “Unfortunately, some people have framed having a diverse board as oppositional to having a wealthy board. These are one-dimensional ideas. I’m simply saying that you can have both, and you should have both. It would be a grave error to demonize wealthy people. That is something that I find regrettable about the discourse around the Whitney board, around this whole controversy.” – artnet
Why Birds Have Been Such Powerful Symbols Throughout History
“Birds enter popular culture from the earliest times, and they continue to pervade literature and art throughout the classical period. They are mentioned in the very first sentence of European literature – as scavengers, at the start of Homer’s Iliad. They feature repeatedly in subsequent epic, lyric, didactic, pastoral and personal poetry, in tragedy and comedy, in epigrams and invective, and in prose writings on geography, history, travel, medicine and early science.” – Aeon
Baltimore Symphony Musicians File Charges With National Labor Relations Board
The unfair labor practices complaint charges that Baltimore Symphony management has failed to bargain in good faith, “unlawfully locked out the musicians … [and] failed and refused to provide relevant and necessary information requested by the union in bargaining.” – WBAL-TV (Baltimore)