On playing Willy Loman: “I knew that it would challenge me like no other role. It is the American Hamlet. And now that I’ve done it, I’m going down the list of all the roles that I want to do: Richard III and Walter Lee (A Raisin in the Sun). I want to do Astrov (Uncle Vanya) again. I’m ready to do my Othello, and look forward in the years to come to do a Lear. I’d love to do Invisible Man if there was an interpretation of that. I still have fear, but now I have courage.” – The New York Times
To The Rest Of The World, Flamenco Says ‘Spain’. To The Spanish, Not So Much.
“Indeed, the world’s love of flamenco has long created problems within Spain, where the performance was once considered a vulgar and pornographic spectacle. Over the years, many Spaniards considered flamenco a scourge of their nation, deploring it as an entertainment that lulled the masses into stupefaction and hampered Spain’s progress toward modernity. Flamenco’s shifting fortunes show how Spain’s complex national identity continues to evolve to this day.” – Zócalo Public Square
Historic recordings of Maine’s Passamaquoddy Tribe restored more than a century later
“Nearly 130 years ago, a Harvard anthropologist visited Calais, Maine, a town on the border with Canada, and recorded songs, words and stories from members of the Passamaquoddy Tribe. For years, these field recordings, some of the oldest in the world, were largely hidden from public view. Now more than a century later, the recordings have been digitally enhanced and shared with the tribe. The Passamaquoddy are working to interpret and present them.” (video) – PBS NewsHour
‘Rocywood’, Gritty Homegrown Cinema From Rio’s Favelas
Named for Rocinha, with 70,000 residents the largest favela in Brazil, Rocywood is a production company formed by five young Rio filmmakers. Their budget per film averages around $50 (US), with favela residents providing everything from the cast to rented equipment to hair and makeup. “The films, made for locals by locals, are screened on the streets of Rocinha using a projector and an improvised tarp as a screen, but are also available on YouTube for a worldwide audience to see.” – Hyperallergic
Why Theatre Isn’t My “Other” Job
Only two per cent of actors actually make a living from acting alone and 90 per cent of actors are out of work at any given time so that means, more often than not, actors have to make money elsewhere. – Metro News
University of South Wales Closes Its Dance Program
A spokesman for the University of South Wales said “projected recruitment figures for the degree mean that we will not have enough students in future to be able to continue to provide a high quality education”. – The Stage
Landmarks Theatre President Suddenly Quits. Is The Quality Movie Business In Jeopardy?
Ted Mundorff: “Since 1927, attendance has gone down, though box office remains the same. It usually sits around $10 and a half billion dollars. I’ve always been very bullish on movie theaters, and I don’t think they are going away, but I do think these past two years we have seen closures of theaters.” – Deadline
Elijah Cummings: Librarians Helped Me Most
“The people who helped me the most were the librarians,” Cummings told Steve Kroft in a 60 Minutes interview broadcast in January of this year, adding that the public library was the only integrated institution in his neighborhood. – School Library Journal
Why Are The NYT, WSJ And Others Making TV Shows?
“So what are newspapers and web producers up to, besides making extremely expensive pivots-to-video? And why are these outlets willing to bet people like their journalism enough to watch entire TV shows about it? Maybe it’s because they aren’t really about journalism. The best producers money can buy aren’t interested in “all the news that’s fit to print.” What works best on television is one kind of journalism that has a long track record of success, especially for the big-city tabloid newspapers.” – The Baffler
What Happened To The Great Cultural Critics?
What has become of the commanding figure of the critic in the last 20 years? Where are the successors to Sontag and Steiner, and to Empson and Richards, FR Leavis, Raymond Williams and Frank Kermode? …They wrote books such as Culture and Society (Raymond Williams, 1958), The Death of Tragedy (Steiner, 1961) and Culture and Imperialism (Said, 1993). They moved literary criticism from poetry and the novel to subjects such as illness and photography, orientalism and the Holocaust. Yes, they were lively speakers, often provocative, but they were also accessible. – New Statesman
National Dance Institute Has A Plan To Be More “National”
Jacques d’Amboise started the nonprofit organization while he was a principal dancer at New York City Ballet to expose children to what he feels is the transformational power of dance. Today 6,500 children in New York City participate in N.D.I. school programs each year. The N.D.I. Collaborative teaching program will offer on-site intensive training and professional workshops to teaching artists, dancers and classroom teachers at the institute’s Harlem headquarters. It will also provide consulting services to other dance education organizations. – The New York Times
London Review of Books Isn’t Just Surviving, It’s Thriving. Here’s How
As newspapers and magazines experience diminishing revenue, plunging circulation and attacks from both terrorists and government leaders, the L.R.B. has not merely survived but also flourished, and its circulation has risen consistently since 1985, to its current 78,000 — substantial in a country where the glossy men’s magazine Esquire reaches 57,000 — by doing the things readers are said not to be interested in anymore. – The New York Times
Bookstores Are Awesome. Should They Charge Admission?
Why not monetize the intangibles? The Strand, and stores like it, could charge an admission fee. Something token, like a dollar. For a buck, you’re granted access to everything the store has to offer. You can browse to your heart’s delight. There’s no pressure to make a purchase. And, if you do buy something, perhaps the item costs close to what it would cost online, because all of those dollars would have allowed the store to lower its prices. – The New Yorker
Collectible Limited Edition Sneakers Have Become Big-Business Art
“A lot fewer people are buying to wear and a lot more people are buying to sell.” StockX, a high-end sneaker resale company based in Detroit, recently reached a jaw-dropping $1 billion US valuation, proving how robust the global market is. – CBC
UK Arts Organizations Are Struggling With Diversity
“For some time now, diverse staff working in larger publicly funded arts organisations, and in particular those producing work that is aimed at the mainstream, have debated how to help their organisations see that their value is not as ‘the representative of disabled audiences’ or ‘the font of expertise on all trans issues’. It cannot rest on individuals to bring others into the light of inclusion.” – Arts Professional
Study: What Kind Of Music Attracts Listeners
The music that the study volunteers said they enjoyed the most was neither too predictable, nor too unpredictable. Too predictable, and it’s boring. Too unpredictable, and it’s not at all pleasant to listen to anymore. – Forbes
The 2010’s Have Changed The Ways We Perceive The World
“Most of the basic experiences on our phones didn’t even exist 10 years ago. In 2010, Instagram launched and the messaging app WhatsApp came to both Android and iOS; in 2011, Snapchat opened for business and Spotify came to the US; in 2013, the workplace chat system Slack launched. When Pew first began collecting data on the subject in 2011, 35% of US adults owned smartphones; in 2019, 81% do. Here at the decade’s end, there are 1 billion global Instagram users.” – Buzzfeed
Twyla Tharp’s Message: Keep Moving!
“The figures are still shocking in terms of people who don’t exercise or who are not aware of the reality that diet is actually extremely important,” she said. “If you want to have a future, you’ve got to provide for that now.” – The New York Times
Future Fair Proposes A Revenue Share Model For Art Fairs. But Will It Work?
Inclusion in fairs can be make-or-break for galleries, especially smaller ones. But it feels as though the balance of power is shifting back to exhibitors. This might well be overdue when it comes to the larger fairs, but it puts the organisers of smaller events in a difficult spot in a survival-of-the-fittest world. – The Art Newspaper
There Is No Such Thing As The Brooklyn Accent
For all the lore that exists around “Brooklynese” (not to mention the insistence of the Brooklyn borough president), a pair of linguistics researchers found that there was no evidence for the existence of an accent particular to Brooklyn (as opposed to New York City as a whole) and that roughly three-quarters of respondents, native New Yorkers and out-of-towners alike, could not distinguish between borough accents. – Gothamist
At The Center Of Theatre That Works: The Stage Manager
In a field known for big egos and explosive emotions, stage managers combine calm, nimbleness and competence that balances left- and right-brain attributes. They have to have an eye for detail, drillmaster-like discipline, psychological finesse and artistic flair. In short, nothing gets off the ground without them. – The Star-Tribune (Mpls)
Eastman School Orchestra Tours China – But China Says S. Korean Students Can’t Come. Eastman Agrees To Go Anyway
Since 2016, China has blocked South Korean artists from performing. “We were suddenly caught right in the middle of this. It was really a challenging decision to make,” said dean Jamal Rossi. “Do we continue the tour without the valued colleagues or do we still go forward?” – 13WHAM
Playwright Annie Baker Never Does Interviews, But She Did This One
But she did it only by email, which meant she’d have time and space to craft her answers — and, writes reporter Mark Lawson, “the precise replies suggest that her public reticence may come from a fear of being over-specific about details that the work blurs.” – The Guardian
This Woman Is Out To Collect And Classify Every Ocher In The World
“For years, [Heidi Gustafson] has been engaged in a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary exploration of the mineral … While there has recently been renewed interest in creating paints from natural pigments, Gustafson’s focus is on ocher alone — and it extends beyond the material’s artistic uses to its scientific, symbolic and spiritual properties.” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine
Another Opera Singer Speaks Openly About Plácido Domingo, And This One Is Well-Known
Brigitte Fassbaender had a long and admired career as a mezzo, and after retiring from singing she went on to run the opera house in Innsbruck, Austria. In her recently-published memoir and a subsequent interview, she says that Domingo’s womanizing habits were very well-known in the opera world and that he repeatedly pursued her without success but was polite about being turned down. (She also has something to say about the Metropolitan Opera and James Levine’s proclivities.) – OperaWire