Offstage, she was a dumpy little frump of a Midwestern girl who lived openly with her mother and her female lover. Onstage, she was “la fée éléctricité,” who manipulated with sewn-in rods a gown made of massive lengths of white silk to create natural images and fantastical shapes under rotating colored spotlights — an act that made her a huge celebrity for decades. – The Public Domain Review
Martin Scorsese’s Cogent Critique Of The Hollywood System
Scorsese isn’t inveighing against fantasy but against a system of production that submerges directors’ authority in a network of dictates and decisions issued from the top down—a network in which the director is more of a functionary than a creator. – The New Yorker
Machines Become More Creative When They’re Allowed To Wander
Because of biology’s track record, Kenneth Stanley and others have come to believe that if we want algorithms that can navigate the physical and social world as easily as we can — or better! — we need to imitate nature’s tactics. Instead of hard-coding the rules of reasoning, or having computers learn to score highly on specific performance metrics, they argue, we must let a population of solutions blossom. Make them prioritize novelty or interestingness instead of the ability to walk or talk. They may discover an indirect path, a set of steppingstones, and wind up walking and talking better than if they’d sought those skills directly. – Quanta
Here’s A Snowflake From The First Full-Length ‘Nutcracker’ In The U.S.
Seventy-five years ago, in a San Francisco busy with Naval activity in the middle of WWII, the San Francisco Ballet staged the first full-length Nutcracker in the U.S. The snow is still falling – but there’s a lot more of it now than there was in 1944, when 16 white-clad ballet corps members danced with sparkler-style sticks around the stage. – San Francisco Chronicle
How About Supporting Artists Above Productions?
“How could we make more of a difference to the artists we work with? What if we put the same level of investment into their professional development as their show budget? What if we committed to supporting the artists over and above any show they make?” – Arts Professional
Artist Dread Scott Is Re-Enacting The United States’ Largest Slave Rebellion
Scott first became (in)famous 30 years ago with his installation What is the Proper Way to Display the American Flag?, which has incited controversy virtually every time it has been exhibited since 1989. This weekend will see his largest-scale project: a re-enactment of the 1811 German Coast Uprising, in which up to 500 enslaved people marched on New Orleans from nearby sugar plantations. Perhaps surprisingly, Scott is doing this with the support of Louisiana officials. – The New York Times
American Theatre Depends On European State Investment
The box-office receipts of commercial theater are not solely attributable to private entrepreneurs and fierce capitalist competition. Broadway producers are buying an artistic sensibility and a talent for provocation honed in state-funded theatrical laboratories across Europe, plus expertise that is the product of working relationships stretching back decades. – The Atlantic
Opera’s Woman Problem: There Just Aren’t Enough Of Them In Decision-Making Roles
The Stage senior reporter Georgia Snow talks to women working as directors, designers, and administrators in opera in the UK — who tell her that things are getting better, but not fast enough. (Opera companies are, after all, large, expensive, slow-moving machines.) Says English National Opera’s new artistic director, Annelese Miskimmon, “Unless we reflect our audience we can’t serve them. According to every statistic I have seen, it’s women who buy opera tickets. So it doesn’t matter what people’s own feelings are – it’s sensible economics.” – The Stage
The Half-Billion-Dollar Expansion At Houston’s Museum Of Fine Arts Has An Opening Date In Sight
In the $450 million project announced four years ago, two smaller buildings and a plaza have already been added to the MFAH’s campus. The expansion’s centerpiece, the 183,528-square foot Kinder Building, is now scheduled to open next fall, with a grand atrium, two conference rooms, a 200-seat auditorium, a pair of restaurants, and 15 galleries. – Houston Chronicle
Stephen Dixon, ‘Experimental Realist’ Author, Dead At 83
“[His] humorous, freewheeling fiction traced the shocks and jolts of romance, aging and everyday life, in an experimental but plain-
spoken style … [He] published well over 500 short stories in The Paris Review, Playboy, Esquire and legions of small magazines across the country. His first book came out only when he was 40, but he made up for lost time in publishing 35 more novels and story collections.” – The Washington Post
Ted Gioia: Music As A Cultural Storage Medium
What people don’t understand is that, for most of history, music was a kind of cloud storage for societies. I like to tell people that music is a technology for societies that don’t have semiconductors or spaceships. If you go to any traditional community, and you try to find the historian, generally it’s a singer. Music would preserve culture; it would preserve folklore. Well, nowadays, we rely on cloud storage to be the preserver of these same things. And I think there’s a strange shift. – Medium
Why Jeremy O. Harris Had A Special Performance Of His ‘Slave Play’ For A Black Audience
“That was me being able to look certain people in the face and say: ‘You’re wrong.’ So many people have dictated what my intentions were with Slave Play. One of the things they’ve always articulated is that I wrote Slave Play for white people and that it’s not written for a black audience. That’s so bizarre to me. … It was amazing to sit in a 99.9% black audience and see that 99.9% of the play worked. And the parts that exhilarated the audience on other nights still exhilarated the audience that night.” – The Guardian
Like Your Netflix? It’s Not Going To Be Like This Much Longer
The vast majority of Netflix’s viewers (upwards of 80 percent, according to him) watch licensed content (“Friends” and the like) and in order to create a library of programming audiences will pay for, they’ve gone massively in debt: “Netflix is currently in the hole for about $20 billion in debt and obligations and still operating at a loss.” – Washington Post
Want To See The Sistine Chapel Without The Crowds? It’ll Cost You
For just $76 per person, you can take a guided tour through the halls of the Vatican after the crowds have gone home. Tour groups now arrange affordable, intimate nighttime visits to the heart of Vatican City. – Artnet
Cleveland Orchestra: First Balanced Budget In Three Years, Endowment Up To Record High
For the first time since 2015, the orchestra this year is in the black. On a budget of $53 million supporting everything from concerts and touring to outreach and special presentations under music director Franz Welser-Most, the orchestra in fiscal 2019 reported a surplus of $24,000. – The Plain Dealer
What Happens When You Get Your Dream Ballet Career And You’re Still Miserable?
“Countless dancers find themselves at a crossroads when they question whether they still love dance, whether the sacrifices are worth it or whether a professional career is truly what they want — or truly possible. We spoke with three dancers who faced this crucial turning point and achieved the right balance of ballet in their lives.” – Pointe Magazine
James Dean, Who Died 64 Years Ago, To Star In New Film
Two visual-effects companies will apply CGI to surviving film footage and photographs of the actor, who was killed in a car crash at age 24 in 1955, to create “a realistic version of James Dean” for a live-action Vietnam War-era drama titled Finding Jack, planned for release on Veterans Day 2020. – The Hollywood Reporter
A Picasso And Giacometti Museum Will Open Next Year In Beijing
“Paris’s National Picasso Museum and the Giacometti Foundation are teaming up to manage the new institution for at least the first five years, from June 2020 through June 2025. (After that, they may extend the partnership or hand the museum over to Chinese management.) The institution will present up to four exhibitions each year.” – Artnet
Catherine Deneuve Hospitalized After Minor Stroke
“The 76-year-old screen icon … had a ‘very limited stroke which is reversible’, her family said in a statement. ‘Happily she has no loss of motor function, although she will of course have to rest for a while.” – Yahoo! (AFP)
Time To Take Down The Mona Lisa And Put It In Storage?
“The Louvre is being held hostage by the Kim Kardashian of 16th-century Italian portraiture: the handsome but only moderately interesting Lisa Gherardini, better known (after her husband) as La Gioconda, whose renown so eclipses her importance that no one can even remember how she got famous in the first place.” – The New York Times
The Slow Impacts Of Literature And Gaining Knowledge
Karl Ove Knausgaard: “I’m not thinking of how long it takes to read a book but of how long its effects can be felt, and of the strange phenomenon that even literature written in other times, on the basis of assumptions radically different to our own and, occasionally, hugely alien to us, can continue to speak to us—and, not only that, but can tell us something about who we are, something that we would not have seen otherwise, or would have seen differently.” – The New Yorker
Response to The Chasm of Disbelief
The following is an incredibly thoughtful response written by Carter Gilles to my post The Chasm of Disbelief. I am particularly grateful to him for pointing out the important role that doing the arts, participating in the arts, can play in overcoming disbelief. – Doug Borwick
Propwatch: the invisible magnets in ‘Little Baby Jesus’
Most props, most props, you could hold them in your hand. A suitcase. A tooth. A (shudders) doll. They’re part of the pleasure of theatre, the imagination made palpable. But sometimes, sometimes they stay imaginary. – David Jays
The twenty-five record albums that changed my life (17)
This was one the now-forgotten Warner/Reprise “Loss Leader” albums, a series of low-priced sampler albums by Warner/Reprise artists that was one of the most ingenious and effective promotional ideas ever to be devised by a major record label. – Terry Teachout
After Three Years In Prison, Turkish Author Ahmet Altan Is Freed
“The 69-year-old [author of I Will Never See the World Again] was arrested in 2016 with his brother, the economist and journalist Mehmet Altan, on allegations of spreading ‘subliminal messages announcing a military coup’ on television. Alongside journalist Nazlı Ilıcak, the Altan brothers were charged with attempting to overthrow constitutional order, interfering with the work of the national assembly and the government.” – The Guardian