This year, the number of work weeks has plummeted by 65 percent to about 92,000 — including nearly three months of normal work before the shutdown. The lack of work weeks is pushing somewhere between 200 and 300 union members off their health insurance a month, Actors’ Equity told CNBC. – CNBC
How London’s “Pleasure District” Became The West End And A Model For Theatre
It was the mid-19th century that really established the modern West End. The taverns around the Strand in the 1830s and 1840s helped develop the song and supper evenings that became Victorian music hall. The bazaars and arcades of the West End evolved into a distinctive form of retail: the department store. Shows at the theatres on Leicester Square, such as the Alhambra, became known for their exuberant spectacle. The West End was therefore a laboratory of mass entertainment that has shaped notions of luxury and fun ever since. It also confirmed London’s status as a capital city. – History Today
What Alex Trebek Achieved Is More Amazing Than We Realize
“It’s easy to forget to appreciate the freak ubiquity of Jeopardy! One of the most popular, longest-running television shows of all time is a trivia gantlet that, by design, casts bookish obsessives. … It’s a miracle that the show is so exciting to watch. This is due almost entirely to Trebek. … He led one of our last wholesome routines — a celebration of facts, from the arcane to the accessible — with a kind of tangible enthusiasm. … [And] one got the sense that Trebek wanted the contestants to thrive.” – The New Yorker
The Collapse Of Quibi: An Inside View
“While employees were trying to figure out how to get people to sign up and actually watch a series, creatives working on the shows were wondering why anyone would voluntarily spend $5 a month to watch anything on Quibi at all.” (And they all found out about the company’s end in the press, not from executives.) – The Verge
What Can The Arts Expect From The Biden Presidency?
An improvement, for starters: Biden is not going to submit a budget (let alone four of them in a row) eliminating the NEA and NEH. Reporter Eileen Kinsella spoke to several experts about where things stand now and where they’re likely to go with respect to tax law and the arts, federal cultural funding, tariffs and trade, and (of course) the pandemic. – Artnet
TicketMaster Plans To Check COVID Status When Performances Return
Ticketmaster has been working on a framework for post-pandemic fan safety that uses smart phones to verify fans’ vaccination status or whether they’ve tested negative for the coronavirus within a 24 to 72 hour window. – Billboard
Why Opera Will Endure
Opera is one of those words that contains so much historical and symbolic weight and prejudice that you have to clamber through dense, thorny tangles before you even get to what it might actually be, and if there is anything really left, other than it being a segregated leisure pursuit for the entitled. – LitHub
Can Performance Art Adapt To Social Distancing?
“As summer has given way to a fall and winter marked by increased social-distancing measures and further lockdowns, in-person performance art looks increasingly like it will be forced to transform again for the foreseeable [future]. As a medium built on intimacy and in-person connection, how, exactly, can it adapt? Those who know the genre best seem cautiously optimistic.” – Artnet
Candido Camero, Cuban Jazzman Who Transformed Conga Drumming, Dead At 99
“[He] began his career in Cuba at 14 and was still active past the age of 95. … His greatest innovation was to play more than one conga drum at a time, eventually settling on a setup of three congas, each tuned to a different pitch. He sometimes added bongos and other percussion instruments, creating a whirlwind of complex rhythms and sounds.” – The Washington Post
How Theatre Audiences Have Responded To Digital Performances During The Pandemic: New Study
“Key findings of the study include that 43% of audiences for digital programming were new to the organization; that digital audience members who previously attended in-person events are paying higher ticket prices; that digital performances with multiple dates have higher revenue potential; that audiences for digital performances book their tickets closer to the performance date than in-person audiences did; and that 10% of digital audiences add a donation on top of the ticket price.” – American Theatre
Playwright Israel Horovitz, 81
The author of more than 70 scripts, “[he] enjoyed his biggest successes Off Broadway and in regional and European theaters” — he was reportedly the most-produced American playwright in France — “[notably] at the Gloucester Stage Company in Massachusetts, which he helped found in 1979. His plays gave opportunities to a number of young actors who went on to become household names. … [But his] career was tarnished by accusations by multiple women that he had sexually assaulted them.” – The New York Times
Why Engage?
When we investigate the disconnect between what we are doing with our art and what we might do, we become aware of who has been left out of what we present, preserve and protect, what has been disregarded, who does or does not benefit using our current model, and who has been harmed by our decisions. – A guest post by Penny Brill
British Museum Initiative Documents Vanishing Traditional Skills Worldwide
“Centuries-old practices and traditions across communities worldwide that might be lost forever — from bee keeping in Kenya to creating the Dalai Lama’s clothes — are being quietly supported and documented online through the British Museum’s Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP).” – The Art Newspaper
Virtual Cabaret That You Can Boss Around
“In addition to occasionally telling a performer what to do, audience members set the order in which the show’s components — short scenes (written by Bear), dances, musical bits, computer-generated poetry — were executed. We could raise a virtual hand to roll virtual dice, and the cast of six would perform whatever scene had been assigned to the resulting number.” – The New York Times