“‘People said, ‘Yeah, yeah, you want to give them crayons. You’ve got acting classes?’ recalls Robbins of the launch of the Actors Gang Prison Project. ‘We’re like, ‘No, we don’t want anyone to be an actor. There’s too much unemployment in that. It’s about changing behavior.'”
The Grandfather Of The Information Age (He Died 300 Years Ago This Week)
Before Alan Turing, before Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, there was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who developed the binary number system and the first mechanical calculators – and who envisioned artificial intelligence and even data overload.
If You Let Someone Hypnotize You, Do You Give Up Control Of Yourself? No – Rather The Opposite
Science writer Erik Vance gives a brief history of hypnotism (back to Dr. Mesmer and before), explains the neuroscience if hypnosis and what it can and can’t do, and recounts his own attempts to hypnotize a friend.
1,900-Year-Old Mosaics Unearthed In Turkey
The works were found by arhcaeologists excavating a series of 80 rock-hewn tombs in the city of Şanlıurfa. They appear to date from the first or second century CE, when the area was part of the kingdom of Edessa, the seat of Syriac culture.
‘Shuffle Along’ Producers Sue Lloyd’s Of London, Saying Accident Insurance Should Cover Audra McDonald’s Pregnancy
It’s fairly standard for Broadway producers to take out insurance covering any illness or accident that causes the main box-office draw to drop out. But does McDonald’s surprise pregnancy (she’s 45) qualify as accident or illness?
ESPN Figures Out That The Performers In ‘The Lion King’ Really Do Qualify As Athletes – Because Science Says So
The network’s Sports Science shown went backstage with high-tech monitoring equipment and finds out just how much physical strength, aerobic capacity, stamina, and balance these champions actually have. (video)
What The Canada Council Has Decided To Do With The Doubling Of Its Funding
The Justin Trudeau government announced that the Council’s government allocation would double. But instead of just giving the country’s major arts groups more money, the Council will diversify. The council has been talking for at least a decade about doing more to reflect the changing nature of art-making in an increasingly diverse Canada.”
Is International Touring Worth It?
According to a new study in the UK, it is – both artistically and financially. “Research into the international activity of arts and cultural organisations, commissioned by Arts Council England, found that 243 of England’s National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) generated £34m through international activities in 2014/15.”
The Promise Of Augmented Reality In Theatre
The technology presents reality and and a technological overlay that alters that reality. “Altering the visual ‘reality’ of theatrical settings by forcing them to accommodate simulated imagery, AR complicates ontological distinctions between real and virtual environments, presenting both with equanimity.”
The Earliest Films Directed By Women, Some More Than 100 Years Old, Are Being Collected And Released
Between 1910 and 1929, the height of the silent film era, numerous women had developed enough skill and clout to helm their own movies. But most of their work had been set aside and forgotten, and one distributor has launched a project to put it back together.
‘The Most Beautiful Man I Have Ever Known’: Leon Wieseltier Remembers His Friend Leonard Cohen
“Leonard had an unusual inflection for darkness: He found in it an occasion for uplift. His work is animated by a laudatory impulse, an unexpected and profoundly moving hunger to praise the world in full view of it. His attitude of acceptance was not founded on anything as cheap as happiness.”
St. Louis Symphony Balances Budget For The First Time This Century
Last season was a much-needed success for the orchestra: attendance was up even though the number of performances was slightly down, and more than a quarter million people heard the group.
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.14.16
Blindsided
It’s been a week since the election. … I will confess that one of my first impulses was to throw in the towel on my work attempting to better connect arts organizations with their communities. Even then, though, I knew that was a form of cowardice that I couldn’t, ultimately, abide. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2016-11-13
Lives in Layers
Jonah Bokaer and Daniel Arsham bring their latest work to BAM Howard Gilman Opera House. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-11-14
Chick Corea at 75
This is pianist, composer and bandleader Chick Corea’s 75th birthday, a milestone in the career that has brought him together with virtually every major figure in modern jazz. We congratulate him and wish him … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-11-13
Double Feature
Kate Weare Company and Liz Gerring Dance Company present New York seasons. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-11-13
How The Royal Shakespeare Company Is Using Motion-Capture To Reimagine Shakespeare
“The tools are only interesting when they’re in the hands of artists who do new things with them. So we worked with Imaginarium, who are excruciatingly talented, and gave them these tools and said: ‘What else would you do? How do we make that happen?’ Teaching our team the agility and resourcefulness you need in live theatre has been great. It’s also been great to see the ingenuity of the designer and then rise to that, and think about how they can do their work.”
How Is Ballet To be Relevant If It Doesn’t Challenge Audiences?
“It is with both bewilderment and sadness that one might look over the National Ballet of Canada’s 2016/17 season and think: What can be considered vital among it? What conversations can these ballets possibly provoke?”
Why Did Book Reviews Get So Polite?
“A literary culture whose tough-mindedness 20 years ago often verged on outright cruelty, has turned horribly emollient, to the point where it sometimes seems that books are not so much criticised, favourably or unfavourably, as simply endorsed.”
Why Do We Believe Fictional Stories When We Know They’re Not True?
“Feeling a range of real emotions for fictional events is so commonplace we don’t often think to question it. But why should we get emotionally involved with characters and situations that we know are not real? Why should we get scared by something we know is only a movie? This is the paradox of fiction.”
Sixteen ‘New Yorker’ Writers, Including Toni Morrison In A Fierce Essay, Write About The Aftermath
“The sad plight of grown white men, crouching beneath their (better) selves, to slaughter the innocent during traffic stops, to push black women’s faces into the dirt, to handcuff black children. Only the frightened would do that. Right?”
ISIL Has Bulldozed Ancient 2,900-Year-Old Nimrud Ziggurat
Only the largest Egyptian pyramids are higher than Middle Eastern ziggurats and central American step pyramids. The Nimrud ziggurat was apparently bulldozed and pushed into the ancient bed of the Tigris river.
The UK’s Education System Is Facing An Emergency As School Libraries Close Across The Land
The current and all of the former children’s laureates of the UK have demanded that the government face up to what its policies are doing to children.
If Dylan Can Win The Nobel Prize For Literature, Let’s Move These Authors Onto The Music Stage
Tom Gauld’s cartoon posits entirely new opening acts to get concertgoers stoked for the musicians.
An Actor In Search Of His Lost Neighborhood
Edgar Oliver, who’s just concluded the third in a series of autobiographical plays, is so much more than a New York downtown fixture.