“The last 10 years have seen a boom for black British playwrights, actors, artistic directors and others in the industry. What has changed on and off stage – and what’s next?” Eight Black theatremakers offer their answers. – The Guardian
Who’s Still Reading The Supermarket Tabloids?
Though their circulation has been decimated — the once-mighty National Enquirer, which approached 8 million in paid circulation at one point and reached millions more, is down under 180,000 as of June, according to industry monitor the Audit Bureau of Control — tabloids still occupy a unique place in American culture. – Los Angeles Times
The Cultural ‘Canon’ Really Is Getting More Diverse
“It’s not so much that canons have been completely obliterated, as [Harold] Bloom and others feared — in any given collection, the old guard and their descendants have remained. But canons have continued to evolve, and new ones have sprung up alongside them.” Aisha Harris looks at some examples. – The New York Times
A Decade That Cultivated Darkness
Michiko Kakutani: “Apocalypse is not yet upon our world as the 2010s draw to an end, but there are portents of disorder. The hopes nourished during the opening years of the decade — hopes that America was on a progressive path toward growing equality and freedom, hopes that technology held answers to some of our most pressing problems — have given way, with what feels like head-swiveling speed, to a dark and divisive new era. Fear and distrust are ascendant now.” – The New York Times
Remains Of Ancient Mayan Palace Discovered In Yucatán
“At the archaeological site of Kulubá, nestled amid the lowland forests of Mexico’s Yucatán state, experts have unearthed the remains of a large palace” — six rooms, 180 feet long, 50 feet wide, 20 feet high — “believed to have been used by Maya elite around 1,000 years ago.” – Smithsonian Magazine
Always-On Culture Has Warped Our Sense of Time And Progress
“The reason that it feels like nothing happened in the 2010s is that too much happened. Each cultural landmark got instantly effaced by the onrush of the next, and the next. This memory-erosion effect is one reason why it feels like something’s gone awry with our sense of time. While the clock and the calendar continue to plod forward in their steadfast and remorseless way, what you could call “culture-time” feels like it’s become unmoored and meandering.” – The Guardian
What A Crossword Created By A Computational Linguistics Researcher Looks Like
“There’s a similar mixture that goes into being a computational linguistics researcher,” with lots of coding, math and empirical work. It certainly helps to have a love of language and be interested in the quirks of language.” – Washington Post
The End Of A Decade-Long Music Project That Was Originally Meant To Be A One-Off
The Green Mountain Project, which has been devoted to producing end-of-year concerts of Monteverdi’s 1610 “Vesper of the Blessed Virgin since 2010, is coming to an end this year in New York – and then heading to Venice. Jolle Greenleaf: “Ending this project needed to be done in a way that really honored everything that everybody did over the years. It feels like the crowning glory — we are going to do it where Monteverdi flourished and was buried. But it’s a little crazy. There’s so many pieces to the organization. There are no cars; there are so many rules. Getting a chamber organ meant renting it from pretty far away and then putting it on a boat.” – The New York Times
What Happened When A Dancer Witnessed Abuse At His Dance Company And Reported It
He was fired, and, to his knowledge, nothing was done to protect the kids from the abuse he saw. The dance company didn’t have an HR team, for one thing. All of this brings up many questions that dancers need to consider: “What protocols are in place to protect dancers at companies that are too small to have a human resources department. Even beyond issues of abuse, how should dancers voice concerns about more routine dysfunction, like late paychecks or unsafe working conditions?” – Dance Magazine
Are These Los Angeles Stereotypes A Silly Pastiche Or An Affectionate Sendup That Goes Deep?
On the Netflix show You, a character from New York moves to L.A. – and you can guess what happens next. (Macrobiotic coffee shops! Stand-up comedy moments! “Aspiring Instagrammers live-streaming on the streets!”) – Los Angeles Times
Arthur L. Singer, Who Helped Set The Stage For Public Television, Has Died At 90
Singer, behind the scenes, was “instrumental in galvanizing federal officials, philanthropies and academics to seed the public airwaves with quality programming and to finance future development.” – The New York Times
Distilling The Essence Of Princess Margaret
When Helena Bonham Carter got the call to play Princess Margaret in Season 3 of The Crown, she wasn’t sure she could follow the tall Vanessa Kirby, who had just won a BAFTA for the role. Then she began her (nearly endless) research. – Los Angeles Times
Trump’s Trade War With China Is Harming American Authors
In a country not exactly known for the free flow of ideas, delays and freezes in publishing have changed what’s available in China. “Publishing industry insiders describe a near freeze of regulatory approvals, one that could make the publishing industry reluctant to buy the rights to sell American books in China.” That freeze may be thawing, or may not be – but in the meantime, U.S. authors and publishers have lost a major group of readers. – The New York Times
How Oxford – And JRR Tolkien, And CS Lewis – Turned English Curriculum To The Past And Kept English Fantasy There As Well
While Cambridge cut out its medieval requirement, Oxford – under the influence of Lewis and Tolkien – doubled down. That weirdly influenced the fantasy all over the English-speaking world. “At the moment that the British Empire is waning, you see this rise of children’s fantasy literature, which is set in these kinds of precolonial worlds, but also imagining these new vistas for exploration and the pleasures of exploration and colonization, encounters with indigenous peoples—but cloaked in a different story, where the people you’re encountering are ‘magical creatures,’ so you’re free of political resonances.” (Narrator: You’re actually not.) – Slate
What’s Disney’s Plan For ‘Star Wars’? Don’t Look To The Movies To Find Out
Look to streaming, of course, to lead the way. “Lucasfilm and Disney are now in a perfect spot: The Mandalorian is a success, Star Wars is ripe for more experimentation, and Disney+ is a new sandbox that will allow for similar experiments. The future of Star Wars won’t only live and die by big event films like The Rise of Skywalker; it’ll succeed with a consistent run of weird and fun Star Wars shows.” (And don’t forget the books, comics, games, ad infinitum.) – The Verge
Sorry, Journalists, But Some Kinds Of Media Aren’t Worth Saving
In Nieman Lab’s 2020 predictions, the founder of a collaborative journalism initiative says that some news organizations aren’t doing enough to make the case that they’re worth saving, but that will have to shift. “The question of how we save journalism (meaning newsrooms) will begin to shift to how do we save journalism (meaning the process). How we answer that question will have a profound impact on the management of newsrooms, the business models we develop, the processes we adapt, and the service we provide.” – Nieman Lab
When Shopping Deserts The Mall, What Happens Next?
Here’s the deal, not that you would know it from Amazon purchases: “The psychic center of American social life has shifted from buying things to feeling them.” – The New York Times
Minneapolis Institute Of Art Sees A Record Year
“Egypt’s Sunken Cities” helped the museum double its income from program activities to $4.9 million in the year ended June 30. Membership increased 30 percent to 52,102 members, and attendance grew to 779,973, up by more than 69,000. – The Star-Tribune (Mpls)
How Robert Moses Transformed The Metropolitan Museum
Wags had taken to calling the Met the Necropolitan and said it suffered from hardening of the galleries. The New Yorker sniped that the acting director still wrote with a quill pen and considered theories about the democracy of art to be “so much parlor Socialism.” Moses disdained the old families who’d run the place since its founding. – The Daily Beast
Jerry Herman, Who Wrote Some Of The World’s Favorite Musicals, Dead At 88
“The creator of 10 Broadway shows and contributor to several more, Herman won two Tony Awards for best musical: Hello, Dolly! in 1964 and La Cage aux Folles in 1983. He also won two Grammys — for the Mame cast album and Hello, Dolly! as song of the year — and was a Kennedy Center honoree.” – AP