Today’s Stories
Theatre’s Front Of House Workers Can Too Easily Get Trapped In Service Roles
The hours are good, the patrons can be terrible, the dreams live … for a while. “A lot of actors, directors and writers work front of house, with most of us spending our days auditioning, writing and on other creative endeavours. FOH is a stepping stone and it fits in with the hours, so we can go from the side of the stage selling ice creams or Aperol Spritzes to on stage performing. But many of us are struggling. We feel stuck.” – The Stage (UK)
Central Park Took Their Land, And Now, At Long Last, They’re Getting A Monument
The Lyons family of New York were a vital part of New York’s Seneca Village. They “were Seneca Village property owners, educators and dedicated abolitionists, running a boardinghouse for black sailors that doubled as a stop on the Underground Railroad.” – The New York Times
When Schools Utterly Fail At Sex Education, Fanfiction Fills In The Gaps
That’s right: Fanfiction, with its hookups of likely and unlikely characters, its absolute refusal to live by the rules of the world set by authors like J.K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins, educates the teens of the world about sex, friendship, and much more, especially for LGBT youth: “Where the education system failed us, our fellow horny teens stepped up.” – BuzzFeed
Abstract Expressionist Painter Ed Clark Has Died At 93
Clark was “an African-American expressionist painter who used a broom and bold colors to capture the natural world and to convey emotions about the racial injustice of the 1960s, earning him international acclaim.” Clark, who lived in Detroit, was known for his experimentation with shaped canvases, bold colors, and a seven-decade career. – The New York Times
On The Return Of Olive Kitteridge
Why did Elizabeth Strout return to her dour, challenging protagonist – and how the heck did Olive Kitteridge become such a cultural force to begin with, a bestselling book that turned into a fantastic HBO series? Strout: “She just showed up and I saw her nosing her car into the marina; and I thought: Oh man, she’s back.” – The Guardian (UK)
Teens Are Getting Famous Off Of TikTok, And High School Arts Teachers Learn To Adapt
Vine and Instagram did it first (and, let’s be honest, Vine was great, RIP Vine), and now TikTok is the new way for kids to become social media-famous. How the heck is a school supposed to deal with 20 or 30 famous 14-year-olds? Make “drama clubs for the digital age, but with the potential to reach huge audiences.” – The New York Times
Mark Morris: Without Bullies, How Would I Know I Was A Sissy?
The choreographer has a new memoir out. In an interview, he describes “the sissy tests” of middle school – and turning those humiliating, degrading moments into dance. – NPR
In Canada, It’s A Moment For Indigenous Art – But What About The Artists?
The vast majority of Inuit artists, even the celebrated ones, “eke out an existence.” Canada’s famed reconciliation isn’t touching their lives much. “Many support large extended families that depend on them for food — most of it flown in at exorbitant cost so that a single cucumber goes for $4.50.” – The New York Times
How To Go Offline (Briefly, For The Sake Of Getting Offline Things Accomplished)
Jia Tolentino, New Yorker writer and extremely online person, follows the advice of a computer scientist. First thing to do: Give up everything optional on your phone and computer for 30 days. “It just makes you bare to the fact of being alive and the sort of existential dread and wonder of it. It was a doozy.” – Slate
This Keith Haring Mural Was Cut Out Of A Stairwell, And Now Its Fate Is Uncertain
The three-story mural, created for the Catholic youth Grace House in New York, has been cut out and preserved for auction. The Haring Foundation is not thrilled by the idea of the auction. “This mural was not meant to be owned by a collector. … It was meant to brighten a room full of children.” – The New York Times
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Needs More Than A Plan To Stay Afloat
A consultant tells the BSO that it needs a “vision” in order to deal with the debt and the uncertain future. The consultant said that “the BSO should be building a blueprint for the next seven to 10 years. In Detroit, where the orchestra had ‘zero liquidity’ and went through a months-long strike nearly a decade ago, articulating a long-term plan encouraged donors to commit new funds, he said.” – Baltimore Business Journal
A 90-Foot Tall Mural Of A Ballet Dancer Is Possibly A Tool To Inspire Others
In Columbus, Ohio, ballerina Rachael Parini was the inspiration for a 90-foot billboard that advertises the BalletMet company, but it means more than that to her – it means that young dancers of color might be inspired to try, and stick with, ballet. – 10TV (Ohio)
A Lion King Swing, Backstage In London
Swings are more than understudies – they have to learn multiple roles within one show. Twenty-year-old swing Debôrah Godchaser, who was barely born when Lion King opened, says she’s learned to control her nerves and just trust that she knows the choreography. – BBC
Drawing, Dancing, And Deradicalization
Can a madrasa that teaches children of suicide bombers to draw and dance help them get deprogrammed from hours and hours of militant videos? The school is sure trying, but “when they first arrived from Surabaya, the children shrank from music and refrained from drawing images of living things because they believed it conflicted with Islam, social workers said. They were horrified by dancing and by a Christian social worker who didn’t wear a head scarf.” – The New York Times
Why Is The Kids’ Movie ‘Abominable’ Being Banned In Countries In Asia?
Well, it’s because of a brief scene with a map, you see. “It’s not every day that a largely forgettable Dreamworks yeti movie can come under fire from multiple national governments for violating a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.” That’s some map, right? Indeed. – A.V. Club
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The Short, Dreamy Film That Goes In Search Of David Hockney’s House
The narration begins, “You were too young to lose your mum, and we were too young to organize a funeral. So because we were in Yorkshire, with nowhere else we wanted to be and nothing else we wanted to be doing, we decided to go and look for David Hockney.” – Aeon
The Nobel Literature Committee Defends Itself For Rewarding A Prize To An Accused Genocide Denier
Sure, Peter Handke spoke at the funeral of Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milošević in 2006, and sure, before that he had compared the fate of Serbia to that of Jewish people during the Holocaust, but Nobel committee members “predicted that in the future, Handke would be considered ‘among the most obvious choices’ for the prize. Writing in the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, [one member] described Handke as an advocate for peace and said he was ‘anti-nationalistic.'” – BBC
Netflix’s U.S. Subscriber Growth Is Slowing As Competitors Ramp Up
This is a bit of a problem for the massive company: “The big question now is whether some of Netflix’s existing subscribers will decide to cancel its service and defect to cheaper alternatives that Apple and Disney will launch within the next month.” Or will the other two just be add-ons for people who get most of what they want through Netflix? The company is counting on it. – The New York Times (AP)
Backup Dancers Are Leaping To The Forefront With The Power Of Smart Social Media
Backup dancers aren’t very “backup” anymore; instead, like the 16-year-old who began touring with Janet Jackson at age 12 and is now a major social media influencer, they’re at the center of the conversation. That’s thanks to Instagram. “Internet popularity can be a dancer’s entree to choreographing and starring in her own viral videos, traveling the world as a guest artist and teacher, and inking lucrative brand deals and endorsements.” – The Washington Post
Julie Andrews’ Biggest Regret Is Losing Her Singing Voice
We regret it an awful lot as well, Dame Julie. But oh, the stories she’s accumulated, this one quite early: “I had forgotten to pack my dress shoes, so my mother painted white ballet slippers over my socks with what they used to call ‘wet white.’ But my socks were still wet and I left little white footprints all over the stage”. – The Guardian (UK)
Russell Thomas is much more than a black tenor. Now, he’s tackling ‘Otello’ and the field’s stereotypes.
“‘I am not an Otello,’ Thomas says … [Yet] suddenly, it seems that Otello is all anybody wants to hear from him. … The problem [is] that there are very few tenors, white or black, who are able to sing the role. Thomas, now, is one of them, and the opera world is eager to seize on him, not only as an Otello but also as a representative of the diversity that the field claims to be desperately seeking.” – The Washington Post
Fans Protest WNYC Cancellation Of “New Sounds”
For music fans, the news last Thursday that WNYC will end New Sounds, a show hosted by John Schaefer since its debut in 1982, has provoked a deep sense of mourning and nostalgia for both the show and the city’s eroding arts and culture scene. Over four decades, the eclectic music program had come to be seen as a proud local institution that reflected New York City’s sophistication and idiosyncratic personality. – Gothamist
Architecture Critic And Historian Charles Jencks, 80
Mr. Jencks was an architectural historian who, with a landmark book, put himself at the forefront of the debate over what architecture should do. – The New York Times
The “Slow Fire” That’s Destroying Our Books
It’s called a “slow fire,” this continuous acidification and subsequent embrittlement of paper that was created with the seeds of its own ruin in its very fibers. In a 1987 documentary on the subject, the deputy Librarian of Congress William Welsh takes an embrittled, acid-burned book and begins tearing pages out by the handful, crumbling them into shards with an ease reminiscent of stepping on a dried-up insect carcass. – Literary Hub
The Radical Personal Life Of Johann Sebastian Bach
“I’ve talked to people who feel they know Bach very well, but they aren’t aware of the time he was imprisoned for a month. They never learned about Bach pulling a knife on a fellow musician during a street fight. They never heard about his drinking exploits—on one two-week trip he billed the church eighteen gorchsen for beer, enough to purchase eight gallons of it at retail prices—or that his contract with the Duke of Saxony included a provision for tax-free beer from the castle brewery; or that he was accused of consorting with an unknown, unmarried woman in the organ loft; or had a reputation for ignoring assigned duties without explanation or apology.” – Lapham’s Quarterly