Yearly Archives: 2021
Texas’s Governor Forbids Mask Mandates. So People Will Go To Shows?
Not really. In an informal KERA and Dallas Morning News survey conducted over the past few days, about 70% of more than 1,200 respondents said they do not...
We Need Better Plots About Friendship
"When friendship exists in the background, it's unremarkable but generally uncomplicated. But when friendship becomes the plot, then the only story to tell is...
NYC’s Remarkable New Island Of Creativity
On 2.4 acres of lush lawns and man-made, sculptured hills, Little Island percolates daily with creative energy, fueled by talent recruited everywhere from the...
What Holds This Tiny Former Mining Town Together? Its Theater Company
Elisabeth Vincentelli visits Creede, Colorado (population 350), isolated high in the San Juan Mountains, to check out the Creede Repertory Theater, which came up...
Balanchine As A Character In a Crime Novel
July 1943 happens to coincide with a window in Balanchine’s known itinerary. He might just have worked on this other wartime Hollywood morale-lifter, which...
Will Scott Rudin Make A Comeback? Could He If He Wanted To?
Word is that the disgraced producer hopes to return, and he claims he's working to improve his notorious temper. Would he be accepted? Some...
Corporation For Public Broadcasting Should Be Overhauled To Focus On The Internet: Study
The German Marshall Fund has issued a policy paper arguing that the CPB, which currently channels federal money to local public TV and radio...
Bolshoi Ballet Director Wants Company To Build A Third Theatre
The Moscow troupe has the famous 1,680-seat house, which he calls the Historic Stage, and a venue opened in 2002, called the New Stage,...
Who’s Everyone’s Favorite Guy At Jacob’s Pillow This Year? The Weatherman
With all performances outdoors this year, the dance festival hired its first resident meteorologist, Paul Caiano from nearby Albany. And, since this summer's weather...
Does “Jeopardy!” Have Its New Host?
If so, it's an inside job: reportedly, the chosen candidate, now said to be in advanced negotiations with Sony Pictures Television, is the quiz...
UK May Finally Have Solved Musicians’ Post-Brexit Touring Problem
"The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said it had negotiated with 19 EU member state countries to allow British musicians and performers...
Artist’s Memorial To Victims Of Beirut Explosion Draws Controversy
The Gesture, an 82-foot sculpture by Nadim Karam, is made of steel debris from last year's catastrophe and stands at the blast site itself....
So This Is The Metaverse, Eh? Yawn…
A game-y galaxy that seamlessly fuses with the meatspace. What matters is that metaverse is now the buzzword du jour and that Facebook wants a piece...
How Working In (For Now) Post-COVID Broadway Works
It’s a resumption of business — and, for many arts workers, employment — that’s been eagerly awaited and long in coming. But it’s also...
A Creative Redevelopment That Intends To Skip The Usual Mistakes
Birkenhead is barely a mile from Liverpool, situated on the opposite bank of the River Mersey. It was once known as the “New York...
How An Obscenity Trial 50 Years Ago Inspired A Generation Of Protest Art
The six-week trial of Oz magazine at the Old Bailey was the longest obscenity trial in England’s history. It remains the most absurd. - The Guardian
Canada Weighs Policies To Make Big Tech Companies Pay For Journalism
News companies in Canada have been struggling financially and digital platforms have vacuumed up most of the ad revenue that used to go to...
The Play Doctors Of Poughkeepsie
Though its theater season each summer is a must-see in the industry, even that is more inward facing than outward, with only a few...
Teaching Kids To Read And Getting Them To Enjoy It — What The Data...
Emily Oster looks at the phonics vs. whole-language debate (she has one word for you: "delumpification") and what studies show about how to entice...
In Praise Of Celebrity Memoirs
The sooner you accept that star stories are full of embellishments and omissions, invented quotes and one-sided recollections dictated to patient ghostwriters, the sooner...
Could 1980s Film Noir Actually Be Better Than The Classic 1940s Stuff?
Neo-noir "could spell out what the 1940s films could only imply, with themes, violence and sexuality that could only be hinted at four decades...
And Now… AI-Generated Sculptures That Look Eerily Real
The resulting totemic structures, biomorphic forms, and sleek stacked shapes against drab gray backgrounds have a strange, mass-produced patina, as vaguely similar as Ikea...
In Defense Of Watching TV At High Speed
Nicholas Quah writes that the habit, reviled by creators, simply makes it easier to get through mountains of content, leaving time to try stuff...
The Value Of Profanity
Even in a society which tells itself the half-truth that it treasures ‘free speech’, there are, indeed must be, words that are beyond the...
Why Composer Jake Heggie Writes His Operas Entirely By Hand
"Making a mess is central to creativity and certainly to composition. … (With music software,) I think that sometimes young composers can be misled....
