Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Dancers’ Contracts Aren’t Year-Round. So How Do They Survive The Weeks They’re Not Paid?
Generally speaking, dancers are on break during the summer — but also at the end of December after “The Nutcracker” and during the first...
Theatre’s Fundraising Problem
The traditional fundraising-during-a-downturn playbook calls on organizations to lean on mega-donors when everyday givers step back and the broader pool shrinks. But this isn’t...
Hollywood Writers’ Not-So-Secret Weapon: Teamsters Boss Lindsay Dougherty
“I’m angry, you know? Building this bond with the writers over the last six months has been great, realizing that writers fight every day...
Another Theatre Closes After 31 Years
Altogether, the Metropolitan Theatre in New York brought to light and recognition over 100 largely forgotten American plays from 1787 through to the present,...
Why Mozart Still Resonates
"It is the embodiment of a set of feelings about the world that are so richly specified in each case as to amount to...
Hong Kong Tries To Ban A Song As “Dangerous”
Hong Kong officials seem to fear it can, as they are seeking an injunction against a protest anthem called “Glory to Hong Kong.” Officials have asked...
American Theatre Is Collapsing – It Needs A Bailout
So how do we avoid this catastrophe? Just as in other areas of recent American life where entire industries were imperiled — banks, the...
Seattle Theatre Is Broken. It Might Not Survive
What worries me more than money at the moment is the spiritual pall hanging over the theater community – a simmering angry paralysis mirroring...
Why Has Brooklyn Public Library Become A Monument To A Celebrity?
The show’s opening last week raised further questions about its intended audience. On a hot weekday, the heavily trafficked library was closed to its constituents in...
What’s The Point Of Eco-Art? (It Won’t Save Us)
What feels different about ecocritical art is that the very topic it engages with proposes widespread ruin and demands that action be immediately...
NYC’s Commercial Real Estate Market Is Collapsing. This Will Significantly Change Manhattan
Last year, a team of academics from Columbia University and NYU published a paper with the eye-catching title “Work From Home and the Office...
When The Biggest Indie Stars Sell Out It’s Bad For Everyone
Writer and actor strikes in the US show that selling out is not just a question of personal ethics, but an industry-wide concern. A...
What Are The Rules For Ghost-Written Celebrity Novels?
What about literature’s latest trend: the celebrity novel? Do the rules that apply to the celebrity memoir remain the same when it comes to...
A Next-Generation Orchestra?
The Cornwall Youth Noise Orchestra is the brainchild of Matt Ashdown and Liz Howell of Moogie Wonderland, which began as a club night and now...
An AI App For Musicians To Help Them Create
Alex Mubert's vision is of an app that will allow people to easily experiment and create music on their own. Because of licensing complications...
Analyst: Hollywood Strikes Could Cost $450M-$600M
Moody’s debt analyst Neil Begley wrote in a July 17 report, “we believe this standstill could be a relatively long strike, with the stakes being larger than...
The Remarkable Resurgence Of Otto Klemperer
From the mid-1950s to the end of the 1960s, Klemperer was among the most prolific conductors on record. Yet around 1950 everyone thought he...
Reimagining “Miss Saigon.” Possible?
Yet it’s hard to shake the suspicion that Orientalist kitsch was integral to the show's commercial appeal. Remove the defamiliarizing frisson of the exotic...
How Hollywood Lost The Point Of What They’re Doing
Under pressure to deliver to Wall Street, too many CEOs have lost the plot of their own movie. They are not running companies to...
300-Year-Old Minaret Destroyed In Basra To Make Way For Road
The demolition of the 300-year-old minaret of a mosque in southern Iraq last week to make way for a road extension has drawn outrage...
The Piano Problem: Owners Fret About How To Get Rid Of Them
Go to any online sales site and you'll find dozens of ads for free pianos — mostly large wooden upright instruments that are around...
The Battle For Nashville’s Creative Soul
Every city changes. But the transformation of Nashville—which began a decade ago, and accelerated exponentially during the pandemic—has stunned the people who love the...
Has Hollywood Abandoned DEI?
After the sudden exits of top diversity and inclusion executives at Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Netflix and the Motion Picture Academy in the past...
The TV-ization Of Social Media (Why TikTok Works)
By design, TikTok encourages different behaviors from those prompted by other social networks. “They say they check Facebook, and they check Instagram and they...
Susan Jaffe On Reinventing ABT
When it comes to the classics, one of the biggest hurdles to bringing new audience members to the ballet is that people are initially intimidated...
