Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
So Nice, They’re Doing It Twice: A Second Kennedy Center Honors This Year
“We have gone through the worst crisis in performing arts history. We need to celebrate the artists who have carried us through this time.”...
It Only Took 145 Years: First Woman Conductor At Bayreuth Festival
A native of Brody, in western Ukraine, where she grew up in a family of musicians, Oksana Lyniv, 43, has spent the better part...
Big: Actors Equity Opens Up Membership
Actors’ Equity said it was waiving prior restrictions on membership in its quest to become a more equitable organization. - Broadway News
Pining For The Empire (We Should Pay Attention)
The experience of imperial nostalgia, Peter Mitchell argues, is not just some lightly felt fancy or excuse for “rote grumpiness,” but evidence of a...
South Korea Is Becoming A Bigger Player In Hollywood
Korean-language programs have seen a surge in demand following drama “Parasite” winning best picture at last year’s Academy Awards and “Minari” receiving critical acclaim. Los Angeles...
Americans Have No Trust? Actually – We Are Amazingly Trusting
The modern sharing economy is premised on leaps of faith in perfect strangers: we rely on crowdsourced restaurant reviews on Yelp, climb into a...
The Language Of Public Art Vandalism
There’s a language of defacement, according to artist Shanequa Gay, who’s just finished restoring her Reframing Herstory (2019) mural on Edgewood Avenue near the Georgia Beer Garden....
Fake News: Distinguishing Between Lies And Mistakes
There’s a very big difference between an error and a lie – and between ‘fake news’ and ‘false news’. A fake is always false,...
Christopher Ricks, The “Irritable” Literary Critic
I think criticism is being good at noticing things. If I write about a particular work of literature, I do have to believe –...
What It’s like Coming Back To The Cello After 40 Years
"I felt like I was reconnecting with a best friend. I needed the opportunity to play music and have these other musicians in my...
Revising Mamet’s “Oleanna” Post-#MeToo
The production can be read as a post-#MeToo critique of the invidious yet slippery ways in which male power exerts itself without being easy...
How The Arts Could Lead On Thinking About Disabilities
Framing disability in this way—as a series of deficits—adds to the problematic thinking that interprets access as questions of patron services, facilities, or technology. -...
The Dark Side Of The Meritocracy
For all of the well-intentioned idealism of today’s aspirational elite, there is a dark side of meritocracy that is never fully concealed in the...
The Potential Benefits Of Using NFTs For Tickets
NFTs can be bought, sold, traded, swapped, used as collateral, borrowed, lent, etc. In other words, your ability to financially engineer to create additional...
What Does Netflix’s Purchase Of Famous LA Movie Theatres Mean?
Under the deal, the Cinematheque will continue to program autonomously on weekends, while Netflix will use the theater for their premieres and special events...
What Will Happen To The Music I Collected On Spotify?
"I feel uneasy about the hundreds of playlists I’ve taken the time to compile on the company’s platform: 10 or 20 years from now,...
NYC’s Historic Cherry Lane Theatre Bought By Lortel Foundation
The foundation is a few blocks from the Cherry Lane Theater on Christopher Street and has managed the building for the past decade. The...
Bourdain Voice Deepfake Reminds Us Documentaries Aren’t Real Reporting
The deluge of nonfiction filmmaking and its seemingly endless permutations has rendered the term "documentary" almost meaningless. - Washington Post
That Tune You Can’t Get Out Of Your Head? Annoying, Right? But There’s A...
These so-called earworms — gross — are annoying but useful, as new research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in June helps illuminate...
When Ideas In Accademia Get Out Of The Lab, They Can Be Dangerous
There’s a huge leap in jumping from these general, aggregate findings to believing that such simple ideas can guide the behavior of complex states...
Are Master’s Degrees An Educational Scam?
In some ways, they’re more similar than they might seem. Many of them are one-year certificate programs. We don’t call them that. We call them master’s...
Is Changing The Name Of The Yale Drama School Worth A Big Donation?
To quote Shakespeare, “what’s in a name?” Quite a lot, it turns out, in these days of societal reckoning. - Los Angeles Times
The Anthony Bourdain Voice-Fake: Documentaries Have Been Faking For Some Time Now
A reenactment and a voice fake actually do different versions of the same thing: Both cement a reality in your mind — the image...
Here’s a Counter-Factual: Social Media Is Making Us… Nicer?
In person, we still know how to be classy friends. But class is tricky on social media. No one can be expected to read...
Ian McKellen’s Epic “Hamlet” Production Loses Two Actors
The Mail on Sunday reported that the two actors had dropped out because of clashes that had taken place since rehearsals began. It said...
