The Freakonomics series on the economics of live theatre continues with this third and final episode, in which I talk about its value – no, not economic value: all the other kinds…
Will 3 Summers of Lincoln Make it to Broadway?
Last Thursday’s episode of Call Time with Katie Birenboim, featuring actor and choreographer Aigner Mizzelle, marked the 100th episode of the show — in some form or another. Longtime listeners, friends, or fans might remember that a different version of Call Time, then known as “Theatre Book Club,” started under the auspices of Berkshire Theatre […]
Karen Ewald, Executive Director of the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture & the Arts, talks about leadership during adversity including the Lahaina fires.
Freakonomics Radio has a new three part series on the economic landscape facing live theatre. Part One is here, and part two is here, which as a supporting act in an episode with Lin-Manuel Miranda, has me trying to coherently explain cost disease in the theatre, where it comes from and its implications. Part three will come next week,...
Kabalevsky contratulates Bernstein Today’s online Persuasion/The American Purpose runs an essay of mine building on the growing awareness that “soft power”
In my last post I wrote about the Cato Institute’s Ryan Bourne’s call to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts. Here I will consider a different approach from the right, Mark Bauerlein’s “MAGA needs High Art, Not just Kid Rock”, from the New York Times. He writes about the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as the NEA, but I...
Twenty-five years ago the Jazz Journalists Association began to identify and celebrate activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz as members of an “A Team,” soon renamed “Jazz Heroes.” Today the JJA announced its 2025 slate of these Heroes, 29 people across North America who put extraordinary efforts into sustaining and expanding jazz in its various forms.
So who...
In deference to St. Patrick’s Day, I’m reposting an entry from ten years ago. Titled “Yeats and the Economics of Creativity,” it originally ran on the Arts Endowment website on May 7, 2025.
Last month, at the invitation of the U.S. Embassy in Dublin, I took part in a conference titled “Creative Minds: The Importance of the Creative Economy in...
When we talk about the arts and DIY, we commonly refer to craft activities or teaching oneself how to play a musical instrument. But what could be more DIY than free-form dancing? The adjective says it all. Free-form, freestyle, or free dance is a series of unstructured, personally directed movements in which creativity and improvisation are at a premium....
A new report from the National Endowment for the Arts re-affirms what we have learned from many other previous studies—namely, that arts education is closely linked with positive academic outcomes and social and emotional development.
The report appears in the wake of new data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), based on survey questions that researchers from the...
Call it entrumpy—a “gradual decline into disorder” (riffing on “entropy”), attributable to the unpredictability of our unprecedented President. Exploiting his
