"I remain optimistic that the theatre has been around for a long time, and it’s going to continue. I just feel that way. There’s no doubt that our younger audiences brains’ have been rewired by the speed of the culture. But honestly, I sit with young audiences looking at an O’Neill play..." - American Theatre
So far, this year's two superhero releases, Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, have underperformed at the box office and received grudging reviews (47% and 51% on Rotten Tomatoes). Nor did this decline and fall start with them. - BBC
It's the cold waters of the Baltic that kept intact the remains of the wrecked Gribshunden, the flagship of King Hans of Denmark and Norway which sank in 1485. Archaeologists have discovered saffron threads, peppercorns, almond shells, ginger, clove, and black mustard. - Atlas Obscura
Apple has turned classical music’s diversity of metadata into the new app’s raison d’être. And, with so many of what Apple calls “data points”—over 50 million bits of information drawn from their database of recordings—it suddenly makes complete sense. - Van
Lynn Riggs rode a cattle train, worked in New York as an extra in cowboy movies and in Hollywood churning out studio screenplays, wrote Green Grow the Lilacs in France and was in the Army when Oklahoma! debuted on Broadway. Yet he never left behind his difficult prairie childhood. - Smithsonian Magazine
"In my life, thanks to Philadelphia and Chicago, I’ve been to Wichita, Des Moines, Ames, Toledo… For me, to make music, it’s not that I conduct in Salzburg and I try my best. Because every time you try your best, it’s a disaster. Everything becomes mannered, exaggerated, chettera, chettera." - Van
"Curator Erin Schoneveld breaks down five seminal posters from the exhibition (at New York's Poster House Museum) that reveal how art reflects history — and how history influences art." - Fast Company
If and when machines can “write essays” that are more deftly organized, more thoroughly researched, and more persuasive than our student’s efforts, then writing’s purpose will cease to reside solely in the finished text. It has never solely resided there, of course, but we too often act and teach as if it does. - The Millions
Julia Voss, author of the first-ever biography of Europe's first abstract artist, talks about the influence which the 19th-century scientific revolution had on the mystical artist, how hard she tried to get shown, the appalling sexism she faced, and the voices she heard. - Artnet
Her most radical initiative was “02020,” a plan to hand over the programming, the keys to the building and the entire annual production budget to a collective of artists. The idea was to extend experimentalism into every part of the organization. - The New York Times
"Lead producer Mike Bosner … and his team enacted the old-school practice of preview pricing: selling tickets for a show's pre-opening period at a significantly lower price point than after the show's official opening — and advertised this accordingly." - Broadway News
"As Hollywood emerged from the pandemic, its biggest film productions dipped in diversity after years of incremental progress. … Opportunities were notably greater for women and people of color on streaming platforms than in theatrically released films." - AP
"The BBC is set to slash its annual output by 1,000 hours worth of shows to cope with savings requirements that have shot up by some 40 percent to almost half a billion dollars." - The Hollywood Reporter
"From the waning years of Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration through the presidencies of 10 succeeding chief executives, Mr. Russell poked fun at the foibles and flaws of the well-known, the pompous and the powerful in monologues replete with pithy one-liners and musical ditties. He called himself 'a political cartoonist for the blind.'" - MSN (The Washington Post)
"Three days after voting to cease publication and lay off its journalists, the nonprofit publisher of the Texas Observer said on Wednesday that it would change course and keep the 68-year-old liberal magazine going, following an emergency appeal that crowdsourced more than $300,000." - The Texas Tribune
