"Last week, Disney's The Lion King grossed $4,315,264 in ticket sales, which is the most any Broadway show has ever made from a single week of performances. The average paid admission was $284.89 and the show played to 99.23 percent capacity at the Minskoff Theatre." - TheaterMania
"A polemicist whose opinions shaped themselves around the plot of her latest book, a pragmatist who giggled her way through every sentence, she was mischievous and evasive, yet wilfully and wittily life-affirming. … Weldon gave a big wink to her future obituarists: catch me if you can, (she's) saying." - The Guardian
Founded in 2013 during what had been the slow weeks of mid-January, Prototype — which has already produced two operas that went on to win Pulitzers — "has become increasingly essential as Lincoln Center moves away from presenting festivals that would have hosted (such work)." - The New York Times
"Citing public dismay at news that the Philly Pops would shut down at the end of this season, leaders of the group have reversed course and are now working to save the city's only stand-alone pops orchestra," with a goal of raising $2 million over the next nine months. - The Philadelphia Inquirer
"'We've said publicly, we're actively seeking a new Parthenon partnership with our friends in Greece and as we enter a new year constructive discussions are ongoing,' the British Museum said in a statement." - Reuters
By the mid-aughts, starting a blog was easier than ever. Streaming hadn’t yet taken over our listening habits, but Web connections were speedy enough that, if a blog posted an MP3, a reader could be hearing the song a few minutes later. It was exciting, hopping from blog to blog. - The New Yorker
The 1960s were Stan Lee’s most astonishing decade, during which he came up with ideas and scripts for the first appearances of such heroes as the original X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, Black Panther, Daredevil and Doctor Strange. - The Conversation
The Artist’s Studio describes how a noisome cockpit of lust, crime and virtuosity produced innovations in how art gets made, and by whom. - The Guardian
Peter Brooks’s fear is that we are so over-saturated with story that we have become undiscerning consumers, slipping too willingly into the familiar rhythms of plot, even when scepticism – of where information is coming from and of who is delivering it – would be more appropriate. - New Statesman
One of the animating principles of modern civic life is to make public resources increasingly inaccessible in order to prevent public resources from being used in the wrong way, or used at all by the wrong people. - Mother Jones
"A book by Thorvaldur Fridriksson, an Icelandic archaeologist and journalist, argues that Gaelic-speaking Celtic settlers from Ireland and western Scotland had a profound impact on the Icelandic language, landscape and early literature." And also, as it turns out, the Icelanders' DNA. - The Guardian
When asked why, participants’ responses included how "theatre direction just doesn’t pay a living wage", with another claiming "the pay and hours are terrible". The survey found one in 10 jobs was unpaid. - The Stage
A Japanese, that is, who has lived and worked in Kyiv ever since he arrived there as an 11-year-old dance student. Nobuhiro Terada went on to dance with the Kyiv Ballet (as it was called before the war) for two decades and then directed its ballet school. - Euronews
In a city where tree shade is unequally distributed and half the surfaces are dark asphalt or concrete, the solution to increasing temperatures could lie in design. - The Guardian
