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Why Did Canada’s Luminato Festival Abruptly Cancel A Highly Anticipated Indigenous Work?

"Two months after cancellation, the collective calls what happened at Luminato 'disrespectful and unethical.' The artists describe a difficult rehearsal process marred by poor communication, lack of support and disrespect." - Toronto Star

The Murder Of Salman Rushdie’s Japanese Translator Remains Unsolved, More Than 30 Years On

"The translator , Hitoshi Igarashi, was stabbed to death at age 44 at Tsukuba University, northeast of Tokyo, where he had been teaching comparative Islamic culture for five years. No arrests were ever made, and the crime remains unsolved." - The New York Times

Emma Thompson Has No Time For Sean Bean’s Freakout About Intimacy Coordinators

Thompson: "Intimacy coordinators are the most fantastic introduction in our work. And no, you can’t just ‘let it flow’. ... There’s a camera there and a crew – it’s not on your own in a hotel room." - The Guardian (UK)

Ukrainian Children Bring A Play From A Bomb Shelter To Brooklyn

The show is Mom on Skype, and "is a series of seven monologues about family separation told from the perspective of children." - The New York Times

Musician Who Was Against The COVID Vaccine Sues Los Angeles Times For Reporting That Fact

Joseph Arthur says that the article left him "shunned and avoided," and says that the headline calling him "anti-vax" was wrong because he hadn't said anything about vaccines in general, just the COVID-19 vaccines. - Variety

Peter Beagle Finally Regains Control Of His Work

A lengthy court battle concludes with the author of The Last Unicorn wresting control of his finances and his work back from a manager. "The book consistently sells 15,000 to 20,000 a year — sales that would be a strong showing for a new book." - The New York Times

Tatiana Maslany Is Nobody’s Token Superhero

True, she is playing a woman who accidentally joins Bruce Banner in Hulkdom. But the idea of a strong female lead doesn't do it for her: "It's a box that nobody fits into. Even the phrase is frustrating. It’s as if we’re supposed to be grateful." - The Guardian (UK)

How Digital Content Leads Artists To Endless Tinkering

Some might call it endless fixing, but whatever it is, digital copies mean the art can be changed or deleted at will. "If you only have a digital version, you don’t have a finite finished product. You’re renting a product from whatever service that you have." - Washington Post

How Did The TikTok-Based ‘Bridgerton’ Musical Get So Big, And Then So Cancelled?

The creators of songs about the books (and TV show) won a Grammy, the author said she was humming their songs in the shower, and Netflix went along with it all. Then Barlow and Bear wanted to charge money for a Bridgerton musical, and Netflix lowered the boom. - BBC

The Most Compelling Thing In Literature Isn’t Certainty Or Self-Improvement

It's engagement, the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next - and it's not about becoming a better person, says author and critic Namwali Serpell. - The Guardian (UK)

The Great Partnership Of Filmmaker Hiyao Miyazaki And Composer Joe Hisaishi

For concerts, Hisaishi takes portions of his scores from films like My Neighbor Totoro and Porco Rosso, turning them into entirely new symphonic experiences - but without losing the humane touch of his work in the films. - The New York Times

Teacher Quits After His Bulletin Board Featuring The Pledge Of Allegiance Is Taken Down

Of course, the Pledge isn't what got the teacher's bulletin board torn down by a co-worker. No - it was the people saying the Pledge, controversial people like, er, Colin Powell and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. - Vice

Lost Banksy Reappears In A Tel Aviv Art Gallery

"Slingshot Rat, a stencil painting, appeared on a concrete block at an abandoned Israeli army position in Bethlehem next to a section of the wall in 2007." It was then graffitied, and finally cut out by ... someone. - The Guardian (UK) (AP)

On The Violent Attack On Salman Rushdie

"Writers represent the part of our culture that engages with humanity through ideas, whose passion is expressed through sentences and paragraphs and pages. It’s a realm we should not just preserve but defend." - The Atlantic

The Joyful Bicycles Of Jean-Jacques Sempe

Sempé, who died on Thursday at 89, had a whimsical style. "His ink cartoons were often set in a mythical mid-century Paris or millennial New York, but their appeal was universal." - Slate

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