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Coachella’s Tickets Are So Expensive People Buy Them On Installment Plans. Good Idea? Or Financially Reckless?

Coachella’s payment plan is just this: For a $599 GA ticket (including fees), fans had the option to put $49.99 down when tickets went on sale in November 2024, then pay off the remainder of the balance in monthly installments through March of this year. - Los Angeles Times

Maybe “Glengarry Glen Ross” Isn’t A Critique Of Cutthroat Capitalism

“What if … Glengarry is instead celebrating the deceit, in fact presenting it as the epitome of manliness? What if Glengarry Glen Ross, quite possibly in ways a younger Mamet himself did not entirely fathom, offers us a joyful ethnography of Donald Trump’s America?” - The New Republic

How Architecture Shapes Everything About Video Games

 These virtual spaces do more than serve as mere backdrops for gameplay. The design of buildings, streets and entire cities guides player emotions, behaviours and even advances the narrative. - The Conversation

A History Of Spelling Reform (Please Make It Simpler!)

In the early 20th century, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie provided the seed money for the Simplified Spelling Board, which, unlike the Spelling Reform Association, was committed to subtracting letters from the alphabet rather than adding them. - The Wall Street Journal

Study: Number Of Theatre Productions In UK Has Declined By A Third In The Past Decade

In 2024, the 40 best-funded theatre companies that make their own productions - ranging from the National Theatre to the Colchester Mercury - opened 229 original productions, compared with 332 in 2014, a drop of 31%. - BBC

Ancient Greek And Roman Statues Smelled As Good As They Looked

“An archaeologist and curator … in Copenhagen finds that Greco-Roman statues were often perfumed with enticing scents like rose, olive oil and beeswax. These fragrances were ‘not merely decorative but symbolic, enhancing the religious and cultural significance of these sculptures.’” - Smithsonian Magazine

Why “Close Reading” Can Miss The Plot

When you studied literature in school or university, I expect that you were taught, implicitly or explicitly, that this plot-focused way of reading was simplistic, and that you were trained to read in new ways where plot was largely irrelevant. The message is: Only amateurs read for the plot. - Public Books

A Conservative Argument For Culture Funding Betrays The Problems With Such Arguments

Its curious incoherence is emblematic of a movement of cultural conservatives that’s lost the plot. - Artnet

SoulPepper Theatre Launches A Community “Public Domain” Project

 With a full slate of free programming that ranges from workshops and classes to performance, the company is hoping to become a neighbourhood hub. - Ludwig Van

It’s Not Easy Finding Jurors For Harvey Weinstein’s Retrial

“Several dismissed jurors were open about why they couldn’t serve fairly. (One) told a pool reporter, ‘I don’t like the guy; he is a really bad guy.’ One woman said she was the victim of sexual assault. A restaurant maître’d explained, ‘I don’t see how anyone can be impartial.’” - Vulture (MSN)

France Agrees To Collaborate With India On Major Controversial Museum Project

The controversy around France’s deal with India may appear more ambiguous to a Western audience. Is it France’s concern if the YYBNM decides to portray a skewed history of India that privileges Hindu culture and a Hindutva ideology, even if its role is limited to “specific areas of technical collaboration." - ARTnews

Why The “Odyssey” Is All Over The Place Right Now

“The Iliad is the poem of death. Death stalks its lines, blood soaks it. Countless young men appear in the poem only to be cut down. … But at the heart of the Odyssey there is life, and survival. This survival isn’t pretty, or comforting, or dignified.” - The Guardian

On The “Odyssey” And Its Ubiquity And Oddity

“We can read the Odyssey today with a sense of déjà vu: we feel we know these narratives, we have met these characters, we recognize these themes. Yet the epic of Odysseus’s return is, in many ways, as unfathomably strange to us as the one-eyed giant Cyclops was to its hero.” - Literary Hub

Preemptive Compliance: Orlando Suspends DEI Arts Grants “Out Of An Abundance Of Caution”

“Organizations impacted include Opera Orlando, the Orlando Ballet, and the Orlando Science Center, to name a few. The canceled grants total $200,000 dollars and were earmarked for arts and cultural organizations that provided programming and outreach for patrons with disabilities … (and for) grassroots organizations.” - Central Florida Public Media

Number Of Productions Staged By British Theatres Has Plummeted Over Last Decade

“The number of plays and musicals staged by the UK's main subsidised theatres last year was down by almost a third compared with 10 years earlier, BBC research suggests. In 2024, the 40 best-funded theatre companies that make their own productions opened 229 original productions, compared with 332 in 2014.” - BBC

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