But more people would know her as the "blue-eyed, flame-haired Irish singer and storyteller who packed Carnegie Hall on St. Patrick’s Day for a quarter-century and regaled her audiences with tunes and tales from the Old Country." - The New York Times
The Mouse promised change at the protests in the wake of George Floyd's death. But the online chatter over racism on The Bachelor has only grown. "As the furor crests heading into the finale, neither Disney nor ABC has commented publicly on the matter, despite leadership’s less than year-old pledge to be open about racial issues. The subject was...
Good: "Some film insiders are privately asking an uncomfortable question: How do you tastefully campaign for trophies when more than 1,000 Americans a day are still dying from the coronavirus?" Not as good: "Calling off the campaigns is not an option for Hollywood, where jockeying for awards has become an industry unto itself." - The New York Times
A good memoir "gets into the feelings that are so buried and complex that they rarely come into focus in a conversation, even among good friends." - LitHub
Yes, there are secret committees. "And they're just one strange, clandestine part of a voting process that is largely shrouded in mystery." Yikes. - Vice
A formerly in-person series of dance workshops in Portland, whose profits go to aid women and marginalized gender people experiencing homelessness, actually expanded during the pandemic. "In some ways, the need to switch yielded some positive change for the workshops. The team ended up creating an Instagram account and getting a website running, ... two assets that they’d functioned...
Gast spent 22 years making the documentary about the Rumble in the Jungle, and in the end, it paid off: "In 1996, Mr. Gast and Mr. Sonenberg took it to the Sundance Film Festival, where they received a special jury citation and 17 distribution offers. Critics praised the film, which nearly swept the awards for documentary films that season...
Some healthcare workers created dances to deal with the losses and tragedies - and stresses of people not believing in the virus' toll - and some painted. Some silkscreened; some embroidered on old bedsheets when fabric became less available. But all of the healthcare workers used art to cope. One physician: "The suffering we have seen with COVID-19 is...
So do most awards - and that excludes nonbinary, extraordinarily popular singer Sam Smith. The official line: "The Brits are committed to evolving the show and the gendered categories are very much under review. But any changes made to be more inclusive need to be just that - if a change unintentionally leads to less inclusion then it risks...
We mourn together for our lost months and years. "Every day the theatre is dark, an opportunity for transformation is lost—yes, for the performers, remaking themselves so completely that, on the best of days, they lack any tether to the real world. But just as importantly, for the audiences who find that bearing witness to those performances, has remade...
With Chita Rivera, André De Shields, and an array of singers and dancers, the pop-up on the anniversary of Broadway's shutdown gave paying work to performers who haven't seen much of it in a year. And it was hopeful: "Although they aren’t likely to perform inside theaters again until after Labor Day, the message of the show was that...
We all have books that are waiting for just such an occasion. When the author of Homecoming and Transcendent Kingdom was young, her parents made her "write a report on the children’s book I was reading at the time. I think it was The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. ... I wrote something to the effect of 'This book is very...
The guidelines are stringent - each county must cycle completely out of "colors" of COVID-19 infections before indoor theatre can open, and they have to cycle way lower rates before outdoor theatre can open at a low capacity, with reservations and assigned seating, and only with people from within 120 miles of the theatre. It's weirdly different from movie...
Dupont was a household name in France, where his death was major news and occasioned a press release from the president's office. He was sent to audition for the Paris Opera Ballet School at 10: "His talent and charm made him a favorite of the school’s director, Claude Bessy, who championed him despite his often rebellious attitude and frequent...
At least a little bit: "'The expectation of an elite ballet company is that it's going to be really cutthroat and really scary and really intimidating,' Holloway said, but ABT is a big, supportive family who like to have fun" - and both the older Instagram and fairly new TikTok accounts emphasize that for their younger-skewing audiences. -...
