Stories

How The Friedman Sisters Found The Great Musical Hiding Inside Sondheim’s Most Notorious Flop

Maria is a successful actor/singer/director in Britain, and Sonia is arguably London's leading producer. They've occasionally worked together before, but Merrily We Roll Along is their big passion project, which they did in England, Japan, and Boston before the New York production that just won four Tonys. - The New York Times

ISIS Made And Posted Fake CNN And Al Jazeera News Videos

Earlier this year, ISIS's media arm created two YouTube channels, with corresponding Facebook and Twitter/X accounts, branded as Al Jazeera and CNN and matching those outlets' graphics and logos. ISIS created four videos each in Arabic and English, all reporting fake news, before getting kicked off YouTube. - Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Netflix Is Going To Open Not-Quite-Theme-Parks In The US

The first of these "experiential entertainment venues" will open next year at the King of Prussia Mall outside Philadelphia and the Galleria in Dallas. Each outlet, called Netflix House, will feature "immersive" experiences (including shopping and eating, of course) based on major franchises like Bridgerton, Stranger Things and Squid Game. - TheWrap

Oh, Great, The Mysterious Mirrored Monolith Is Back

The first of them — rectangular pillars over 10 feet tall, made of reflective sheet metal — materialized, seemingly out of nowhere, in Utah in late 2020. Over four months, similar pillars appeared, then disappeared, in various places on every continent. Now one has reappeared in the desert mountains north of Las Vegas. - AP

Parkour Crew Damages Building At UNESCO World Heritage Site In Italy

The London-based Team Phat — which has already been banned from Venice — was doing its thing in the seaside town of Matera, in the arch of the Italian boot, when they stood on a stone protruding from a historic building and it fell off. They videotaped the whole thing. - The Washington Post (Yahoo!)

How Algorithms Are Changing Performance Art

We are in a feedback loop in which social media edifies and dictates taste. In a time of strained attention, where every next post in the feed threatens to be a succession plan for what came before it, content makers are looking to land on the grid and stick there. - Artnet

German Theatre Reinvents, Reuses, And Reimagines To Get To Climate Neutral

No aspect of the process of making a play has been left unturned. From the lighting (switching to LED bulbs) to reducing travel (rehearsals are longer but less frequent to cut down on journeys) “everything has come in for scrutiny,” says Marcel Klett, the managing director. - The Guardian

Who’s Consuming The News And Why Not

Instead of a left-right thing, the report repeatedly locates a different divide — between people who are interested in news and politics and those who are not. - NiemanLab

Why Is The Progressive Brooklyn Museum Being Attacked By The Political Left?

 Seven months ago, the museum was criticized not for a sympathetic view toward Israel but instead for antisemitic leanings. The turmoil in which so many universities and cultural institutions were now engulfed was playing out at the museum as whiplash. - The New York Times

What, Actually, Is Intelligence? Just A Label?

Instead of a measurable, quantifiable thing that exists independently out in the world, we suggest that intelligence is a label, pinned by humanity onto a bag stuffed with a jumble of independent traits that helped our ancestors thrive. - Aeon

Bayadere Is Stuffed With Stereotypes. Should It Be Reinvented Or Put Away?

“As someone who’s interested in pushing the boundaries forward, we have to know what our past looks like and embody that. What do we really love about Bayadère? It’s the choreography to the music. So, we’ve kept it. We’ve made it better.” - JStor

The Slow-Motion Heist Of Pre-Columbian Antiquities From A Fort Worth Storeroom

In 1996, a wealthy collector donated a trove of ancient Peruvian ceramics and textiles — items which had no clear provenance — to Texas Christian University, which turned out to be ill-equipped to handle them. By 2001, most of them had disappeared. - Texas Observer

How Daniel Radcliffe Overcame Harry Potter

From early on, Radcliffe was aware of two competing drumbeats—two inevitable destinies, usually somehow intertwined, that were being predicted for him. - The Atlantic

Agnieszka Holland’s Latest Film Enraged Poland’s Right Wing — And Became A Hit

Green Border takes place among the Middle Eastern migrants, now stuck in a no-man's-land between borders, whom dictator Alexander Lukashenko invited to Belarus and then, in order to destabilize the European Union, attempted to push across the border into Poland, which won't admit them. - The Guardian

World’s Best And Biggest Video Store Might Have To Close

The longtime University District video store, which turned nonprofit in 2014, holds one of the largest publicly accessible video collections in the United States; its collection currently includes more than 148,000 titles, including numerous rarities. - Seattle Times

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