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Are OpenAI-Written Broadway Musicals Coming? No — They’re Already Here.

Peter Marks: "How do you analyze the artistic circuitry of a new musical when the musical’s lyricist is just circuits? I faced this challenge the other night at an off-Broadway theater. ... Living, breathing actors performed the musical, but no human brain put the words in their mouths." - MSN (The Washington Post)

Great Contemporary Novels Are Being Turned Into Story Ballets

"Choreographers’ interest in tying ballet directly to literature is a notable turnaround from the 20th century’s Balanchine-influenced rise of abstract, plotless ballets. Using ballet vocabulary to retell the works of great writers is fraught with potential pitfalls. But the medium of dance can also illuminate a book afresh." - Dance Magazine

California Musicians Across The State Celebrate California

The 100-plus participating organizations, some large and wealthy, others neither, include professional orchestras, choruses, opera companies, youth orchestras, and educational institutions. - San Francisco Classical Voice

Hollywood Studios Are Deciding That Filming In L.A. Is Just Too Much Trouble

The city agency FilmL.A. has raised fees for various permits needed to film within Los Angeles proper — and introduced a new set of fees for the use of drones or helicopters, street closures, etc. Says one location manager, "It makes people think, 'Why don’t we shoot this in Canada?'" - The Hollywood Reporter

Lin-Manuel Miranda Is Building A New Arts Center At The Far Northern End Of Manhattan

Okay, he's not building it, or even funding it, entirely by himself, but the foundation run by the actor-playwright and his father is the lead backer of the The People's Theatre: Centro Cultural Inmigrante on West 206th St., expected to open in 2025. - Time Out New York

A Visit To The Real-World Inspiration For Brian Friel’s Village Of Ballybeg

Laura Collins-Hughes travels to Donegal, in the northwestern corner of Ireland, to visit Glenties — not Friel's own hometown, but that of his mother and aunts (think of the five women of Dancing at Lughnasa), where he spent childhood summers and is now buried. - The New York Times

Salman Rushdie Asks: “What Does The World Of Fable Have To Tell Us About Peace?”

"The news is not very good," goes part of his answer, given last month in his acceptance speech for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. "If my work has been influenced by fables," he continued later, "there is also something decidedly fabulist about a peace prize." - The New Yorker

French Authorities Arrest Alleged Leader Of Major Egyptian Antiquities Trafficking Operation

"Serop Simonian, the alleged leader of a suspected Egyptian antiquities trafficking ring, was arrested in Germany and transferred to France. … The 80-year-old dealer is believed to be behind the sale of smuggled Egyptian antiquities to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre Abu Dhabi for a collective €60 million." - ARTnews

A Look Inside The Ancient Egyptian Book Of The Dead

"A standard component in Egyptian elite burials, the Book of the Dead was not a book in the modern sense of the term but a compendium of some 200 ritual spells and prayers, with instructions on how the deceased’s spirit should recite them in the hereafter." - The New York Times

How Did Bach’s Toccata And Fugue In D Minor For Organ Become The Emblematic Spooky Music For Halloween?

After all, Bach knew nothing of Halloween, and to him the organ was an instrument for church worship. (Never mind the fact that some musicologists don't think it was Bach who wrote the piece.) No, the spooky associations of the music come straight from Hollywood. - The Conversation

How Revelations Of Buffy Ste. Marie’s Heritage Is Affecting Indigenous Culture

Suddenly, this story broke and everything we believed about her was called into question. There was no warning and no sensitivity to the impact it would have on Indigenous peoples. This is not how reconciliation is done. - The Conversation

An Initiative To Radically Change The Way Scientific Research Is Shared

It outlines a future “community-based” and “scholar-led” open-research communication system in which publishers are no longer gatekeepers that reject submitted work or determine first publication dates. Instead, authors would decide when and where to publish the initial accounts of their findings, both before and after peer review. - Nature

How Big-Publishing Consolidation Has Changed Fiction-Writing

In the conglomerate era, authors like Stephen King and Danielle Steel are pressured to become advertisements for themselves, even as much of the work of authorship (the research, the fact-checking) is farmed out to a small army of aides, assistants and publicists, leaving writers with less control over their output. - Washington Post

News Consumption Trends — Mainstream Journalism Down, Opinion Channels Up

In the past 16 months, seven publishers crossed the one million subscriber mark to enter Press Gazette’s ranking for the first time – including the accounts for opinion-led UK broadcaster GB News and global TalkTV programme Piers Morgan Uncensored. - Press Gazette

Theatre’s Crisis Is Really A Demographic Issue

I have been told that staff, tasked to phone up lifelong supporters and subscribers who didn’t renew for the first time, had to be given counselling after hearing the harrowing explanations they were told for why. - The Stage

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