Mya Kagan: “Over the past few years, I have been increasingly disheartened by the statistics on women in theatre and TV. The exact number varies from study to study, but they all come in around 20 percent. … With all these numbers reminding me that my industry sees and treats me as inferior to my male counterpart, I started wondering … would I have been more successful if people straight-up thought I was a dude?”
Are There Any Unforgivable Sins In Literature?
Rivka Galchen: “For me, the unforgivable sin in literature is the same as that in life: the assumption of certainty and the moral high ground.”
Benjamin Moser: “The Nazis proved that perverted words can, in fact, lead to the destruction of society. … To use words to serve the cause of human unfreedom is grotesque, like a physician serving torturers.”
And Now, A Rant About How Our Culture Has Dumbed Down (And The Consequences)
“The decades-long assault on the arts, the humanities, journalism and civic literacy is largely complete. All the disciplines that once helped us interpret who we were as a people and our place in the world—history, theater, the study of foreign languages, music, journalism, philosophy, literature, religion and the arts—have been corrupted or relegated to the margins.”
How An American Magazine Editor Accidentally Became A Leading Russian Screenwriter
Michael Idov, former editor of the Russian version of GQ: “I don’t have a good answer for how I got here. Not only have I blindly managed to write Russia’s most popular feature film and one of its most-talked-about TV series of the year, but I managed to do it in 2015, when relations between the United States and Russia were at their coldest point since [the 1960s].”
How The Copyright Industry Misrepresents Copyright
“The richest source of knowledge available, which underpin all college educations even if unofficially, was written completely outside the copyright monopoly context with no need for anyone to get paid.”
Will It Make A Difference If I Submit Scripts Under A Man’s Name?
“What if I was a Jordan or a Morgan? Or what if I was an unfamiliar foreign name, like Sizwe or Hideyoshi? Would I have been more successful if my gender was uncertain? Or better yet—would I have been more successful if people straight-up thought I was a dude?”
That Time When Art Collecting Wasn’t So Completely About Money
“In an age of growing income inequality, the excesses of today’s art market are, for some, beginning to grate. In October, Chris Dercon, the director of Tate Modern in London, wrote in The Art Newspaper that there was a conflict between ‘those who treat art as a private good — from which to profit’ and those who participate in art as a ‘collective process and common endeavor, based on inclusion and access.'”
When You Want To Be Transgressive But You Also Want People To Like You
“If you look at American pop culture, the only well-loved book where a married mom commits infidelity is ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ — and it begins when she’s several decades dead, conveniently dead, and she did it for four days and then went back to her marriage. The guy wrote her these letters, and she just returned them. Why? Leave the farm! No one cares! The kids are up and out, your husband is into weighing heifers. Go to Spain, order off the tapas menu!”
A Military Curfew Killed Theatre In Ghana In The 1980s, But It’s Coming Back (At Last)
“After the curfew was lifted, ‘nightclubs came back, discos came back, but theater did not come back, because we had lost most of the human resource to the new emerging video production market. So we didn’t have the theater anymore. Commercial theater was missing.'”
Who Won What At The Golden Globes?
“The Golden Globes worked hard on Sunday to live up to its reputation as the most unserious of Hollywood’s major awards stops, as stars spewed profanity from the stage, the host swigged beer, many presenters appeared discombobulated and A-list dinner guests disengaged early on. Oh, and some trophies were given out.” – The New York Times
Have We Been Wrong About The Dates Of Mozart’s Symphonies?
“‘I was absolutely stunned, gobsmacked really,’ Arthur said. ‘It completely changes our understanding of the works he composed in that period.'”
Top Posts From AJBlogs For 01.10.16
Recent Listening: Houston Person, Bren Plummer
AJBlog: RiffTidesPublished 2016-01-09
Donna Uchizono premieres a new work at Gibney Dance’s Agnes Varis Performance Center. Heather Olson (L) and Molly Lieber in Donna Uchizono’s Sticky Majesty. Photo: Scott Shaw “Donna Uchizono: Woman of Mystery.” Does that sound… … read more
AJBlog: DancebeatPublished 2016-01-09
Many of the most interesting developments in musical form over the last few decades have featured explorations in non-linear progression. Influenced in part by the implications of Relativity theory, but equally by the ease with… … read more
AJBlog: Infinite CurvesPublished 2016-01-09
I wrote a piece about Harold Arlen for the latest issue of the Weekly Standard: In one sense Arlen’s credits are lackluster. None of his Broadway shows has ever been successfully revived, and except for… … read more
AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2016-01-08
Mozart in the Jungle Picks Up Two Surprise Golden Globes, Probably A Big New Audience Too
“‘I’m really immersed in a world of classical music and that loses me in a void where I don’t know much about anything,’ [Gael Garcia] Bernal said of earning a nomination, admitting he was ‘delighted’ by his unexpected win.”
Contrary To The Claim Of A Very Important Guy, Women Do Create Comics, And They Always Have
“In a remarkably tone-deaf interview, the executive officer of the festival, Franck Bondoux, claimed that there was a very simple reason no women were included among the nominees. Discrimination was not to blame, he said. Instead, it was because of a lack of qualified women. ‘The Festival likes women, but cannot rewrite the history of comics,’ he said.”
Another Songwriter Files Suit Against Spotify
“According to Ferrick’s complaint, Spotify must notify the copyright holders before distributing reproductions of their compositions in order to obtain a license. Spotify has failed to do so in many cases, the suit alleges.”
Why Do Theatre? Ask These People
“‘I’m trying to share this story,’ she says. ‘I’m trying to leave something in the minds and hearts of people who will carry it. And it’s something I can only do through art.'”
OK, Let’s Get Down To It: Who Will Win The Golden Globes?
“At Sunday night’s Golden Globes, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will dole out honors to some of Hollywood’s brightest stars — who will no doubt be slightly tipsy. Who will win? We have some ideas. Who should win? We definitely have some ideas.”
The Mystic, The Monk And The Play Brought To You By Powerball
“It sounds like the setup for some kind of droll joke: A lottery winner and a rhinoceros arrive at the birthday party for a dead mystic. Art, and a blowout brawl, ensues. An unusual stew of ingredients, some onstage and some off, has resulted in this strange spectacle’s move from Kentucky to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.”
Who’s Brave Enough To Redo Jerome Robbins’s Choreography For ‘Fiddler On The Roof’? Hofesh Schechter
“[Jewish folk dance is] the DNA of my dance education. I have been to Orthodox weddings. I know how it looks like, how it has to feel. I didn’t have to research. My life is the research.” As for most of Robbins’s original, “for my taste, it was not energetic enough.”