Ralph Lister, Director of the Somerset-based NPO Take Art, believes that England’s rural arts infrastructure could disappear entirely within the next five years unless ACE takes steps to address the funding imbalance. – Arts Professional
Saved By A Donor, Australia’s Top Professional Vocal Ensemble Emerges From Bankruptcy
In May, The Song Company suddenly announced that it was ceasing business and beginning the bankruptcy process called in Australia Voluntary Administration. Then, in early June, the ensemble’s board chairman announced that, following “the intervention of a significant donor” and confirmation of government funding, “the company is in a good position to recommence trading.” – Limelight (Australia)
What Did Old English Sound Like?
“No one living, of course, knows exactly what it sounded like, so scholars make their best educated guesses using internal evidence in the scant literature, secondary sources in other languages from the time, and similarities to other, living languages.” And here are some of those educated guesses, applied to excerpts from Beowulf, prayers, and even a casual conversation. – Open Culture
Robert Kelley On 50 Years Of Running TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, This Year’s Regional Tony Award Winner
“Actually, our growth curve as a company parallels almost exactly the growth of Silicon Valley as a thing. And I credit our success and durability as a company with the fact that we were in this unique area that was changing rather dramatically over time over this same period. It was becoming one of the most international and diverse places on earth, really. And diversity is one of the big commitments of TheatreWorks, one of our core values, and that was something that made the company, we think, increasingly attractive to people in the region.” – American Theatre
Twin Cities’ Theater Mu Hires New Artistic Director To ‘Reunite’ Company Following #MeToo Scandal
Lily Tung Crystal began her career as a news journalist who did stage acting on the side. She now says that “theater is the hobby that became a job” — in 2010, she co-founded the Bay Area Asian-American theater company Ferocious Lotus. She comes to Theater Mu following last December’s dismissal of artistic director Randy Reyes. – The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
The Last ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ Machines In New York
Or, at least, in Manhattan. The once-wildly-popular 1990s electronic game can still be played at arcades in Times Square and Chinatown, where there is a devoted following. – The New York Times
Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum Has New Director, Nearly Two Years After (Non-)Scandal
“After more than a year and a half of being without a permanent director, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam said that the veteran museum leader Rein Wolfs has been picked to fill the position. … [He] follows Beatrix Ruf, who resigned in October 2017 after three years on the job, amid conflict-of-interest accusations from which she was later cleared.” – ARTnews
Maker Faire Has Shut Down And Laid Off Its Staff
For 15 years, MAKE: guided adults and children through step-by-step do-it-yourself crafting and science projects, and it was central to the maker movement. Since 2006, Maker Faire’s 200 owned and licensed events per year in over 40 countries let attendees wander amidst giant, inspiring art and engineering installations. – TechCrunch
Did The Enlightenment Invent The Future?
We didn’t used to worry or predict it, aside from religious prophets. Then came the idea of progress. “The Enlightenment gave humanity the idea that we might make things better, that perhaps there was some inevitability to this, that we would discover more, find better ways to live, treat one another with greater kindness, and eventually build a kind of heaven without the need of gods to hold it up.” – LitHub
Moving, By Choice, From Ballerina To Administrator
Kathleen Breene Combs has been with the Boston Ballet for decades. now, she’s packing up her pointe shoes, putting on the business shoes, and moving to Rhode Island’s Festival Ballet Providence as executive director. Her interest in the smooth running of the back end came about when she got active in the union, negotiating dancers’ contracts, and morphed into something else when she got pregnant. – Pointe Magazine
Casual French Is Sprinkled With English Words, But Young French Workers Say They Need More
One young woman who is at “the university of Mickey Mouse” – that is, working in communications for Disneyland Paris – says that fluency in idiomatic English is a must-have for business. If you aren’t fluent, she says, you’re ashamed – and “it makes you feel excluded.” And the laws that help French resist anglicization may be part of the problem. – Le Monde (France)
Tharp Times Three
Twyla Tharp revivals bring to mind how we understood her 40 years ago. – Deborah Jowitt
After Ava DuVernay’s Netflix Series On The Central Park Five, The Prosecutor Is Dropped By Publisher
Linda Fairstein published 24 books after retiring as a prosecutor, but the new Netflix series When They See Us shows her “determined to see the boys convicted, regardless of inconsistencies and evidence that suggested their innocence.” That may be dramatized – and she has threatened a lawsuit – but the fallout has been swift. – The New York Times
Dr. John, Back in the Day and Blindfolded
The dazzling, dense, glorious career of the New Orleans musician. – Howard Mandel
The Met Scales (Way) Back On A Production Whose Technological Demands Just Can’t Be Met
The opera will go back to concert productions of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust next year, because, well, the production that was scheduled was way too demanding. The Met “decided not to revive the production after officials realized that they would need to revamp some elements of it to meet newer industry safety standards, refurbish some of its automated mechanical systems, and update video projections that are more than a decade old.” – The New York Times
Our Obsession With Old Diaries And Other ‘Found Texts’
The author, or is that “the author,” of a new book that emerged from a diary found in 2004, says that she learned to write while reshaping the diary into a book, and that there’s a certain cost to that: “By selecting and shaping the material in this way I’ve distorted, misrepresented the ‘real life’ of the diary to suit my purposes—or, as Davis says, I’ve made it into a fiction.” – The Millions
Critic Margo Jefferson On Coming To Terms With Her Writing About Michael Jackson
Jefferson, author of On Michael Jackson: “Am I chagrined and shamed that when I wrote my book I couldn’t push myself to acknowledge that this damaged man was almost certainly a sexual predator? Of course I am. As a critic I’m invested in believing I’m not in the grip of naivety or denial. … [But] the crises that have created #MeToo and similar movements show how little we knew and how little we chose to know.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Backstage ‘Nests’ Of Broadway
Harvey Fierstein (who prefers a riot of color): “Superstition demands that a dressing room cannot be decorated until the reviews are published. It’s the old ‘counting your chicks before they’re hatched’ deal. But some actors take the monastic approach even further.” – The New York Times
Laura Linney On ‘Tales Of The City,’ And Leaving Georgia, And Its Retrograde New Laws, Behind
Re the return of Tales of the City for a Netflix generation, she says, “I hope that it does what the arts do, which is it makes you feel less alone.” And re the show Ozarks, which films in Georgia: “I don’t want to ever stop working in Georgia. But if this law goes forward … I think we’ll have to leave. Because if you don’t stand up for this, then what do you stand up for? What does it take?” – The New York Times
When Theatre Artists Read The Mueller Report Aloud, Did That Qualify As Theatre?
Howard Sherman (who was one of the readers): “It certainly was a performance: the airing of a document with the use of theatrical tools to illuminate a text for others. … If journalism is the rough draft of history, then [the reading] was the first draft of drama based on history.” – The Stage
Barnes & Noble Bought By Hedge Fund
Publishers Lunch’s Michael Cader writes that the deal is for “a modest $6.50 per share,” putting the value of the transaction at some $477 million, “plus the assumption of long-term debt makes the cash purchase ‘valued at’ approximately $683 million.” – Publishers Weekly
The Empress Of Desserts, Cookbook Author Maida Heatter, Dead At 102
A self-taught cook who was discovered by Craig Claiborne when he ate at her husband’s Miami Beach restaurant in the 1970s, she wrote or co-wrote more than 20 cookbooks, the most recent of which was published in April, and won three James Beard Awards. – The Washington Post