“I may be one of the last people to be burdened by the self-imposed obligation to read certain books during the golden months of vacation. These days, the summer-reading list seems to have gone the way of the perfect tan.”
The Mass Panic Over The ‘War Of The Worlds’ Radio Broadcast? It’s A Myth
“The idea that hysteria swept America on October 30, 1938, when a 62-minute radio dramatisation of The War of the Worlds [was broadcast], remained unchallenged for nearly eight decades.” But it didn’t happen. (Well, not in the U.S.) Here’s (some of) the truth about that night.
The Grand Empress Of Cabaret In Philly Is A Six-Foot-Two Drag Queen Who Founded One Of The City’s Top Theater Companies
“This year marks 10 years since Pig Iron Theatre Company cofounder Dito van Reigersberg donned a wig and an evening gown, put a clever spin on the name of his legendary former teacher at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, and strutted onstage at L’Etage.”
The Emptiness Of The Invented City
Pico Iyer on Pyongyang and Las Vegas: “Plato’s Cave can look much the same in East or West, whether its screens are projecting images of tumbling cheerleaders or brigades of goose-stepping soldiers.”
The Lies And Infidelities Of Translation
“In translation, a discontent with reality expresses itself forcefully and most hauntingly by the longing to reproduce this one. The fabrication of a new, parallel reality flies in the face of the already created and as such is based on negation, and what should be the vacuum of a dream becomes continually replete as the source of dreams.”
Writers Love Writing Implements, And They Love Them Specifically And Passionately
“Somehow those pencils and that jar from my last teenage year takes me back to my most elemental self, the same self who learned to write holding a chubby pencil and then graduated to the traditional yellow Dixon Ticonderoga. I switched to black ones somewhere along the line, probably thinking I was too punk rock for a kid’s pencil, probably imagining black pencils were the sort of thing Gertrude Stein would have approved of and Nelson Algren might have liked.”
What’s The Point Of A Print Bookstore?
“Books were the original social media.”
Is David Oyelowo Going To Play James Bond? Sort Of
“His performance will be heard rather than seen – in an audiobook. The announcement on Thursday follows long-standing rumours that Idris Elba is in line to replace Daniel Craig when the latter’s run playing James Bond on the big screen comes to an end, potentially in two movies’ time.”
Research: Five Popular Education Reforms That Don’t Work
In a new paper, “What Doesn’t Work In Education: The Politics Of Distraction,” published by Pearson Education, Hattie takes on some of the most popular approaches to reform. Small classes. High standards. More money. These popular and oft-prescribed remedies from both the right and the left, he argues, haven’t been shown to work as well as alternatives.
Run Out Of Money? This City Just Spent £188 Million On New Library. Now It’s Asking The Public To Donate Books
Libraries in Birmingham have posted notices requesting members donate their new and recently-released books, saying they would be “gratefully received”.
Fringe Festivals Are A Lot Of Work. Are They Worth It?
On the eve of FringeNYC, which runs Friday to Aug. 30, we asked representatives from some shows presented last year whether the overall effort — the cost, the frantic pace, the heat and the need to compete for audiences with almost 200 other shows — is ultimately worth it.
What HBO Acquiring “Sesame Street” Means For The Future Of TV
“Sesame Street will still air on PBS—after a nine-month delay—so it’s not as if the program is vanishing entirely behind a paywall. But today’s announcement is a harbinger. The streaming model won’t just be for re-runs and specialized content. It’s coming for all of us.”
Research: Children’s Educational TV Doesn’t Reduce Prejudice
“Despite our vigorous attempts to unearth associations between children’s racial attitudes and their exposure to these types of programs, there were no significant direct effects of exposure to intergroup friendship shows such as Sesame Street, and minority hero shows such as Dora the Explorer,” the researchers write in the journal American Behavioral Scientist.
‘Sesame Street’ Goes To HBO And Makes Clear Why We Should Fund The Arts
The new agreement “simultaneously demonstrates, once again, that the show is a valuable commodity, and makes one of the best, most underlooked arguments for public arts funding. It’s not … about whether art exists or not. It’s about whether people who don’t live in areas with museums, or who can’t afford cable, much less premium cable subscriptions, have access to arts and culture.”
Rupert Pennefather Leaves Royal Ballet, Effective Immediately
Neither the company nor Pennefather gave any reason for the departure. He had danced with the company for 16 years and was named a principal in 2008.
It Can Pay For Itself : Arts Council England Defends Decision Not To Fund Comedy
“An open letter written by the producers of the London Sketch Comedy Festival criticised ACE’s policy not to financially support the art form, claiming it is ‘negligent and dismissive’. A spokeswoman for ACE said the main reason it does not fund comedy directly is that it ‘tends to be a commercially self-sustaining performance form’.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.13.15
Reading the Tea Leaves: What is Ai Weiwei Thinking?
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-08-13
Weekend Listening Tip: Jazz Port Townsend All-Stars
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2015-08-12
So you want to see a show?
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-08-13
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New Opera’s Acceptance Problem
“Why do we have to work so hard to love new American opera? Part of the problem is that even those who love opera tend to think of it these days as a problem child: an acquired taste, a genre that has to work hard to win people over, an art form for which one must make allowances. Some try to conceal it as something other than it is, downplaying the word “opera” on marketing materials about works adapted from familiar books and/or films: they’ll like it, the reasoning goes, if only we can get them in.”
Why Old-Media Companies Are Buying New-Media Sites
“What these new-media entities need most is money (and perhaps a bit of old-media prestige). Comcast has plenty of that, thanks to its cable TV, ISP, and movie businesses. Getting that cash also gives Vox and Buzzfeed a broader reach—and it allows them to brag about being “unicorns” for passing the $1 billion mark. So what does Comcast/NBCUniversal get out of these kinds of deals? For the most part, it means they get a hedge against the future.”
Chinese Ripoff Of Anish Kapoor’s “Bean” Sculpture Raises Ire And Questions
“The sculpture in the town of Karamay and the outrage about it raises fascinating questions. Why would a city in China think it could just knock up a copy of a living artist’s work without permission? Is this a malign act, or a magnificently naive one? Do people in the west make too much of the rights of the individual author?”
In The New Media Universe No TV Show Ever Really Gets Cancelled
“As we head into another season of inevitable cancellations, and possibly one or two announced series not even making it to air on the network that picked them up, producers should look on the bright side. In today’s media landscape, every TV death is an opportunity for a new beginning.”
Why Does So Much New Dance Have So Little To Do With Dance?
It’s an interesting reflection on something – either an overwhelming trend in Toronto’s contemporary dance scene or dance-curator Amelia Ehrhardt’s taste – that the choreography (so far) has been so sparse on actual “dance.” I use the term a bit loosely; I don’t mean to imply that text and pedestrian movement can’t fall under dance’s domain. But it’s surprising to see that so many young choreographers are more interested in breaking down barriers between forms than they are in finding innovations that exploit the singularity of their own.
Shaw Festival (North America’s Second Largest Rep Theatre) Gets A New Artistic Director
“A British theatre and opera director with 25 years of experience, Tim Carroll is best known for his Shakespeare productions, which have shown in theatres internationally.”
Riccardo Chailly Is Lucerne Festival Orchestra’s Next Music Director
“The renowned conductor … got an early break when, as a very young man, he was hired as Claudio Abbado’s assistant at La Scala in Milan. Now Mr. Chailly, 62, is following in the footsteps of Mr. Abbado, who died in 2014, in more ways than one: he became principal conductor at La Scala this year, and on Thursday he was named music director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which Mr. Abbado revived and led for 11 years.”
BBC Radio’s Global Business News Program Goes To The Opera
“Opera is an expensive art form. It receives millions of pounds of public money. Can that be justified? Peter Day gets a range of operatic experiences – from top opera companies, to pub performers and a country house summer festival. The first opera was performed 400 years ago in Italy; how does the future look?” (audio)