“Naming Gallery in Oakland, California, is a multi-purpose arts space where people congregate on Saturday nights. … In August 2016, a fatal shooting occurred outside the gallery where hundreds of people were celebrating. ‘If we let this destroy us as people, we won’t be able to gather, we won’t be able to share art with each other,’ says Imari, a musician who is part of the Naming Gallery community. ‘To stay open is the only thing I can do right now.'” (video)
Why Movie Romantic Comedies Are A Problematic Genre
“The common knock against rom-coms—besides their being too often glibly hetero-normative and horrendously lacking in diversity and ironically ambivalent about the women who generally watch them—is that they are fantasies, in the worst way as well as the best.”
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised – Unless It’s In A Commercial
Lewis Lapham: “For the last several years the word ‘revolution’ has been hanging around backstage on the national television talk-show circuit waiting for somebody, anybody – visionary poet, unemployed automobile worker, late-night comedian – to cue its appearance on camera. … Why then does nobody have any use for it except in the form of the adjective, revolutionary, unveiling a new cell phone app or a new shade of lipstick?”
This Is Why, In The Age Of Social Media, A Theater Shouldn’t Stiff Its Actors
“Cash-strapped Mad Cow Theatre must pay actors and others owed money by Dec. 1 if it wants to receive a $75,000 grant from Orange County. … The council’s recommendation also requires the downtown Orlando theater to explain how it plans to deal with its long-term debt.”
Exploring Dylan As A Literary Phenomenon
Accademia has grappled with the literary stylings of Bob Dylan for some time. It may be that Dylan hits a funny sweet spot in academia today: To many professors, he still stands for literary ambition and ’60s rebellion. And for many students — born in the last years of the 20th century — he is so distant from the streets where they live he might as well be John Keats.
A Deep Meditation On What Emma Rice Meant To The Globe
The U.S. and Britain don’t have public investigations of theatres’ artistic direction, though Germany does. Perhaps the Globe’s seemingly peremptory dismissal of recently hired AD Emma Rice over lighting will lead Britain to figure that out a little more clearly – together, before hiring a new artistic director.
Quentin Tarantino Says He’ll Retire After Directing Two More Films
The director says he’ll fulfill a long-ago pledge to direct 10 films and then move on to other creative endeavors. In his own words: “Drop the mic. Boom. Tell everybody, ‘Match that shit.'”
A U.S. Visa Fee Hike For Traveling Artists May Make It Even Harder For Them
The fees have gone up to fund free visas for refugees, says the US Citizen and Immigration Services. The fee hike will hurt more than the artists: “When only the wealthy kids who can hire an agency to advocate for their passage are coming, I can’t help but think that hardworking foreign artists aren’t the only ones missing out on something.”
How Video Games Desensitize People To Violence
“Young children have unprecedented access to violent movies, games and sports events at an early age, and learning brutality is the norm. The media dwells upon real-life killers, describing every detail of their crime during prime-time TV. The current conditions easily set up children to begin thinking like soldiers and even justify killing. But are we in fact suppressing critical functions of the brain? Are we engendering future generations who will accept violence and ignore the voice of reason, creating a world where violence will become the comfortable norm?”
Does Shaming An Arts Organization For Not Being Diverse Make A Difference?
Is it fair for one aspect of an organisation’s work to tar the rest? And, equally, can the sector become more diverse and inclusive by ‘naming and shaming’?
American Adolescence Is Now Extending Into The 20s, And That’s Good For The Brain
The key words here are “neurobiological capital” and “metaplasticity.”
50 Years Ago Disaster Struck Florence As The City Flooded, Damaging Priceless Art
“The flood was a pivotal moment in the history of conservation in terms of the development of new methods and techniques, key lessons learned, the formation of lasting relationships and, significantly, attracting a younger generation to the field. It is being marked by a series of events in Florence and Venice (which also sustained extensive damage).”
Maybe It Made Sense For Shakespeare’s Globe To Part Ways With Emma Rice
Terry Teachout argues that the London press’s “general meltdown” over Rice’s sacking sudden resignation as artistic director is misguided, and that the Globe’s press release was basically telling the truth. But that doesn’t mean the Globe hasn’t treated Rice badly.
The Ballerina Who Got Away – From New York, From Seattle, From Ballet – Comes Back (For Now)
Carla Körbes became a professional at New York City Ballet, but left because she wanted a greater variety of repertoire; she went to Pacific Northwest Ballet and had a brilliant career, but retired at age 33. (“I wasn’t having fun anymore,” she says.) But up at Vail, Damian Woetzel got her back onstage, and she’s about to dance Martha Graham in New York.
Chinese Conglomerate Pays $1 Billion For Dick Clark Productions
“Dalian Wanda, a real estate and entertainment corporation owned by a billionaire who has aggressively pursued US film companies in recent years, … already owns AMC Theaters, which it bought in July for $650m, and the production company Legendary Entertainment, which it bought in January for $3.5bn.”
2016’s Word Of The Year Is ‘Politics’ Most Important Contribution To The English Language Since Watergate’
Actually, there will be several Words of the Year: Collins Dictionaries is just the first to announce; we’ve yet to hear from Oxford and Merriam-Webster. We wouldn’t be surprised, though, if they all choose this word.
The Lawsuit Over Broadway’s ‘Great Comet’ Is Officially Over (But The Adversaries Still Despise Each Other)
“The unusually ugly who-gets-how-much-credit-for-a-big-Broadway-musical battle was officially resolved on Wednesday, when the commercial producers of Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 agreed to revise the show’s Playbill to give more specific credit to Ars Nova, the nonprofit theater that commissioned the show. … But it appears that hard feelings remain.”
Kay Starr, Country/Pop/Jazz.Blues/Hillbilly Singing Star, Dead At 94
“[Her] hits, for better or perhaps mostly for worse, defined her in the public mind as an empress of schlock pop, an impression that overshadowed a vast amount of high-quality, less commercial work that was widely revered among reviewers and her musical peers.”
America’s Most Un-Christian Church Came To Picket Juilliard, And Juilliard’s Students Rickrolled Them
“Protesters from the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church took a break from their regular pious activities – such as demonstrating at soldiers’ funerals and proclaiming ‘god hates f*gs’ – to picket Thursday morning in front of the Upper West Side’s Juilliard School in Lincoln Center.” (Their stated reasons are quaintly Calvinistic.) Dozens of the school’s young musicians responded by doing what they do best.
Jason Reynolds, C.E. Morgan And Susan Faludi Win 2016 Kirkus Prizes
“The prize, awarded by the literary publication Kirkus Reviews, doles out $50,000 apiece along with the honors in each category. Judges plucked the three winning books from the pool of more than 1,100 books that received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews in roughly the past 12 months.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 11.03.16
When is a novel like a piano? When it’s “treated”
Tom Phillips is the polymath’s polymath. When he gave the Slade Lectures at Oxford in 2006, we gleaned that he is not only a painter, print-maker and a Royal Academician, but also a film-maker, opera librettist and set designer, a fluent writer, translator, composer, and a musician with a fine singing voice. … read more
AJBlog: Plain English Published 2016-11-03
So you want to see a show?
Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-11-03
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Last Month The Finnish Government Refused Funding For Guggenheim Helsinki. So This Is The New Plan…
“Of its $144 million building costs, the City of Helsinki’s investment would cover a maximum of $89 million. The remaining $55 million would be paid by private investments and a loan, the costs of which would be covered by the Guggenheim Helsinki Supporting Foundation. The licensing fee payable to the Guggenheim Foundation has been reduced by $10 million to $20 million and would be entirely financed by private donations, which have been secured.”
Report: Diversity On American TV Hits All-Time High In 2016/17
The newest installment of the advocacy organization’s “Where We Are on TV” report found that 4.8% of all broadcast series-regular characters expected to appear in the coming season are LGBTQ — the highest percentage in study’s 21-year history. Black characters accounted for 20% of all broadcast series regulars, and characters with disabilities for 1.7% — both also all-time highs. Across broadcast, cable and streaming, the number of transgender series regulars more than doubled from seven last season to 16 this season.
Study: Seven Out Of Ten Musicians Report Mental Health Issues
Professionals working in the music industry, including those in theatre, may also be up to three times more likely to suffer from depression than the general public, according to the Help Musicians UK survey results.
Exploring Rodin’s Significant Role In Dance
“Rodin used his (by then significant) influence to champion the careers of these dance pioneers and he was a key figure in supporting Nijinsky during the brouhaha that followed his 1911 ballet L’Apres Midi d’un Faune, when half of Paris claimed to be scandalised by its pagan images of sexuality and its adoption of archaic-looking dance forms.”