“Taking place on the last Saturday of each month, the tours are free to all and aim to uncover the queer histories of the objects in the museum’s collection.” For instance, the Flemish sculptor Giambologna’s marble of Samson slaying a Philistine (both unclothed) with the jawbone of an ass — an artwork that ended up in the possession of King James I’s boyfriend.
‘Zombie Movies Are The New Westerns’ — 50 Years Since The Living Dead Invaded Our Screens
“In these fifty years, let’s face it, we have been completely overrun. Zombies are everywhere. They are in our movies, tv shows, books, and comic books, plus, out here in the real world where the Center for Disease Control has a comprehensive Zombie preparedness and education plan and there are Zombie-walks, Zombie-conventions, and, anyway, didn’t you see them this Halloween?” Tim Sommers considers the nature of Zombies’ appeal.
‘Make More Money. Do More Good.’ — Years Of Austerity Have Put UK Theatres In An Impossible Position
“The problem is that, at the same time as having to boost income [because of subsidy cuts], theatres have faced increased demands to justify their funding. Organisations have had to diversify their audiences, artists and their personnel, to prove their social utility and inclusivity with access schemes and outreach programmes … Taken together, however, the two things add up to one hell of a paradox, which risks pulling theatres apart at the seams. Being dependent on both earned income and public subsidy, theatres are having to pull in two directions at once. Make more money. Do more good.”
Are Our Theatres Too Intimidating To First-Timers?
What if you have never been to the theatre before? Could the entrance also be seen as a barrier that feels as if it is there to keep you out just as much to welcome you in? Once you get inside, how do you know what to do and where to go? It can make theatregoing feel as if it’s an exclusive club to which you don’t have the right membership, and one that is likely to fill you with rising panic, adding to the sense that you don’t belong there.
Actors Call For UK Production Companies To Get Tax Breaks If They Employ More Women, Minorities And Disabled
Actors Call For UK Production Companies To Get Tax Breaks If They Employ More Women, Minorities And Disabled
“The actors Lenny Henry, Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor were among the signatories to a letter to The Guardian that said similar moves had been successful before and should be tried again. … Also putting their names to the letter were the Paralympic athlete and television presenter Ade Adepitan, the playwright Lucy Prebble and Jodie Whittaker, the first female actor to play Doctor Who,” as well as playwright and Young Vic artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah.
How Thomas Campbell Ended Up In San Francisco
“There are several large questions there. The Met is obviously an enormous institution—it’s the supertanker of the museum world—and change is complex there, since it’s an administration-heavy institution. I’m looking forward to working in an institution where I can have more direct contact with many of the key players and the program, where the touch on the tiller is faster and more responsive than it is in a big, bureaucratic institution like the Met.”
Is There An Executive Exodus At This North Texas Theater?
Joanie Schultz will have been on the job for only two years when she leaves the WaterTower Theatre in Dallas County. Her unexpected resignation comes just a few months after the departure of Nicholas Even, the second managing director to resign from WaterTower during Schultz’s term. Also, one major donor family had its name removed from WaterTower’s stage because they were offended by Schultz’s production of Robert Askins’s extremely irreverent play Hand to God.
When We Say That ‘Art Is A Right, Not A Privilege’, What Exactly Do We Mean?
The statement can mean one of two things: “access to art is a moral right” or “access to art ought to be a legal right; that free access to museums and other institutions housing cultural artifacts should be legally guaranteed to citizens.” NYU art professor Nickolas Calabrese argues that, while the first would seem to be true on its face, the second is far more problematic than most people who favor it seem to realize.
Cost Of Manchester’s New Arts Center Goes Up By Almost £20 Million
The Factory, designed by Rem Koolhaas’s OMA and going up on the site of the old Granada TV studios, is now budgeted to cost more than £130 million. The additional costs are caused by “construction inflation” and design changes required to improve the venue’s acoustics.
Qatar’s New National Museum, Designed By Jean Nouvel, Will Open Next March
“Innovative presentation techniques are planned throughout: entire walls will become cinema screens, individual cocoons will hold oral histories, and handheld mobile devices will guide visitors through the museum’s displays.” (Nouvel also designed the other enormous new museum in the Gulf: the Louvre Abu Dhabi.)
Is This How Ancient Egyptians Built The Pyramids?
Scientists researching ancient inscriptions happened upon a ramp with stairways and a series of what they believe to be postholes, which suggest that the job of hauling into place the huge blocks of stone used to build the monuments may have been completed more quickly than previously thought.
Openly Gay Male Ballet Dancers Are Creating A New Paradigm Of Masculinity
“If you didn’t know much about classical ballet, you might think it’s an obvious home for queer artists and narratives, but it’s more complicated than that.” The canon is small and its stories are very conventionally heterosexual; even today, openly gay male dancers can have trouble getting cast as leads. “[Now] a new generation of dancers who are collapsing the boundaries between queerness and maleness in ballet by challenging its, and the culture’s, preconceived ideas of masculinity.”
How The ‘House Of Cards’ Crew Rewrote The Entire Last Season Without Kevin Spacey
“[Spacey’s scandal] was a ‘gut punch,’ [co-showrunner Frank] Pugliese said, but the prospect of tossing out five months of work and having to rebuild the season without the show’s corrupt central figure actually emboldened him and his partner. ‘It felt so unfair to the story, in a way, we had to defend the world of the show,’ [co-showrunner Melissa James] Gibson said.” Here’s how they pulled it off.
Bernard Bragg, 90, Pioneering Deaf Actor And Co-Founder Of National Theater For The Deaf
“After I saw [Marcel] Marceau’s performance, I said to myself, if he can do a two-hour show without saying a word, why can’t I?” Bragg once said. And he did: as The Washington Post once wrote, Bragg became “the man who invented theater as a professional career for the deaf.”
Two Miró Works Damaged During Venice Floods Repaired In Record Time
The pair of untitled tapestries, worth roughly €1 million, were disfigured (ironically, by a leaky sink, not the floodwaters themselves) during last week’s record-breaking high water. A specialty tapestry factory was able to clean the works, dry them, and get them back to Venice in time for the opening of an exhibition last week — a turnaround time of two days.
A. Margaret Bok, ‘Matriarch’ Of Curtis Institute, Dead At 98
“Though mostly a behind-the-scenes presence at the school, Mrs. Bok, known as ‘Stormy,’ stepped into leadership positions at Curtis at critical times. … She is best remembered, though, for her many decades as a loyal supporter of the small school started by her mother-in-law, Mary Louise Curtis Bok, in 1924. … It was during her most active period at Curtis that it shifted from being an inward-looking institution that relied on its own endowments and only selectively opened concerts to the public to one that routinely sends its students — and fund-raisers — to concert halls around the world.”
Chicago Backs Down, Pulls Kerry James Marshall Painting Out Of Auction
“In the face of withering criticism from public art advocates and the artist himself, … Mayor Rahm Emanuel has decided to pull the Marshall canvas Knowledge and Wonder from a Nov. 15 auction at Christie’s in New York City, where the work, commissioned for the Legler Branch of the Chicago Public Library for $10,000 in 1995, was expected to sell for more than $10 million.”
Chronicle of wasted time
There was much more to Art Carney than his much-loved impersonation of Ed Norton, the bumbling sewer worker on The Honeymooners, and the reason why you probably aren’t aware of that fact that is one of the saddest stories I know.
This Festival Is Building A Theatre Audience From Scratch In Burkina Faso
“Founded in 2002, Les Récréâtrales takes place in a residential area of Ouagadougou. Plays are developed, rehearsed, and performed in family courtyards, bringing theatre to the people. Whereas non-festival performances at downtown cultural centers … attract audiences composed of Europeans, other artists, and the artists’ family members and friends, the festival’s audiences are locals of all ages who would not usually have access to or interest in theatre.” Writer and translator Heather Jeanne Denyer talks with the festival’s artistic director, playwright Aristide Tarnagda.