“Heart of Darkness is, to use today’s parlance, problematic. … Whether [the novel] is ‘offensive and totally deplorable’, as [Chinua] Achebe insisted, or a searing critique of colonialism trapped in its time, putting it on stage pulls it into the present. Literature might be excused, though not absolved, by context. Theatre isn’t.” Matt Trueman looks at the approaches two directors are taking with their adaptations. (And some of the commenters administer thoughtful interrogations of the projects’, and the article’s, premise.) — The Guardian
David Shepherd, Granddaddy Of Chicago Improv, Dead At 94
In 1955, Shepherd co-founded Compass Players with Paul Sills, and, as one comedy historian put it, “Without David, no Compass. Without Compass, no Second City.” Which means no North American improv or sketch comedy as we know it. — Chicago Tribune
NPR Develops Open-Source Tool For Getting Podcast User Data, And Feelings Are, Well, Mixed
Until now, the only tools for telling how long users actually listened to the podcasts they downloaded were the proprietary ones of Apple and Spotify. So NPR developed an open-source tool to get data beyond download figures. But with the privacy scandals that have broken over the past year, some podcasters are leery. — Columbia Journalism Review
Please: Transgender Theatre That Isn’t Strange
“To many playwrights, the very existence of trans people is enough to make up an entire plot, because it’s just that strange. It often doesn’t end up mattering where we come from, who we love, what we think—to be trans is so new and bizarre that everything in the play must be dedicated to parsing that, with almost no attention given to the other important factors that make up our lives.” – Howlround
Tania Bruguera, Just Out Of Prison, Files Defamation Lawsuit Against Cuban Government
“Tired of suffering defamations in state media publications such as Granma newspaper … as well as official websites from the Ministry of Culture,” said the artist-activist in a statement, “I have decided to legally act against parties who have damaged myself and my family, psychologically, socially, and professionally.” — Artnet
The Most-Popular Poem Of 2018
More than 250,000 people in 2018 clicked on the poem, which features such lines as “It is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes.” – Washington Post (AP)
English National Opera Makes Its Saturday Shows Free For Under-18s
“Removing cost as a barrier to entry for under-18s is a seismic leap forward for ENO and for opera as a whole, and we hope to entice as many under-18s as possible, from the musically obsessed to the just plain curious.” – The Stage
The Phenomenally Successful School That Exposed A Major Flaw In Higher Ed
Even taking the alleged fakery into account, how did T. M. Landry school seem to fool so many of America’s most prestigious universities for years? The work of admissions officers is notoriously secretive, but what little is known about the Landry affair threatens foundational assumptions about American higher education. – The Atlantic
Krampus The Christmas Demon Joins The 21st Century
The half-goat-half-devil has been St. Nicholas’s sidekick and enforcer for hundreds of years, warning little Austrian children that they’d better not be naughty. Traditionally he’d only appear once a year and his mask and costume would be more-or-less homemade, but today’s masks have things like glowing LED eyes, and there are Krampus shows with heavy-metal accompaniment that “feels like a rock concert mixed with a rodeo.” — Public Radio International
Meet ‘The World’s First Sleep Storyteller-In-Residence’
Phoebe Smith writes what are basically bedtime stories for grownups, 20-to-40-minute narratives that are recorded by actors such as Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley and listened to on an app called Calm, created to help people fall asleep. — The Guardian
Inside The Lives Of Understudies
They get less rehearsal than the principal cast, they have to keep the lines and (crucially) the blocking straight in their minds while rarely getting the chance to use them, and they’re pinned down to one place for all of a show’s run. But even without star-is-born moments, the job is a terrific opportunity for actors fresh out of school to launch careers. Young reporter Zoe Grossinger talks with some Philadelphia actors who are living the understudy life. — The Philadelphia Inquirer
New York Times Book Review Editor Responds To Controversy Over Alice Waters’s Book Recommendation
In response to reader queries, Pamela Paul explains why Alice Walker was chosen for the “By the Book” Q&A feature, how the interview was conducted, and why the published feature didn’t include any explanation or context for Walker’s citation of a book and author widely seen as anti-Semitic. — The New York Times
Nonprofit Journalism And Its Funders Have A ‘Random Acts Of Innovation’ Problem
A new report from Oxford’s Journalism Innovation Project refers to it as ‘bright, shiny things’ syndrome: a tendency to focus on, and fund, new and perhaps untested ideas such as algorithm-tweaking, new media, and even artificial intelligence — often while losing sight of the production of quality journalism that this innovation is supposed to be supporting. — Nonprofit Quarterly
Wendy Whelan Laments That Today’s Young Students Know Too Little About American Ballet’s History
“Today, as I travel around the country giving master classes, … I can’t help but notice my students’ eyes widening as they look to each other wondering who exactly [one or another once-famous American ballerina] is. … As we navigate ourselves forward, it might be good to glance back more often, to see how and why those before us did what they did.” — Dance Magazine
Steven Spielberg Is Expanding His Shoah Foundation To Cover Genocides Beyond The Holocaust
“The Holocaust cannot stand alone. We decided to send our videographers into Rwanda to get testimony. From there we went to Cambodia, Armenia — we’re doing a critical study in the Central African Republic, Guatemala, the Nanjing massacre. Most recently, we’re doing testimony on the anti-Rohingya violence in Myanmar and the current anti-Semitic violence in Europe. We’re expanding our scope to counter many forms of hate.” — The New York Times
Director Quits Broadway ‘All My Sons’ Because He Wasn’t Allowed To Cast Two Black Actors
“Director Gregory Mosher said in an interview that his association with the Roundabout Theatre Company revival — which will star Annette Bening and Tracy Letts and begin performances at the American Airlines Theatre on April 4 — ended after the Arthur Miller estate, overseen by his daughter, filmmaker Rebecca Miller, objected to the casting” of black actors as brother and sister Ann and George Deever. — The Washington Post
Penny Marshall, Star Of ‘Laverne And Shirley’ And Director Of ‘Big’ And ‘A League Of Their Own’, Dead At 75
Her sitcom, a spinoff from Happy Days, was one of the two or three most popular series on American television in the late 1970s; with Big and A League of Their Own, she became the first woman to direct one, and then two, films that grossed more than $100 million. — Variety
Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery Has New App To Bring Its Collection To The World (And Ask For Money)
“[The Russian state museum] is harnessing blockchain technology to power a new app that digitises its entire collection of more than 190,000 objects … In what is being described as a ‘new form of public involvement in art’, the My Tretyakov app invites each user to … either sponsor a work personally or give digital patronage to someone as a gift.” — The Art Newspaper
BBC Proms Traveling To Japan For First Time
“The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (BBC SSO) under chief conductor Thomas Dausgaard will perform during the six-day festival, from 30 October to 4 November, in Tokyo and Osaka. … This is part of an expansion of BBC Proms International, following successful tours of Australia and Dubai in 2016 and 2017.” — Classical Music (UK)
LA County Museum Of Art Is Falling Behind On Its New Building
Not only must it continue to amass money toward the $650 million project, but it also must pack up its collection to prepare for construction. And it faces lingering questions about whether an increasingly uncertain economy will hurt fundraising in 2019, whether the museum’s long-in-progress environmental impact report will further delay the project, and how much competition, if any, it will face from construction campaigns at other museums, including the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures next door. – Los Angeles Times
Higher Ed’s Alternative Values System: Respect
Academics are unlike the employees of most organisations in that they fight over symbolic rather than material objects of aspiration, but they are like other workers in that they too are motivated by fear and greed. Instead of competing over power and money, they compete over respect. – Aeon