The 91-year-old theatre legend talks about stepping in for Diana Rigg as Mrs. Higgins in the Broadway revival of My Fair Lady. (No, she wasn’t at all insulted, and she found the prospect daunting.) — TheaterMania
The Intriguing Science That Explains Wit, Humor
Wit, whether visual or verbal, can make the commonplace uncommon again by breaking the habits that render perception routine. We tend to define the quality of wit as merely being deft with a clever comeback. But true wit is richer, cannier, more riddling. And the best of it is often based on a biological phenomenon called supernormal stimuli. – The Atlantic
How A Surrealist Painting Saved The Lives Of The Family Of The World’s Most Dangerous Drug Lord
Victoria Eugenia Henao, widow of Pablo Escobar of the Medellín drug cartel (yes, Millennials, he was even worse than El Chapo), says that Salvador Dalí’s The Dance accomplished something that even the hippos couldn’t: it kept her and her family safe more than once. — The New York Times
The Ruins Of A Street – Turned Into A Museum
“We came to Greensboro to attend a group exhibition presented by a cohort of artist residents whose blend of style and performance provoked laughter one minute and tears the next. Their work offered insights into a network we knew little about, and through them, we discovered a poetic intersection that is worth revisiting: the nexus of art and travel.”
NYer Critic Michael Schulman Reflects On This Year’s Best Theatre
“I’ve noticed a common thread. It’s the theme of terra firma not being so firma—of finding cracks in a foundation you thought was rock solid, whether the U.S. Constitution, a time-tested love story, or memory itself. Perhaps I’m projecting: this year (like the year before) was one in which the world felt like an unsafe bet, and America like a bait and switch. Or maybe playwrights and directors are responding to our disorienting era by echoing the uncertainty onstage—and by pulling the rug from under our feet.” – The New Yorker
Rock ‘n Roll Has Stalled. Can It Recover?
This year, rock and roll seems bored with itself. The most successful acts of the past few years have been bands bristling at the boundaries of the guitar, bass, and drums setup. The genre’s best-selling album of 2018 was Las Vegas electro-rockers Imagine Dragons’ summer 2017 full-length Evolve, a work that prefers humming synths and suspenseful atmospherics to the growl of a six-string. – New York Magazine
Report: Is Social Media A Threat To Democracy?
Manipulation of our media environment by foreign as well as domestic actors is now the new normal. “If anything has changed since 2016,” writes one experienced reporter, “it’s that social media is no longer seen as just a useful tool for influencing elections. It’s the terrain on which our entire political culture rests, whose peaks and valleys shape our everyday discourse, and whose possibilities for exploitation are nearly endless. – The Guardian
What Does It Mean To Be ‘Cosmopolitan’?
Bruce Robbins says that “cosmopolitanism” has implications far beyond what movies, art, food, and other culture we might enjoy from all over the world. “If you are willing to benefit from a system that systematically deprives people far away of a great deal of the product of their labor and ships that surplus over to you and makes your life more comfortable, and you’re not ready to say anything about that, that’s as bad a problem as going along with war.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
Photographing The Segregated South
A photographer in Durham, NC, in the early 1900s used a camera that allowed multiple, distinct pictures on one plate-glass negative. And the results are surprising. “Mangum’s glass plate negatives tell a nuanced account of this history, one that affords more agency to people of color than the average textbook. One example of this disruption is the photographic evidence that Mangum did not discriminate in the way he had his sitters pose for the camera. These poses can be seen across all clients, each experiencing a typical session.” – NPR
The Christmas Classic You’ll Never Hear At The Mall
It’s “Green Christmas,” by Stan Freberg. “When it was released by Capitol Records 60 years ago, the song caused a huge backlash from major advertisers, many of whom threatened to pull radio ads in protest. A young DJ at the time—one George Carlin—was almost fired for playing it on the air.” – The Atlantic
Why Are Moviemakers Obsessed With 1962?
Some see it as the year before the end of the innocence in the U.S. – the year before JFK was assassinated. For others, that “innocence” was built on an entire system that kept Black people down, that wielded sexism openly, and that was focused on the Cold War. – Los Angeles Times
The Israeli Government Asks That The German Government De-Fund Berlin’s Jewish Museum
Why? It’s one on a list of German institutions that, the conservative Israeli government says, are promoting anti-Israeli activity or sentiment. But “Tamar Zandberg, leader of the left-wing Meretz party, which sits in the opposition, decried what she called Mr. Netanyahu’s ‘obsession’ with pursuing and censoring ideological opponents all the way to the Jewish Museum in Berlin.” – The New York Times
When Childhood ‘Kitchen Yiddish’ Comes In Really Handy
That time is when you get to play Yente in the Yiddish Fiddler on the Roof. “People are so taken by the communication of the story and hearing it in this language.” – NPR
How Can Theatres Deal With Generational Changes, Take Risks, And Work With Failure?
Two artistic directors try to figure it out. Joanna Pfaelzer is the soon-to-be incoming AD of the Berkeley Rep: “When we look at the twenty-year-olds and the thirty-year-olds in our field, they’re thinking about collaboration, about the process of how and why and you make work together, in a much broader way. They’re going to demand that of the institutions, and the structures are going to have to adapt to their vision, and they should.” – HowlRound
‘Silent Night’ Is Turning 200 [VIDEO]
Yes, there is a Stille Nacht Museum in the town in Austria where the carol was first sung in 1818. (And it does have the original guitar on which it was played.) – BBC
A Christmas Without Enough Paper Books As Printers Run Into A Bottleneck
Turns out a banner year for publishing (which is what 2018, improbably, turned into) means that printers are running as fast as they can, and it’s not fast enough. That’s “creating a backlog that has led to stock shortages of popular titles.” (They do have these things called ebooks and audiobooks? But … anyway.) – The New York Times
How Does An Art Museum’s Conservation Scientist Do His Job? [AUDIO]
A great way to end the podcast year: MoMA senior conservation scientist Chris McGlinchey talks “about all the complex machines he uses, the extremely tiny scale conservators work on, and figuring out how to fill the museum with sugar cane that won’t rot.” – Slate