"Treemonisha experiments seem to be everywhere these days: Three very different versions have recently been presented, in the United States, Canada and France. Their timing is a coincidence, and all were envisioned before the widespread calls for diversifying the canon over the past few years." - The New York Times
Yasmeen Lari, who's spent nearly two decades creating and promoting architecture for the poor using inexpensive traditional materials and techniques, has designed improved, flood-resistant huts made of mud, rice husks, lime, and bamboo for thousands of villagers. Each costs less than $90. - The Guardian
"Barbie combines the rules of the movie musical ... with the investments of a Beckett or a Ionesco play. … (It's) a highly symbolic exercise where theoretical entities get to speak for themselves, and where real people get to tell anthropomorphized theoretical entities what effects they have on the human experience." - Literary Hub
How do you decide that the content you’re producing is actually generating value? That goes back to the question that we have about how to get the residual because if you can’t figure out what the value is going be, then how do you decide how to distribute the value downstream?” - The Guardian
"'It’s impossible not to be distraught about the state of the field,' said Christopher Moses, an artistic director of the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. 'It’s clear this is the hardest time to be producing nonprofit theater, maybe in the history of the nonprofit movement.'" - The New York Times
"With both the studios and unions expecting a drawn-out battle, everyone from makeup artists and costume designers to carpet dealers and foam sculptors is preparing to perhaps go for months without working, at a time when many are still recovering from the pandemic." - The New York Times
The floating psychedelic flowers of this season's Parsifal "are meant to provide the audience with 'sacred visions' of 'a world where wonder still exists,'" says director Jay Scheib. But this production also reveals a massive rift in leadership at the festival. - The New York Times
Arts leaders say the city is treating the needs of cultural institutions like paper cuts, when the issues they’re facing are more like bleeding, gaping wounds. - KERA
It’s not, ultimately, technology that’s at the root of the problem. It’s that the studio executives both new and old have embraced the powerful — and ultimately disastrous — magical thinking pumped out by Silicon Valley for the last 10 years. - LA Times (MSN)
Theatre scenes in scores of countries around the world are every bit as sophisticated as ours in the U.S. (and in many cases far better funded). So why are U.S. theatres generally so unconnected to what’s going on in the non-English-speaking theatre world? - American Theatre
The rise of “postcritique” signals a similar pivot in some English departments, while in the broader culture the aftermath of the Trump years has been marked by a steady retreat from feverish activist critique and a new hunger for style, humor and frivolity (TikTok, not Twitter; Red Scare, not Rachel Maddow). - The Point
"(In the beginning), there was no real reason for (public radio stations) to pick us up. So …we basically looked for what the stations wanted. And what they wanted and needed, but didn't have, were pledge-drive materials that would bring in money and be entertaining to listen to." - Vulture
So how do we avoid this catastrophe? Just as in other areas of recent American life where entire industries were imperiled — banks, the auto industry — this crisis requires federal intervention. - The New York Times
Under pressure to deliver to Wall Street, too many CEOs have lost the plot of their own movie. They are not running companies to profitably deliver a good product, such as a book or a cup of coffee or, in this case, a movie or TV show. They are running companies to deliver good profit. The quality of their product has ceased to matter. - The Atlantic
By design, TikTok encourages different behaviors from those prompted by other social networks. “They say they check Facebook, and they check Instagram and they check Twitter. But they don’t check TikTok. They tell us they watch TikTok.” Like television, TikTok is something you watch. Its primary purpose is entertainment. - Hedgehog Review
"(She's) never played a live gig and is unknown to the music industry. But every day since 2017, Harriet Goldberg's jazzy instrumental, 'My Time to Fly,' has been served up to countless callers put on hold by the customer service lines of businesses large and small." - The New York Times
With the Writers Guild strike now in its 73rd day, this will be the first time that actors and writers have been on strike at the same time since 1960, when Ronald Reagan was president of the Screen Actors Guild. - Deadline
"A word can be a perfect fit until something I try in the next clause introduces a clumsy repetition or infelicitous echo. Meaning, connotation and subtext all matter, but so does style. Below are two attempts to show the thought processes involved in the translation I do." - The New York Times
"(He) was the most widely read Czech writer of the 20th century after Kafka. … Although, unlike Kafka, he lived to see fame, he also survived long enough to witness the waning of his reputation, and never received the Nobel Prize that had once been talked of as a certainty." - MSN (The Telegraph)
Notably, the surveyed artists' professional practice represented just 33% of their overall income, with many having to rely on additional ways to bring in money. Just 12% of surveyed artists said that their practice represented their sole means of income. - The Art Newspaper
