• ArtsJournal Classic
    • ArtsJournal By Category
    • ArtsJournal By Category (Text)
    • ArtsJournal (text by date)
    • ArtsJournal Classic (headlines)
  • Subscribe
    • Free AJ Newsletters
    • Subscribe to AJ’s Premium Newsletters
  • Follow
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Tumblr
    • RSS
  • Advertising
    • Advertising
    • Place a Classified Ad
  • About AJ Classifieds
    • About AJ Classifieds
    • Place a Classified Ad
  • About
    • About
    • Contact
  • Sources
  • Contact

ArtsJournal

  • Home
  • DANCE
  • IDEAS
  • ISSUES
  • MEDIA
  • MUSIC
  • PEOPLE
  • THEATRE
  • VISUAL
  • WORDS
  • AJBlogs
    • AJBlog Central
    • Culture
      • Amanda Ameer
      • Ted Bale
      • Doug Borwick
      • Judith Dobrzynski
      • Lynne Conner
      • Jan Herman
      • Matt Lehrman
      • David Jays
      • Paul Levy
      • Clayton Lord
      • Sarah Lutman
      • Scott McLemee
      • Douglas McLennan
      • Sheila Melvin
      • National Arts Strategies
      • Diane Ragsdale
      • Tim Riley
      • Lee Rosenbaum
      • Michael Rushton
      • Andrew Taylor
      • Terry Teachout
      • Scott Timberg
      • Jim Undercoffler
      • Chloe Veltman
      • Margy Waller
    • Dance
      • Deborah Jowitt
      • Jean Lenihan
      • Apollinaire Scherr
      • Tobi Tobias
    • Media
      • Jeff Weinstein
    • Music
      • Andrew Appel
      • Bruce Brubaker
      • Lawrence Dillon
      • Kyle Gann
      • Joe Horowitz
      • Speight Jenkins
      • Alexander Laing
      • Howard Mandel
      • Doug Ramsey
      • Greg Sandow
      • Michal Shapiro
      • David Patrick Stearns
      • Stanford Thompson
    • Theatre
      • Scott Walters
    • Visual
      • John Perreault
      • Glenn Weiss
  • AUDIENCE

‘This Is Your Brain On Selfies’

IDEAS Posted: January 10, 2017 11:02 am

“In the face of [a] typhoon of data vying for our attention, we find a measure of self-actualization in the 16 ‘likes’ that friends proffer our duck-faced self-portraits. It mixes a sense of desperation, vanity, hunger for attention, and pathos … It’s also a modern mode of ‘bookmarking,’ like carving one’s name in a tree – witness the thousands of visitors snapping selfies in front of the Mona Lisa.” Noah Charney looks at the phenomenon, referencing neuroscience, Magritte, and Bosnian stand-up comedy.

Read the story in Salon Published: 01.08.17

Hillary Clinton Had A Slightly Different Experience On Broadway Than Mike Pence Did

THEATRE Posted: January 9, 2017 7:30 am

The audience at “The Color Purple,” which was ending its run, gave her and former President Bill Clinton several standing ovations. One audience member “shook her hand, but said he is still filled with frustration over her loss. ‘She shouldn’t be here. She should be planning her cabinet,’ he said.”

Read the story in The New York Times Published: 01.08.17

Making TV Reflect Its Audience, And Holding It Accountable When It Doesn’t

AUDIENCE, MEDIA Posted: January 9, 2017 6:45 am

Maureen Ryan, chief TV critic for Variety: “I really take my hat off to men and women of color and women who actually fight these tropes in the room because every time you open your mouth for whatever reason to contradict the showrunner, you’re taking your career in your hands.”

Read the story in NPR Published: 01.08.17

Calls For A ‘Culture Strike’ On Inauguration Day Continue, Grow Louder

ISSUES Posted: January 9, 2017 6:30 am

Artists including Richard Serra and Cindy Sherman have signed on to the “J20 Art Strike,” and some museums are considering it as well. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) says it won’t close because “Our entire program and mission, every day, is an expression of inclusion and appreciation of every culture.”

Read the story in The New York Times Published: 01.08.17

A Bored Audience Misbehaves, Is Rude. Write Them Off? Or…

One Story: Some Context Posted: January 8, 2017 10:40 pm

How do you know what an audience is really thinking? Polite applause only tells you so much. Lagging ticket sales aren’t precise about cause. Focus groups aren’t reliable. So then there’s this story about millennials’ reaction to an O’Neill play they were attending:

About two scenes into the play, the students began to grumble among themselves. It was clear they felt they didn’t relate to the story. They were bored, and they resented being forced to attend a three-hour play. But instead of leaving the theatre and taking a zero for the assignment, which might have constituted a kind of nonviolent protest, they began speaking and laughing with each other. Some were asked to leave, but those who remained continued to interrupt the performance with chatter and flash selfies, videos, and a laser pointer. One performer was hit in the eye with the beam.

While that audience’s behavior was unacceptable, I wonder whether we might learn something from it. In some ways, the unadulterated responses of those disgruntled, unengaged students may be a gift. As theatremakers and educators, we have an immense responsibility to deal with this demographic in particular, for they are the next generation of audiences who will—or will not—attend shows created by the next generation of theatre artists.

We might see that disrupted O’Neill performance as a call to reexamine the invitation we extend to student audiences—to question our programming choices as well as our motivations for assigning performances to students in the first place. In short, it can be an opportunity to ask ourselves: What do we gain, and what do we lose, when we invite the next generation of theatregoers into our theatres?

But it’s not just student audiences. How are artists to understand the impact of and engagement with their work if audiences aren’t honest in their responses? Even if those responses aren’t polite. Which is not to say that artists should have to accept laser pointers and selfies. But a decision to write off such behavior and such audiences is a choice to define the conditions and context in which our work needs to be seen. Which is fine. As long as we’re clear about what they are.

Read the story in One Story: Context Published: 01.08.17

The Shakespeare Detective Who Has Determined That Shakespeare Was, Indeed, Shakespeare

THEATRE Posted: January 8, 2017 7:30 am

When she’s not making big data discoveries that slay the conspiracy theories about who else might have written the plays, the scholar Heather Wolfe is creating things like Project Dustbunny, “one of her initiatives at the Folger Shakespeare Library, [that] has made some extraordinary discoveries based on microscopic fragments of hair and skin accumulated in the crevices and gutters of 17th-century books.”

Read the story in The Observer (UK) Published: 01.08.17

Newsletter

Join our 30,000 subscribers

  • 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 ... read more
    AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2019-12-12
  • Almanac: Chekhov on the talkativeness of the lonely
    “People who lead a solitary existence always have something in their hearts which they are eager to talk about.” Anton Chekhov, “About Love” ... read more
    AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2019-12-12
  • The Late Donald Marron & Me: An Affable Collector with a Keen Eye for Contemporary Keepers
    Early in my career, when I was learning art journalism under the tutelage of Elizabeth (“Betsy”) Baker, the deeply knowledgeable editor of Art in America ... read more
    AJBlog: CultureGrrlPublished 2019-12-11
  • Snapshot: Bruno Walter rehearses Mahler’s Fourth Symphony
    Bruno Walter leads the Concertgebouw Orchestra in a 1946 rehearsal of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony:  (This is the latest in a series of arts- and ... read more
    AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2019-12-11
  • Almanac: Chekhov on banality
    “There is nothing more awful, insulting, and depressing than banality.” Anton Chekhov, “The Teacher of Literature” ... read more
    AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2019-12-11
  • DEI Statements
    Recently (Doomed to Fail), I wrote about the essential increase in conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I discussed the important role that commitment ... read more
    AJBlog: Engaging MattersPublished 2019-12-10
  • Audience and Actors Sharing The Thin Place
    Emily Cass McDonnell knows The Thin Place works because of magic. She stars as Hilda in the Playwrights Horizons debut of Lucas Hnath’s play which ... read more
    AJBlog: The Bright RidePublished 2019-12-10
  • Not much to sing about
    In today’s Wall Street Journal I write about the best theater of 2019: On Broadway and across America, it’s the same old story: Large-scale musicals are ... read more
    AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2019-12-10
  • Lookback: the one that got away
    From 2010: Apropos of the front cover of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, James Breig, a reader of this blog, writes with a query: “Impertinent ... read more
    AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2019-12-10
  • Almanac: Horton Foote on the burdens of life
    “I saw all of my mother’s people, her sisters and brothers and their children that are left, that live here, crowding into the living room ... read more
    AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2019-12-10
  • This Blogpost Is Personal
    After a bad accident that knocked me cold and disfigured my face . . . . . . I was thinking of Edward Dahlberg’s ... read more
    AJBlog: Straight|UpPublished 2019-12-09
  • Just because: Richard Burton and John Gielgud in Hamlet
    Richard Burton and John Gielgud in a scene from Hamlet. This production, staged by Gielgud, was filmed in 1964 at a Broadway performance: (This is ... read more
    AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2019-12-09
  • Almanac: Vladimir Nabokov on how to discover Shakespeare
    “First of all, dismiss ideas, and social background, and train the freshman to shiver, to get drunk on the poetry of Hamlet or Lear, to ... read more
    AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2019-12-09
  • Pill-popping mama
    In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway transfer of Jagged Little Pill. Here’s an excerpt. *  *  * How good can a jukebox musical ... read more
    AJBlog: About Last NightPublished 2019-12-06

Our Free Newsletter

Want premium instead?
.

[footer_backtotop]

This site published under a Creative Commons License | Share | ArtsJournal