“As mobile phones have replaced landlines, call quality has, strangely, gone down. The general connectivity of the world — including the ease of international video calls and the use of foreign call centers — means that spelling out a name or word is an increasingly common practice. A modern, updated, globally friendly English spelling alphabet would be pretty useful right now, but getting people to use one might be harder than you’d think.” – Atlas Obscura
Check Out The New World’s Largest Performing Arts Building
Designed by the Dutch architectural firm Mecanoo, the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Kaohsiung is a city of nearly 3 million at the southern end of Taiwan) opened last fall and includes a 434-seat recital hall, a 1,210-seat theatre, a 1,981-seat concert hall, a 2,236-seat opera house, an art gallery, and an outdoor amphitheatre incorporated into the roof. – Bachtrack
The arts pride themselves on being progressive – they should now focus on the language of gender identity
Howard Sherman: “While New York stages increasingly showcase the talents of queer, trans, non-binary, and intersex artists – I recently saw a gender-identity diverse cast in a reading of the classic Our Town – the language commonly used to talk about the work of those artists hasn’t generally caught up with progress in hiring, which itself still has a way to go. The most obvious area where this will likely become apparent relates to awards. The vast majority of competitive arts awards for performance are rooted in the gender binary of men and women.” – The Stage
Berlin’s Heyday As An Inexpensive Haven For Artists Is Being Gentrified Away
“Its reputation as a hub where artists and creative types can rent inexpensively and still afford to do as they please is eroding. Certain neighborhoods, such as Kreuzberg, … [which] was pressed up against the Wall and became home to immigrants with few other choices, have had the hex of coolness cast upon them.” – The New Yorker
The Evidence Is In On The Effectiveness Of Trigger Warnings
“Like many a random supplement, trigger warnings are probably useless for most people and potentially, though not definitively, a little harmful to some. So, with no clear upside, why risk it?” – Slate
Can Science Fiction Be Useful In Imagining The Future?
“The answer is one that divides futurists, writers, and academics. Some argue that there is power in narrative stories that can’t be found elsewhere. Others assert that in our quest for imagination and prediction, we’re deluding ourselves into thinking that we can predict what’s coming.” – Wired
Why It’s Not Good To Invite A Writer Into Your House
Is it a good idea to invite someone into your home whose occupation it is to observe everything? The writer as host might be no better. Even the most thoughtful guest will undoubtedly interfere with the writer’s productivity during the visit. – The New York Times
A Proposed New International Airport Threatens Machu Picchu
The site draws up to 5,600 foreign visitors daily, more than double the 2,500 recommended by Unesco. The new airport could quadruple tourists, to 6 million from 1.5 million a year, which would mean a lethal burden of 22,000 visitors a day, or almost 10 times the limit set by Unesco. – The New York Times
The Classical Musicians Who Created The New Live-Action ‘Lion King’ Score Because Representation Matters
The African American and Black musicians who make up the Re-Collective Orchestra recorded a chamber-music version of Black Panther‘s “All the Stars Are Open.” Hans Zimmer heard it, and then he asked the musicians to record the score for the Disney behemoth’s live-action version of its massive 1994 hit. For bassoonist Lecolion Washington, the experience “felt like an acknowledgement that who makes art, and the stories they bring, holds as much value as the art itself.” – WBUR (Boston)
A Catalan Pop Star Uses Some Spanish Words In A Catalan Song, And Her Fans Are Not OK With That
The Spanishisms, or Spanish words, or words that are a mix, are making Catalan purists and separatists angry. Ironically, “there are also a few English words thrown into the song but, amid the fuss, no one seems to mind that the refrain repeats the words ‘Fucking money man.'” – The Guardian (UK)
What Libraries Mean To The American Dream
Last year, an economics professor suggested killing off the public library and replacing it with Amazon. The backlash was swift – and it’s ongoing. Why? Libraries are free, providing a refuge for everyone, and helping those disenfranchised gain more and more agency – and more: “Libraries are the cornerstones of democracy, where all people—regardless of income, race and religion—are welcome. To me, they’re also the one place where I truly feel at home.” – LitHub
In This Professional Orchestra, All Of The Musicians Got Sorted
Into Harry Potter houses, that is. Way to go, Philadelphia. – Philly Voice
Five Things To Watch For At The Emmy Nominations
Did the voters love the final season of Game of Thrones more than mere mortals did? And how many nominations can the second season of Fleabag get when the first season got exactly zero? – Los Angeles Times
Theatre Criticism Is At A Crossroads
Theatre criticism, like every other kind of critique in the age of the internet, appears to be booming, but that’s not really true. “How is the average theatregoer to sort quality from digital noise and (perhaps more importantly) support those who create high level critiques? Education is key—not just for the would-be theatre critics but for audience members in general.” – Howlround
Dear Musicians, Pay Your Dancers
Yeah, doing work “for the exposure” and vague promises of pay isn’t really great. “Some dancers were going for that because it was a good opportunity and gives you more of a profile and helps to build your CV, but it’s not a good deal. It’s not fair. At the end of the day we deserve fair payment.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Opera Star Who Says Twitter Has Been A Real Lifesaver
Sure, Twitter has issues. And then it has this: “At 58, [Karita] Mattila, who is currently onstage here at the Aix Festival in Weill and Brecht’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” is having something of a late-career renaissance: a newly expanding repertoire and newfound celebrity on Twitter, where she is beloved by some of opera’s most ardent fans. And she loves them right back.” – The New York Times
Will Finding Shakespeare’s London Home Tell Us More About His Plays?
That’s the idea of the search, truly. Historian Geoff Marsh “concluded from cross-referencing various tax and leasehold documents of the time … that the playwright – then in his early 30s – almost certainly lodged in St Helen’s Place, Bishopsgate, just south of Liverpool Street station. It was one of the City’s more affluent parishes, and he would have been living among well-travelled physicians, merchants, lawyers, musicians and writers.” – The Stage (UK)
Sci-Fi Is Trying To Prepare Us For An Uncertain Future (And Present)
A contingent of science fiction writers – that is, novelists, to be clear – are being hired by companies to predict the future. Yes, really. “Mega consulting firm Price Waterhouse Cooper published a guide on how to use sci-fi to ‘explore innovation.’ The New Yorker has touted ‘better business through sci-fi.’ As writer Brian Merchant put it, ‘Welcome to the Sci-Fi industrial complex.'” – Wired
As Playwright Luis Alfaro Adapts Immigration Stories, He Says Greek Dramas Are The Primal, Perfect Canvas
Alfaro met a 13-year-old promising playwright in 1999, but she was in a program for felons: She had killed her mother, who had put a hit out on her father. Then he started re-reading Electra, by Sophocles, and it hit him – he could retell Greek tragedies, but set in Chicanx and Latinx communities in Los Angeles. “‘The Greeks are so primal,’ Mr. Alfaro said. ‘They get to the essence: why we hurt each other, this inability to forgive.'” – The New York Times
Writing About Theatre In St. Louis
The critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “The way I look at it, there are people who just wanna see a show, and there are theatre people. There’s some overlap between those two groups, but not a lot. Some people want to see a big, bombastic play, an Aladdin, and they’re not looking to see No Exit.” – American Theatre
Bob Ross Was A Famous (Infamous?) Painter, So Where Are All Of His Paintings? [VIDEO]
The mystery lasted a long time, and criss-crossed the internet – partly because everyone wanted to buy a Bob Ross original. Good luck with that. (Also, come for the mystery, but stay for the tongue-in-cheek score to this short video.) – The New York Times
Producers Of ‘Big Little Lies’ Promised A Woman Director Complete Creative Control – And Then Yanked It Back
Showrunner David E. Kelley had a plan, but he didn’t share it with British filmmaker Andrea Arnold before shooting began … or finished. “There was a dramatic shift in late 2018 as the show was yanked away from Arnold, and creative control was handed over to executive producer and Season 1 director Jean-Marc Vallée. The goal was to unify the visual style of Season 1 and 2. In other words, after all the episodes had been shot, take Arnold’s work and make it look and feel like the familiar style Vallée brought to the hit first season.” – IndieWire
The Author Of ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ Says Books Are Better For The Brain Than Movies
Cressida Cowell, laureate for children’s literature and a writer whose fame has greatly benefitted from film and TV, says, “Books are a kind of transformative magic that offer magical things that films aren’t as good at creating in children: empathy, creativity and intelligence.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Mystery Mural At L.A.’s Coliseum – And The Teen Who Solve It
The kid who solved the mystery was simply obsessed – and lucky, thanks to a tweet, to find the right timeline. “‘The entire time I was trying to figure out who painted it, I thought it was from 1932,’ said Gordon, now 19 and a student at Amherst College in Massachusetts. ‘All my research was in that time period.'” Understandable … but wrong, as research showed. – Los Angeles Times
The Life Cycle Of A Beach Read
Ouch, why did you have to zing all of us who have ever been on vacation, NYT? – The New York Times
When Will Theatre Awards Catch Up With Nonbinary Actors?
Howard Sherman says the time has come to figure this out: “So long as there are categories for best actor and actress (or best male and female actor), those who identify outside of the binary will be left out, misidentified and othered. This will come home to roost the first time someone with non-binary identity is nominated for an award, and then we will see awards-giving organisations doing hurried acrobatics to come up with a solution. The better option is to understand where the thinking is heading, and thoughtfully make the appropriate changes now.” – The Stage (UK)
So, What Exactly Is L.A.’s Urban Plan For The New LACMA District?
Um … indeed. “The big question is whether Los Angeles can pull it together to approach its public urban spaces in ways that are more cohesive and more mindful of human scale — and perhaps (just perhaps!) correct some of the errors of the past.” – Los Angeles Times
How A Large, Decentralized Social Network Is Dealing With A N*zi Problem
Mastodon was meant to be a kinder, gentler, no-fascist Twitter. Then a right-wing social network moved to Mastodon. “It’s a hard problem, playing off the deepest limitations of decentralized projects like Mastodon. Mastodon arose from the idealistic open-source software movement, designed to let anybody run their own social media site. But it was never intended to support something like Gab.” – The Verge
Someone (A Lot Of People, To Be Honest) Has To Mow The Lawn At The Largest Sculpture Park In The U.S.
Storm King is big. Really, really big: “The art here is nestled amid 500 acres of verdant hills, exposed to the ever-shifting and unrelenting climate of New York’s Hudson Valley.” – The New York Times
The Offstage Toll It Takes To Play A Loathsome Racist Character
“It can be fraught and isolating, it seems, portraying a white character activating the racial overtones of a beloved novel brought to the stage. Just ask Fred Weller, essayer of Bob Ewell, the patently evil father of Wilhelmi’s Mayella, who forces her to concoct the story that sends a blameless black man, Tom Robinson, to prison for rape.” – Washington Post