“A group of conservative Muslim clerics in India have called on the organisers of the annual Jaipur literary festival to drop speakers who were involved in a demonstration of support for Salman Rushdie at last year’s event before the opening later this week.”
Month: January 2013
English Theatre Has Cut Off Working Class Actors, Says Brian Cox
“I have nothing against [public school-educated actors] Eddie Redmayne, Damian Lewis or Benedict Cumberbatch, but I think the acting industry should be more mixed. At the moment, it’s cutting itself off from a whole section of society. … I feel awful that young people don’t have the opportunities that I had. That understanding of the need for social mobility that came after the Second World War has gone.”
Andy Warhol, Expressionist
“[His] 300 drawings from the 1950s … show another side to Warhol, an artist we mostly know for his pop art screen prints, his soup cans, car crashes, Marilyns and so on. Here … we see a skilled and sensitive draughtsman producing images that are more Egon Schiele than pop art.”
Showing Audiences How The Choreographic Sausage Is Made
“Designed as a way to open a window onto the creative process, [Doug Varone’s] Stripped/Dressed intimately reveals to an audience within sweat-spray range how a dance is constructed by stripping it down – no costumes, minimal lighting – and rebuilding it to its fully dressed performance state.”
Sydney Opera House Lands Multimillion-Dollar Sponsorship (But No Logos On The Sails)
“[The] New South Wales government is adamant that a three-year, multimillion-dollar agreement between the World Heritage-listed Sydney Opera House and [Abu Dhabi-based) Etihad Airways will not see the Opera House’s name changed.”
My Bauhaus Is Better Than Yours: What’s In A Name That Everybody Wants To Use?
“To any design enthusiast, the word Bauhaus means one thing: the art and design school founded by the architect Walter Gropius … [But] hundreds of organizations have chosen the name Bauhaus: from a Hong Kong furniture store and a solar energy conference in Frankfurt, to a Madrid investment bank and a hostel in the Belgian city of Bruges” – sparking brand confusion and lots of lawsuits.
Ultra High-Definition TVs – Do Consumers Really Want Them?
“Having seen interest in 3D television fizzle, consumer-electronics firms are desperate to find some other blockbuster product that will get customers back into big-box stores. The development most are hoping will do the trick is a display technology known as Ultra High-Definition that offers four times the resolution of today’s 1,080p HDTV sets.”
In Rehearsal For The World Premiere Of Doubt, The Opera
“At one point in the afternoon, mezzo soprano Denyce Graves arrived, dressed for an evening out in contrast to the three other principals … in their casual sweaters and sneakers.”
Daniel Radcliffe: Why Are People Shocked About Gay Sex Scenes?
Says the actor, who plays Allen Ginsberg in the new film Kill Your Darlings, “For me, there’s something very strange about that because we see straight sex scenes all the time. We’ve seen gay sex scenes before. I don’t know why a gay sex scene should be any more shocking than a straight sex scene. Or both of them are equally un-shocking.”
Brazil’s $35 Million Promotion Campaign For Literature
“The Brazilian government is anteing up over US$35 million to fund a program over the next eight years that aims to inject Brazilian literature into international markets by funding translations into other languages, grants to publishers outside of Brazil to promote Brazilian publications …, and travel grants to send Brazilian authors on world publicity tours.”