The selection committee for the prize cited the actress/playwright/author/educator for creating “what is in some ways a new art form” – documentary theater, with scripts assembled verbatim from interviews – “to address today’s major social issues.”
Month: January 2013
Houston Grand Opera To Begin Its First Ring Cycle
As part of a nine-opera 2013-14 season that will feature nearly half again as many performances as this one, HGO will present the first installment (Rheingold) of Wagner’s tetralogy in the Valencia staging by the (in)famous Barcelona theater troupe La Fura dels Baus.
What George Orwell Got Wrong: Writing Style
“Orwell’s assault on political euphemism, then, is righteous but limited. His more general attacks in Politics on what he perceives to be bad style are often outright ridiculous, parading a comically arbitrary collection of intolerances.”
First-Ever Crowdfunded Theatre Opens In South London
“Matthews Yard in Croydon has raised nearly £8,000 in just over a month through online pledge system Kickstarter to put towards a new performance space … housed in a disused basement that was previously part of a supermarket.”
St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Cancels Yet More Concerts
“Management and musicians of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra met twice at the beginning of January, but those talks appear to have gone nowhere. Management announced Thursday evening that it would cancel concerts through March 23.”
Philadelphia Orchestra Returns To Regular Radio For First Time In 23 Years
“It’s not the restoration of a national radio presence, but the Philadelphia Orchestra will return to regional radio under the terms of a new deal with WRTI-FM.”
English National Ballet Rebrands Itself – With Vivienne Westwood
“English National Ballet has launched a campaign to re-brand itself by creating a new logo and website and joining forces with Vivienne Westwood, who has provided clothes for the campaign pictures.”
When Humanities Professors Watch Sex And The City
“According to some scholars, Sarah Jessica Parker’s much-scrutinized protagonist is a feminist icon; according to others, she’s a post-feminist icon. She’s a philosopher in the 19th-century European tradition and the quintessential damsel in distress, a gay-rights poster child in Asia and somehow also a xenophobic bigot.”
This Funder Wants Your Weirdest Ideas
“Want to stage a realistic re-enactment of a violent 1980s industrial dispute? Or perhaps line the interior of an apartment with copper sulphate crystals? These are the kind of unlikely proposals that the arts commissioning body Artangel has realised. Now it is asking artists, composers, filmmakers and choreographers to propose fresh ideas for up to five fantastical projects, on which it will lavish £1m between them.”
Do Humans Have A Biological Stopwatch? Maybe More Than One
“That might explain why we perceive time as moving forward, but it fails to account for why we often perceive time moving at varying speeds. Why does it speed up when we’re having fun, but slow down when we’re bored? Most of us are fairly good at measuring short time intervals – seconds, minutes – but neuroscientists aren’t sure how we do it.”