In an essay for the Sunday Arts & Leisure section, the American actor – one of the few to perform at England’s National Theatre – recounts his joyful discovery of one of the actors’ traditions there.
Month: January 2013
Rescuing The Stately Homes Of Persia
“For thousands of years, houses with secluded gardens and courtyards have been a cornerstone of Iranian architecture … But in past decades the houses fell out of favor and were widely demolished to make way for glassed apartment blocks, especially in Tehran.” Now one of Iran’s top designers is leading a trend to save and restore historic houses in the city of Kashan.
New York City Ballet Targets Young Urbanites With Visual Art
“The New York City Ballet is speculating that, much like Billy Elliot, most young city-dwellers would love ballet if they just gave it a chance. In order to entice these folks to make that initial jeté into ballet, the NYCB is starting an annual collaboration with some contemporary artists, the fruits of which will be on display all around the city.”
Diablo Ballet Tries Crowdsourcing Choreography Ideas
“In a process it dubs the ‘world’s first web ballet’,” the San Francisco Bay Area company “is taking suggestions starting Tuesday for a new ballet, via Twitter. Participants can cast votes for one of three choices of music and can suggest the mood of the work, the emotions of the dancers, or different dance moves to include.”
Steven Soderbergh Does Celexa
“It was only a matter of time before Hollywood, where antidepressants are common as after-dinner mints, turned them into a high-stakes movie thriller.”
Tenor On ‘Vocal Strike’ Over Opera Ad Campaign
Marc Hervieux, billed by L’Opéra de Montréal as “the prince of Québec tenors”, is refusing to sing during rehearsals because he’s angry that the company’s posters for Die Fledermaus feature models instead of singers.
A Hollywood Actress Who Actually Likes Getting Older
“There are those actresses – no names mentioned, of course – so eager to preserve their ingénue image that they bridle strenuously at the idea of playing a mother. Fine, so just give the part to Mare Winningham. ‘I rather like growing old. I’ve been playing a mom for a while now,’ the girlish-looking Ms. Winningham, 53, forthrightly said.”
When Charles Addams Illustrated Mother Goose
Published in 1967, “The Charles Addams Mother Goose … is exactly as darkly delightful as you’d expect it to be, bringing the time-honored characters to wicked new life.”
Does The Self-Help Industry Have Anything To Say To Us?
“Underneath what appears to be umptebajillion ideas about who we are and how we work, the self-help movement has a startling paucity of theories about the self. To be precise: It has one.”
Rise Of The Pseudo-Intellectual
“If you’re a certain kind of amateur intellectual with self-improving impulses, it’s less vulgar to entrust your anxieties to a Cambridge- and Harvard-educated pop philosopher who speaks three languages than to the hearty exhortations of Tony Robbins or Oprah.”