“It feels appropriate that the audience members have been advised to bring their passports. Never mind that this is on the off chance – as has happened to other audiences – they might be arrested by the Belarussian K.G.B.” Ben Brantley visits Minsk to see a secret production of the Belarus Free Theater.
Month: October 2015
Making Vegetable Soup Becomes Theatre
“During a performance that begins as a monologue, and which slowly and organically develops into a conversation, we all make a vegetarian soup together: cutting vegetables and garlic – lots and lots of garlic – and gradually turning up the heat so that the smells fill the room like memory itself.”
The Pomp – And Mockery – Of Louis XIV’s Propaganda Medals
“Throughout his over 70-year reign, the French king directed a self-portrait campaign in medals – the petite propaganda that spread his image and victories across the continent. However, that didn’t stop his enemies from mocking his grandeur in the same medium.”
Here Are The Finalists For This Year’s National Book Awards
“Among the books that have survived the second round of cuts, a few clear favorites are beginning to emerge – while others have been displaced by less familiar names.”
Speaking In Tongues: The Remarkable Boom In Invented Languages
Elvish, Klingon, Na’vi, Dothraki – they’re all “conlangs” (constructed languages), and there are many, many more. “The story of conlanging is, as with so many other bodies of knowledge, the story of old-fashioned research inflated to surreal proportions by the internet’s bellows. Yes, you can be a professional conlanger, but the competition is stiff.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 10.14.15
Marketing and Development Terminology
This is part of a series of blog posts in conjunction with TRG Arts on the interrelationships among marketing, development, fundraising, and community engagement. The point of the series is that they are all rooted in relationship building and maintenance. … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2015-10-13
Worth 1,000 Words: An Illustrated Companion to My WSJ Review of the Wadsworth Atheneum
My article in today’s Wall Street Journal on the gloriously transformed Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford paints many verbal pictures of what I enjoyed during my visit. But “verbal” is often a poor substitute for “visual.” To help you see what I saw, here’s my illustrated tour of what I described in the WSJ … read more
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-10-14
Snapshot: Deborah Kerr and Paul Scofield in Noël Coward’s A Song at Twilight
An excerpt from BBC2’s 1982 TV production of Noël Coward’s A Song at Twilight, directed by Cedric Messina and featuring Deborah Kerr and Paul Scofield. The role played by Scofield is a fictionalized portrayal of Somerset Maugham. … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2015-10-14
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What’s Really Killing Music In Our Culture
“Those who care about the future of the music business ought to spend less time complaining about digital disruptions and expend more energy lifting up the public’s awareness of serious music, because we truly do devalue music when we reduce our most impactful art form to an artifact of celebrity and a lifestyle choice. Complex instrumental music has become marginalized to within an inch of its very existence, and that has a lot to do with industry folk defining “value” in only the way that affects their mailbox money.”
Why The Art World Hates Renoir
“His beliefs are disappointing, of course, if maybe not the right frame for understanding Renoir’s paintings. But if God does in fact hate Renoir, at least he has a decent moral reason to do so. For the rest of us, his insipid, chintzy, gauzy paintings will simply have to do.”
Carnegie Hall’s Internal Struggles Come Out In A Bad Week
“Carnegie Hall cannot exist without large private donations, gratefully received. But it is primarily a nonprofit institution and a public trust, not a billionaire’s plaything, and preferences on programming can only be discussed between board and staff in the most general of conversations.”
Is Cultural Appropriation Bad?
“At a time of heightened racial tensions across the world, with police shootings of black men in the United States and Islamophobia (and phobias of all kinds) seemingly on the rise, this rage against cultural appropriation is understandable: no right-minded liberal wants to cause unnecessary offence, least of all to minorities. Yet simply to point out instances of appropriation in the assumption that the process is by its nature corrosive seems to me a counterproductive, even reactionary pursuit; it serves no end but to essentialise race as the ultimate component of human identity.”