Alastair Smith, print editor of The Stage: “[Once,] the rules may not have been written down, but they were clear and strict … Then along came jukebox musicals that asked you to dance along to a megamix. At Shakespeare’s Globe, actors started engaging with the groundlings. … Next, immersive theatre asked audiences to touch the set, to react to the actors. … Rules of audience engagement vary wildly from one show to the next. And the expectations of what one audience member finds permissible also varies from one person to the next.”
Month: July 2016
Tennessee Williams’s Final Novel As (Sad, Scary) Auto-Fiction
Moise and the World of Reason, “seemingly sees Williams splitting himself in two and making the younger self horrified and repulsed by the older, whom that character sees as premonitory.”
After Orlando: Nine LGBTQ Writers Reflect On Finding ‘Home’
“In an effort to create more space for healing and solidarity, to help articulate a more peaceful and just world, CF has invited a number of LGBTQ-identified writers to respond to this question: Can you tell us about a time that you felt at home in your identity? Home is a complicated notion, as several of our contributors note, and it’s ultimately inadequate to the task of realizing justice – but it is a powerful idea.”
Let’s Stop Dissing Amateur Orchestras, Okay?, Says Maestro
“[Eric] Kujawsky is the director, founder, and inspiration behind the Redwood Symphony, which he has recently nicknamed ‘the Bernie Sanders of Symphonies’ because of their steadfast commitment to a progressive approach that embraces ambitious and contemporary music. If you wonder whether that includes a chip on the shoulder; yes, it does.”
Headphones, Headphones Everywhere – Are They Changing Everything?
“Certainly, headphones are an obvious method of exercising autonomy, control – choosing what you’ll hear and when, rather than gamely enduring whatever the environment might inflict upon you. In that way, they are defensive; users insist upon privacy (you can’t hear what I hear, and I can’t hear you) in otherwise lawless and unpredictable spaces. Should we think of headphones, then, as just another emblem of catastrophic social decline, a tool that edges us even deeper into narcissism, solipsism, vast unsociability? Another signifier of that most plainly American ideology: independence at any cost?”
Louvre Releases An App So You Can Find Your Way Through The Place
“This month the Louvre introduced a geo-locator application for multimedia devices that can instantly calculate a path through the museum from da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. The app is a key part of a 53.5 million euro, or $59 million, project to make the museum more user-friendly and accessible to its more than eight million annual visitors.”
There’s Another App That Has People Thronging To Museums: Pokémon Go
“It turns out that a huge number of Pokéstops, as described in the game’s release, are museums, historic buildings and markers, and even public artworks. … Pikachu seems to be drawn to the electricity of a Dan Flavin at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Charmander’s been spotted hanging around the British Museum’s Parthenon Marbles galleries as well as Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.” (Unfortunately, somebody put Pokéstops at the 9/11 Museum and Holocaust Museum.)
JACK Quartet Loses Two Of Its Founders
“Founded in 2007, JACK has become an important ensemble with a reputation for adventurousness and for championing new work. … The personnel change adds a new wrinkle to the quartet’s name. JACK is an acronym made up of the first letters of the first names of its original musicians.”
A Classical Response To #BlackLivesMatter
“After a series of Google searches along the lines of ‘classical music black lives matter,’ it became clear to [Eun Lee] that no such project existed. ‘It just hit me,’ Ms. Lee said, ‘that, as much as we were seeing a response from rap musicians and folk musicians and now more and more pop musicians, there was no such response from the classical music community.'”
Donor Sues Museum To Get Her Money Back
Dr. Helga Wall-Apelt, who donated millions for a gallery for Asian art at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, is suing the museum for breach of contract. She claims the Ringling failed to build the gallery within a reasonable time, failed to display the Asian art she donated for the wing, and failed to hire a curator for the collection.