From a children’s choir to pop stars to a soprano who sings with Theatre Bonn and who was “arguably the star of the night,” here are the musicians who got listeners around the world buzzing in the opening ceremony for the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Month: February 2018
Parents Are Not Happy About The New ‘Peter Rabbit’ Film, Which Makes Light Of Serious Food Allergies
One mom who won’t take her son said, “I’m pretty sure Beatrix Potter will be turning in her grave about now. … Allergies are often not taken seriously enough anyway. To have them trivialized on the big screen by such a popular character is immensely disappointing.”
Actors Who Are Working Parents Suggest That It’s Time For Job Sharing In Professional Theatre
One actor set up a forum to discuss West End job sharing ideas, and it had hundreds of members within days. Actor Caroline Sheen is for it. ‘”Eight shows a week for a year – it’s a lot for any parent,’ says Sheen, who has a five-year-old daughter. She’s a fan of having the alternate scheme extended. ‘To explore these avenues further means people who are parents have more options open to them. … I’ve only been able to take short contracts, because of the parental guilt of leaving her for so long. A job share would make life easier for parents.'”
As The Vagina Monologues Turn 20, Eve Ensler Has A New Play About The Body – And Cancer
As Ensler was helping build a sanctuary for rape survivors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, she discovered that she had stage 3/4 uterine cancer. After she turned that experience into a memoir, she, and director Diane Paulus, made it into a one-woman play. “Ensler says there’s something very ‘meta’ about re-enacting her own physical pain and spiritual journey for 300 people, eight performances a week.”
The Oscars Have Begun
That is, the Scientific and Technical Awards, handed out by host Patrick Stewart, but without a red carpet or other celebrities. “This is an awards ceremony where the mere mention of a “rig” — the basic skeleton of a 3-D model used in digital animation — can inspire a hearty round of applause and where a wry joke about the programming language C++ can bring the house down.”
A Gritty French Drama Pictures A Young, Centrist French President, Almost Like Macron
One big difference is that this French president is a woman. “‘Like everybody else, we didn’t see Macron coming,’ said Eric Benzekri, one of the show’s two screenwriters. ‘What we saw is the political space which Macron had, and we gave our president, Amélie Dorendeu, the same space in the series.'”
Have You Really Always Hated Tarantino? Does That Matter?
Yes, it probably does (same for Louis CK or writers now being accused of misogyny, abuse, and more). “Saying ‘I always hated his work’ might be a cheap hipster pose, but it also might be bitterness born of long-suppressed, impotent anger. If you’ve grown used to being shamed or condescended to for caring about an ugly thread that everyone else seemed to be overlooking, the sudden shift is gratifying, but also exhausting.”
Brooklyn’s Home Of Horror
The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies takes its name from Lovecraft and was founded in Canada. It has homes in Brooklyn and London, and it’s heading to L.A. as well. At the Institute, those curious about the intellectual side of horror film can take courses “led by writers, scholars, directors and others with a passion for the genre.”
Learning To Be A Reader In A Small-Town Library
Steven Kurutz, a reporter for The New York Times who now has the entire New York Public Library to look through: “I loved being in a room filled with books. Two rooms, actually. There was a small-town stillness, an atmosphere of benign neglect inside our little library that suggested the great works of Western lit were mine alone to discover. … The persistent feeling that the public library belonged to me, that it was a clean, well-lighted place built and kept open for one reader, was reinforced.”
Frederieke Taylor, Whose Gallery Showed Her Eclectic Taste In Art And Architecture, Dies At 77
Before she started curating architecture shows and taking on clients, she had jobs that supported artists in a variety of major ways: “In Peterborough, N.H., she was director of the MacDowell Colony, a prestigious artists’ retreat, and in Madison, Me., she directed the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. Back in New York City, she was a board member and chairman of the composer, singer and interdisciplinary artist Meredith Monk’s House Foundation for the Arts.”