Everybody in performance needs to toughen up and remember that “hushed reverence at public performances, from classical music to theatre, is a relatively recent invention, to keep the riff-raff out; it sounds as if attending plays in Shakespeare’s day, all tobacco and ale and raucous banter, was more closing time on a bank holiday than church service. It kept the playwrights and the actors on their toes, because they were forced to earn the audience’s attention, rather than just expect it.”
Month: July 2018
The Transgender Artists Of France Are Changing That Country’s Theatre, Slowly
But French bureaucrats might not quite be with the program yet. “‘Since they didn’t know where to put me, I’m ‘undisciplined,’ ‘ [Phia Ménard] said in a recent interview, looking wearily amused. Ms. Ménard, 47, often perplexes programmers. Her stage productions feature almost no text and operate on an architectural scale, somewhere between choreography and art installation. Their slow-moving tableaux dwarf any human presence, leaving audiences with enigmatic, elemental images — a shadowy army of frozen figures melting before our eyes, say, or a lonely performer struggling in a vortex of fan-powered winds.”
How A 97-Year-Old Artist Became The Hot ‘Discovery’ Of A Show In Los Angeles
“Luisa Amelia Garcia Rodriguez Hurtado was born on Nov. 28, 1920, in Caracas, Venezuela. And over the 97 years that have passed between her birth and the current moment, she has lived at the center of the art world — yet also at its margins. … Just in the last two years she’s had two solo exhibitions, but before 2016 her last solo show was back in 1974 at L.A.’s Woman’s Building. You could say that at 97, Hurtado is a fresh face in art.”
A Theatre Director Takes A Research Trip (And Some Selfies)
Lileana Blain-Cruz went to New Orleans before she began directing Marcus Gardley’s “The House That Will Not Stand,” which is set in 1813 in the city. She documented what she discovered, and “even the food, she reported, felt relevant.”
Ireland’s Extremely Cool Orchestra Members Play David Bowie In Their Wellies
The Trinity Orchestra plays everywhere, including summer music festivals (which can be rather damp on the Emerald Isle). “‘The priority is not to lose your instrument when you’re camping,’ says Kellie O’Neill, nodding. ‘Yep. That would be pretty bad.'”
The Science Behind How We Feel About Art
About two dozen labs in the U.S. are studying “experimental aesthetics” – why we like what we like, and why we make art at all. “The mysteries of the aesthetic response, and the creative impulse, have become a burgeoning area of inquiry for scientific researchers across many disciplines. They hope quantifiable data and statistical analysis can help explain matters that some consider ineffable — like why we paint or sing, or why we naturally favor Van Gogh’s sunflowers over the landscapes we encounter in budget hotel rooms.”
Meet Marsha Hunt, A 100-Year-Old Hollywood Actress Who Stood Up For Her Peers And Never Lost Her Principles
She lost her Hollywood career (though she found work on stage) thanks to her advocacy for free speech. “Hunt is the last surviving member of what was known as the Committee for the First Amendment. It was a group of a few dozen big Hollywood names, including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston and Judy Garland. They produced a radio show called Hollywood Fights Back, protesting HUAC as itself un-American. And several members, including Hunt, flew to Washington, D.C. to show support for the writers and directors who’d been called to testify before HUAC.”
In Santa Fe, ‘Doctor Atomic’ Is A Very Local Opera
Peter Sellars, who is re-creating the 2005 opera for a run in Santa Fe, says he’s also reconsidering elements of it. “Here the story is, of course, the Los Alamos laboratory, … but also the ‘downwinders,’ the people living with all these cancers from all the test sites — and the pueblos that are 10 minutes away from Los Alamos, where most people and their families were employed.”
Artist Steve Ditko, Co-Creator Of Spider-Man And Doctor Strange, Has Died At Age 90
Though he left Marvel after a serious falling out with Stan Lee, he worked for other comic publishers and returned to Marvel and worked as a freelancer from the 1970s onward. ” Among his last creations was Squirrel Girl in 1992, who has become a cult favorite in recent years.”
AJBlog Weekend Highlights 07.08.18
- Watrous Plays Rifftides readers sent so many interesting comments about the passing of Bill Watrous, and about Alexandra Leh’s remembrance the following day, that the staff has voted to reward you all with video of … read more
- When the king is a queen In today’s Wall Street Journal I review two of the Hudson Valley Shakepeare Festival’s new productions, Richard IIand The Taming of the Shrew. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Seven years ago, it was … read more