It’s familiarity, true: “There is an allure to the repetition of rereading, submitting to the rhythms of a narrative, place, and characters you know well, and the familiar emotions they evoke. Rereading also has a different pace. I tear through a book on the first read, to find out what happens next, but rereading feels mellower and more leisurely, even while relearning the parts I’ve forgotten.” But then, there’s the discovery of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia – basically, there’s the risk of understanding the suck fairy.
Month: July 2018
A Broadway Show Actor Commits Suicide Six Days After A Brutal Meeting With The Director, And The Cast Is Reeling
“However complex the causes of Mr. Loeffelholz’s death may be, widespread discussion of his final rehearsal has brought new attention to the way theatrical creative teams wield power in an era of increasing concern about how managers treat subordinates in the workplace.” In other words, there’s a lot – a lot – of bullying on Broadway.
How Opera Became A Tool For Empowering Young People In South Africa’s Townships [PODCAST]
The founder of Umculo, an organization that uses musical theatre and opera to get both young people and adults interested in the power of the music for social change, was inspired by El Sistema in Venezuela.
Is The Smash Hit Musical ‘Hamilton’ Going To Become A Movie?
Fans would demand nothing less: “In an unusual twist, the ‘Hamilton’ movie won’t be a filmed adaptation. Instead, it is a recording of the show made in 2016 with its original cast, including Mr. Miranda in the lead role.”
A Genderfluid Ballerina Would Love The Entire Ballet World To Open Up [VIDEO]
Assigned birth gender shouldn’t limit dancers to certain roles – “that was what the English National Ballet showed me,” says genderfluid dancer Chase Johnsey. “They saw me for how I danced.”
Grammar Purists Are Running A Ridiculous (And Classist, Racist, Etc.) Ponzi Scheme On The English Language
What’s ‘standard’ English? What’s ‘colloquial’? Why is one right or wrong? “There is no official source of grammar prohibitions. For the English language, no one has the authority to lay down laws. Rules exist. It is possible to speak or write ungrammatically. It’s possible to be ‘wrong.’ But right and wrong derive from a far more powerful, albeit hard-to-pin-down source: us.”
Months After ABC Refused To Air An Episode Of The Show ‘black-ish,’ The Show’s Creator Leaves Three Years Early
Speculation says that showrunner Kenya Barris has jumped ship for warmer waters at Netflix, but that’s unconfirmed. And “Barris will remain an executive producer on all of his ABC Studios shows,” including black-ish spinoff grown-ish.
A University Museum Says It Has Solved A Decades-Old Mystery Of Who Painted One Of Its Popular, 1720s-Era Portraits
The unsigned painting of a woman wearing an outfit with a plunging neckline has been a favorite at the Spencer Museum of Art on the University of Kansas campus for decades. “Over the years, it’s been attributed to a few different artists — first, William Hoare, and then, sometime before the 1980s, to Highmore. But museum curators had never been 100 percent sure of the 1720s-era painting’s true origin, until now.”
Instagram Fills A Space Traditional Media Can’t, Or Rather Refuses To
When television, movies, magazines, and news sites don’t reflect reality, some people turn to Instagram. That includes Afro-Latinx people: “We are purposely recognizing one another in ways we’ve never found in popular media representations and sharing images and stories that redefine the narrow Eurocentric definition of Latinidad.”
A City-Defining Mystery Series Comes To An End
Naomi Hirahira, who is “a one-woman Japanese American history project,” is best known for a seven-book crime novel series. “She has also authored several nonfiction titles on Southern California Japanese-American history. Her newest Mas Arai mystery title and the final one of the series, Hiroshima Boy, was just published by Prospect Park Books in March 2018, and in April her latest nonfiction title, Life After Manzanar, was published by Heyday.” In this article, she takes a LARB reporter on a literary walking and driving tour of Los Angeles.