The report covers theatre across the board. It says “musical theatre has challenged the monoculture”, with successful productions such as Motown the Musical, “but the success of these shows has bred another problem. The failure of drama schools to take in enough BAME talent has led to a shortage of actors suitable for the roles and, as a result, touring productions have been cancelled”.
Author: Douglas McLennan
This Weekend’s Top AJBlog Posts 12.04.16
- Two for One Dylan Crossman Dans(c)e shares a program with Caleb Teicher & Company at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center… read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2016-12-04 - This Week In Audience: Are Our Common Cultural Experiences Suffering Because Of High Ticket Prices? This Week: A relation between common experiences and ticket prices?… Some clues about why arts audiences in Canada have declined over 20 years… Netflix taxes reflect changing culture… Does culture have to have social … read more
- Octavia Butler’s Los Angeles THE posthumous rise of the science-fiction writer Octavia Butler, who died in 2006 and spent most of her life in and around Pasadena, CA, has been fascinating to watch. I’ve been interested in Butler … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2016-12-04
- Celebrating Lucinda Lucinda Childs Dance Company samples fifty-three years of her choreography at the Joyce, November 29-December 11 … read more
This Week’s Top ArtsJournal Reads: An Artist Identity Crisis?
This Week: The next wave of arts journalism layoffs begins… Lots of debate about the role of artists in the Trump era… Prominent Canadian artists petition the government to “fix” support for creativity… It’s getting harder to define what “home” is… Is “mindfulness” overrated?
This Week In Audience: Are Our Common Cultural Experiences Suffering Because Of High Ticket Prices?
This Week: A relation between common experiences and ticket prices?… Some clues about why arts audiences in Canada have declined over 20 years… Netflix taxes reflect changing culture… Does culture have to have social or political relevance?
Today’s AJBlog Highlights 12.02.16
- Making Christmas Music Rifftides activity is about slow a bit. Rehearsals and performances for the Yakima Jazz Sextet with the Yakima Symphony Orchestra begin this afternoon. If you are in the area, concerts are at 4:00 p.m. Saturday … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-12-02 - Children’s books It’s an evergreen story: great books are removed from a school’s library because a few parents have complained about their being unsuitable for children. Today it’s two American classics: To Kill a Mockingbird, and the … read more
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth Published 2016-12-02 - Red sauce and water In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the new musical version of A Bronx Tale. Here’s an excerpt. * * * When should a movie be turned into a Broadway musical? “Never” is a big … read more
AJBlog: About Last Night Published 2016-12-02
What Happens If We Price Out Culture We Like
“Without public access, a culture becomes dead, an inert shell that serves as a shill for profit, while too rarefied and remote to thrive. The quaestores of modern times use health, religion, and access to sports and art just like those of the Middle Ages used salvation: to exploit people by pricing what they value too high.”
A Rant Against Political Correctness
Jonathan Foreman: “If you have had much to do with liberal intelligentsia in the U.S., they like to think they are above their own country, and they often have contempt for their compatriots, and they think they’re better. They think that being super-critical of the United States exempts them. When they talk about Americans, they don’t think they’re talking about themselves. They’re the same people who are always vowing if Bush wins the election, they’re moving to Italy. They never move to Italy.”
What Went Wrong With The Met Opera’s Commissioning Program?
If you start handing out $50,000 commissions to major artists, there’s not a lot of excuse for coming up almost completely empty-handed at the end of a decade. Muhly’s “Two Boys,” which began under the program’s auspices, made it to the Met’s main stage; everything else was either rejected (like Rufus Wainwright’s “Prima Donna”), fell through, or simply withered on the vine, and no new blood has been added to the pipeline for years.
Theatre Artists Talk About What Comes Next For Theatre In The Trump Era
“We tell stories. As directors, we stand beside speakers with narratives other than our own and ask them to tell us what they see so we can build a telling of that narrative with sufficient doors and windows for an audience of wild multiplicity to all walk inside a shared moment of human condition. Samuel Johnson said that the human mind, once expanded by a new idea, does not retract to its original size. Nor, I think, does the heart. And all I know to do right now is the work of expanding the heart.”
Poetry Plays An Important Role In Iceland
Poetry is a national pastime, but not a particularly “specialist activity,” said Sveinn Yngvi Egilsson, a professor of Icelandic literature at the University of Iceland. “It’s part of being an Icelander,” he said. “Yes, it’s charming, isn’t it?”