“Now, just before the 15th anniversary of the attacks, plans for the complex, to be called the Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center, are taking new shape. The New York architecture firm REX, selected after a more elaborate plan by Frank Gehry was shelved, has released its conceptual design. Its proposal contains three small theaters that can be combined in various configurations to produce and stage theater, dance, music, opera and experimental works, and can serve as a space for the Tribeca Film Festival each spring.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
The Glass Harmonica – An Instrument For Our Time?
It’s an unusual and quiet sound indeed, as anyone who has ever moved a finger around the ridge of a glass knows. But it’s apparently a sound that appeals to modern ears and composers.
Lin-Manuel Miranda And Coping With Sudden Mega-Fame
“Toward the end of my run in the Broadway company, you know, it got a little scary outside the theater. I was negotiating secret exits the last month of the run. It was unsafe for me to do the stage door. It wasn’t that good fans turned bad or anything like that. It’s just that when people feel like time is finite to see someone, the urgency is what makes it scary. You know, ‘We have to get that selfie now.’ ‘We have to get this autograph right now,’ as opposed to life being long.”
Data – The American Creative Divide: It’s Between North And South
“Those data reveal a somewhat surprising pattern: America’s Great Creative Divide isn’t between the coasts and the center, but rather between North and South. Take a look.”
What Explains The Long-Term Decline In Reading Literature?
“Since the share of American adults with a bachelor’s degree or more has nearly doubled since 1982, you might expect to see a concomitant rise in literary reading. But that hasn’t happened. Indeed, previous research by the NEA has found that drops in the literary reading rate have happened across the board, among all ages, races and educational levels.”
I’m A Professor. I Write Romance Fiction. I Can’t Tell Anyone. (They’d Make Fun Of Me)
“I write bodice-rippers. Paperback romance novels that seek to titillate and entertain (both me and the reader). I create what is commonly referred to as pulp fiction. I was very lucky to have a mentor from the start, a friend far more established in their academic career who also has a sideline in crime novels. They advised me in no uncertain terms to keep the two absolutely separate. I should not breathe a word about my novel-writing until I had a permanent position. This is the advice that I would, unhappily, give to anyone doing the same thing.”
Study Describes Hollywood As “Epicenter Of Cultural Inequality”
The University of Southern California’s report showed that women had just 31.4% of spoken roles in 2015’s top 100 films, compared with 32.8% in 2008. Lesbian, gay or transgender characters accounted for less than 1% of speaking parts – or 32 out of 35,205 characters.
Toronto International Film Festival Starts Demand-Based Ticket-Pricing And Some Fans Object
“I just felt like no movie is worth $58. It’s already a stretch at $49,” said Jaimie Marshall, a Whitby, Ont. paralegal. She made the same decision to sit out American Pastoral, as well as the animated comedy Sing, to which she had hoped to take her 12-year-old daughter. Though she has been a TIFF member for five or six years, paying $450 for the privilege of early access to some TIFF tickets, she said “this has seriously made me question whether I will continue.”
Ruth Braunstein, Prominent San Francisco Gallerist, 93
“Braunstein was a purveyor of contemporary art when there was little market for it in the Bay Area, and an early champion of such artists as painters John Altoon and Mary Snowden. She was particularly supportive of artists who worked in clay, taking the so-called “craft” medium of ceramics seriously and building an audience for the work of Peter Voulkos, Richard Shaw and Robert Brady, among others.”
Cities Don’t Have Gates Anymore. But What If They Did?
In a time of urbanization, refugee and “arrival cities,“ as well as metropolitan regions with multiple urban centers, could a city provide an entry differentiating itself from its barrios, suburbs and exurbs? If so, what form would this entry take, or would it have any form at all?