Andrew Scott was awarded for his role in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter at the Old Vic, while Maggie Smith took the trophy for one-woman play A German Life at the Bridge. Lynn Nottage’s Sweat was named Best Play, following a successful run at the Donmar and in the West End. – London Evening Standard
Author: Douglas McLennan
Bad Form: Company That Commissioned “Fearless Girl” Sculpture On Wall Street Sues Artist, Others Making Replicas
The financial services firm that purchased the original, State Street Global Advisors, is calling them unauthorized copies and waging an aggressive legal campaign against them. Critics say the fight proves that the company’s embrace of the Fearless Girl was always less about promoting female empowerment than it was about promoting itself. – The New York Times
Why Netflix Bought New York’s Paris Theatre
Undoubtedly this will aid in the company’s recruitment of top shelf directors who yearn for that opening night vibe, especially at the spot where Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet played for an entire year back in the day. – The Guardian
Wrestling With The Complicated Theatre Criticism Of John Simon
“It is saddening for me to say this, but I doubt that he ever wrote anything which could make a novice reader feel that the theatre (or film, or literature, or music) was an art worth pursuing, or worth attending to, as having some value for civilization. John published many books collecting his reviews, and I read through most of them, but I don’t recall them offering me any insight on why I should care about a given work, or about the art as a whole. I gave them away.” – American Theatre
Bumbershoot Was The Iconic Seattle Festival. Then It Became Generic. Now It Needs To Reinvent
Festival culture is big. But many of the big festivals have become generic, expensive and boring. Here are five elements that define successful festivals, and five ways to think about reinventing a Pacific Northwest classic. – Post Alley Seattle
Still Trying To Pin Down The Effects On The Brain Of Studying Music
“Current research implies — implies, not concludes — that studying music can help children develop spatial reasoning and listening skills and improve their concentration, but more study is needed to fully understand this relationship.” – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Netflix Buys Manhattan’s Last Single-Screen Movie Theatre
On Monday, Netflix announced that it has reached an agreement to continue leasing the Paris Theater space and keep it open for special events, screenings, and theatrical releases. “After 71 years, the Paris Theatre has an enduring legacy, and remains the destination for a one-of-a kind movie-going experience.” – New York Magazine
Kanye West Popped-Up An Opera – So How Was It?
Mark Swed: “Typically, a new opera is a multiyear project, so the very notion of this pop-up one, which seems to have been in the works for a couple of weeks at most, is extraordinary. But if you go back to the 18th and 19th centuries, operas were popular entertainment put on with the regularity and immediacy that television shows are today.” – Los Angeles Times
Longtime Theatre Critic John Simon, 94
He was to theatre criticism as pigeons are to statues, William F. Buckley once observed. “In a style that danced with literary allusions and arch rhetoric — and composed with pen and ink (he hated computers) — he produced thousands of critiques and a dozen books, mostly anthologies of his own work.” – The New York Times
Women Writers Still Don’t Get Respect For Their Work
“Ten years ago I went to a speed-dating event in Belfast where I told a succession of potential dates I was a writer and was met with a unanimous sense of disappointment. “I thought you might be a nurse,” one man said, his face falling.” – Irish Times