“One reason for this is that they do not appear on stage. Unlike conductors, who stand in front of an orchestra and wave a baton, they are invisible artists whose work is done when the curtain goes up, and their methods differ so greatly that the art they practice defies succinct definition. Moreover, directors work not only with actors and playwrights but also with the designers of the sets, costumes, lighting and sound for their shows, making it still more difficult to single out their contribution to the theatrical process. It follows that directing should be as hard to teach as it is to define.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
Prominent Shakespeare Scholar Has Trouble Getting His Work Published
According to Sir Brian Vickers, a major reason he has not yet found a home for his complete edition of works by Thomas Kyd is that his “reputation as a scholar has been damaged by a string of hostile reviews by people associated with the New Oxford Shakespeare”.
The Game Sensation “Fortnite” Is Also Becoming A Dance Sensation
The free-to-play Fortnite: Battle Royale has become a cultural sensation with a wide-ranging playerbase. How do we know? Because professional sports players won’t stop mimicking the game’s weird dances in real life. Maybe one day they’ll be doing one of your dances — because Epic Games just launched a contest for players to submit video of their smooth moves, with the best one making it into Fortnite.
When Archaeologists Put The FBI On The Case
Egyptian mummies pose a unique challenge because the desert’s scorching climate rapidly degrades DNA. Earlier attempts at obtaining their ancient DNA either failed or produced results contaminated by modern DNA. To crack the case, the museum turned to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
London Theatres Up The Audience Experience
Across London, theaters have come to understand better than anywhere else that voracious consumers of the performing arts want something else to chew on, to be able to pair their love of drama with a pint or a glass of wine and, say, a burger and chips, or a cheese board. And so, at the Young Vic or the National Theatre near the Waterloo railway station, or the Royal Court in Sloan Square, or the brand-new Bridge Theatre, under the Tower Bridge, large, inviting and comfy spaces have been dedicated in the theaters to soaking up some alcohol and accommodating some serious schmoozing, to go with the cultural enrichment.
After 18 Years, Bramwell Tovey Prepares For His Vancouver Symphony Exit
Today’s Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is in large measure Tovey’s creation, having brought in more than half the players and significantly raised performance standards, as anyone could testify who attended this year’s recently concluded Spring Festival.
An Adventurous Violinist Finds A Home In The Detroit Symphony’s Remarkable Comeback As Champion Of Its City
They anointed themselves the “most accessible orchestra on the planet,” and have gone some ways toward justifying that superlative. Tickets are cheaper than at other orchestras; my press seat, on the left orchestra aisle, would have cost twenty-five dollars. Neighborhood concerts reach into underserved communities. Most strikingly, the Detroit offers free Webcasts of its concerts—an initiative that seems obvious but that few other orchestras have tried. Anne Parsons, the Detroit’s president and C.E.O., told me, “We’ve gone from three thousand viewers on average to around seventy-five hundred—in one case, thirty-five thousand. It’s brought great young musicians to us—they can see what we’re doing. I was sure that, by now, everyone else would be doing it. I’ve stopped wondering and haven’t looked back.”
Do Cambridge Analytica’s Psychographic Targeting Algorithms Really Work?
By rewording the ads to appeal to the respondents’ underlying psychological disposition, the researchers were able to influence and change their opinions. According to Sumner, “Using psychographic targeting, we reached Facebook audiences with significantly different views on surveillance and demonstrated how targeting . . . affected return on marketing investment.” Psychological messaging, they said, worked.
Diversifying The Arts Also Means Diversifying Boards
“Our staffs increasingly reflect the communities in which we operate. But our Boards do not. Larger, euro-centric mainstay arts organization boards are largely composed of an elite group. Even in those cases where Boards have succeeded in recruiting people of color, more women and LGBTQ people, those individuals tend to be more highly educated, wealthier, and successful – from the privileged class. And that’s not surprising. Many organizations depend on their Boards to both contribute and to fund raise, and those with wealth and networks of people of wealth, are far more likely to be able to both contribute and successfully fundraise.”
A “Post-Truth” World? Here’s What It Means
“Whenever a fact contradicts one of our beliefs, we are prompted to restore consistency by revising some of the beliefs in our web. But in choosing what to revise, we are no longer guided by facts alone. Starting from the anomalous evidence, we look at the contested belief and its supporting justification(s), and assess how consistency can be most parsimoniously restored in light of the full web of our beliefs. We can end up revising anything, from doubting that we actually observed the anomalous evidence in the first place, to the principles of logic and mathematics that lie at the centre of our web.”