“Theater artists who really want to make a difference might be advised to break free from the constant stream of infuriating updates belching from their phones. It’s not that the stage should turn a blind eye to the latest outrages. Indeed, for too long American drama seemed blithely detached from the economic conditions radically transforming our national life. Yet playwrights have more pressing business than keeping up with the news crawl.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
If Our Artists Can’t Speak To The Powerful, Then?
Sarah Ruhl: “In dictatorships, the artists are often the first to go. Or maybe they are the third to go, after the press and the intellectuals. The refusal of the president to celebrate them is a chilling and clear departure from American values. Perhaps the Trumps didn’t want to compete with the Obamas, who at the 2016 Kennedy Center awards received the longest standing ovation of the evening.”
Expert Calls For Destruction Of “Hundreds” Of Fake Modiglianis
Marc Restellini says that French museums have legitimized fake artworks by showing them, and that these museums have profited from the deception.
Meet Amadeo. He’s The Last To Speak His Amazonian Language
“The entire fate of the Taushiro people now lies with its last speaker, a person who never expected such a burden and has spent much of his life overwhelmed by it.”
A Homeless Symphony
“There are about fifty-eight thousand homeless people in Los Angeles County. To walk through the streets of Skid Row to the Midnight Mission is to feel shame for the state of the city and the state of the country. Block after block, the sidewalks are crammed with tents, boxes, broken furniture, and shopping carts full of possessions. To enter the mission, you have to step over people in sleeping bags. It is, however, a different experience to visit the Midnight Mission with Vijay Gupta, an L.A. Phil violinist, who, in 2011, founded Street Symphony. He greets both residents and staff with smiles, handshakes, banter, and an explosive laugh.”
How Atlanta’s High Museum Diversified Its Audience
Over the past two years, the museum’s nonwhite audience has tripled, from 15 percent to 45 percent. Now, its visitors more closely—although not exactly—mirror the population of the Atlanta metro area, of which 51 percent are people of color.
In Toronto Plays Are Getting Much Shorter
Plays running at 70 or 80 minutes are, according to Company Theatre’s co-artistic director Philip Riccio, “a newer phenomenon,” perhaps connected to the fact that “most of our playwrights come up through the Fringe festivals”; the majority of Fringe shows need to come in at under an hour.
Kindle’s Next Act: Reinventing The Book?
“In a world filled with distractions and notifications and devices that do everything, the Kindle’s lack of features becomes its greatest asset. But readers also want to read everywhere, in places and ways a paperback can’t manage. They want more tools, more features, more options, more stuff to do. Amazon’s still working out how to satisfy both sides. Whatever route it takes, the next decade of Kindle is likely to be even more disruptive than the last. First it changed the book business. Next it might help change books themselves.”
MacArthur’s $100 Million Plan To Bring The Muppets To The Middle East
“The five-year grant will fund a localized version of “Sesame Street,” distributed through television and digital devices, and home visits using “Sesame Street” content for an estimated 1.5 million children. Instead of the stars that Americans grew up with, like Big Bird, Elmo and Oscar the Grouch, the characters would be tailored to the region, speaking Arabic and Iraqi Kurdish.”
Our Universities Have Become Polarized. What To Do About It?
“There are many things we can do to reduce tribalism, strengthen our kids, and repair our universities. We—the baby boomers and gen-Xers who fill this room—we have made a mess of the clock. Left and Right, Republicans and Democrats. But we can make up for it if we can come together, admit that we messed up, and change what we are doing to kids, and to college students. We just might be able to raise a generation of kids who can care for the clock after all.”