“We must stop handcuffing our writers and producers by forcing them to comply with some national mandate to tell Canadian stories. We are Canadian, and our stories will inherently reflect our sense of humour, our drama and our individuality. I can’t tell you how many pitches I have been to where some development executive measures the Canadian quotient word by word like a recipe for poutine.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
UK’s Labour Party Says Arts Council Should Only Fund Arts Organizations That Pay Living Wage
‘Acting Up’, commissioned by Shadow Culture Minister Tom Watson, notes that although 33% of the population is working class, just 16% of actors are working class, and only 7% of the performing arts workforce is from a Black, Asian or minority ethnic background. The report presents the findings of an inquiry that focused on the barriers to working in the performing arts at every career stage, in order to find “political solutions to knock them down”.
There Has Been A Surge Of Interest In Boredom…
Quietly asserting itself in books and personal essays since 2015, the “boredom boom” would seem to be a reaction to the short attention spans bred by our computers and smartphones. The words “boring” and “interesting” didn’t exist in English till the 1800s, a period when…
New TV Shows Involving Racial History Spark Hollywood Debate About Who Can (Should) Tell History
HBO and Amazon’s dueling Civil War alt-history dramas have brought an age-old debate about art back to the cultural forefront: Who is “allowed” to tell certain stories, particularly those about marginalized communities? The question is prompting frank conversations among those in the TV industry.
Producers Cast An Asian-American Actress As Ariel In “Little Mermaid”. Some In Middle America Don’t Like That
One journalist from a southern publication, he added, asked him how it felt to be “saddled” with a non-white actor in the role of Ariel. “Saddled?” he responded, “I cast her!”
Show Closes In San Francisco After Theatre Makes Unauthorized Cuts
“Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis has revoked the rights to the Shelton Theater’s production of his “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot,” citing the show’s script cuts, which violate federal copyright law, as well as the theater’s response after he found out about the cuts.”
Negative Music Reviews Have All But Disappeared. Why?
“The dearth of negative music reviews is due to a number of factors. In the digital era, outlets covering music have become decentralized with fewer dominant players and more outlets running reviews. That’s helped create a new power dynamic between pop stars and the press—one where stars are less dependent on critics and critics are more eager to please artists.”
Andrew Russell Saves Seattle Theatre, Heads To New York
The backstory: There wouldn’t be an Intiman Theatre in 2017 if it wasn’t for Russell. For audiences, for the company and the Seattle theater community at large, Russell has been nothing less than a turn-around artist — in some ways, a controversial one — whose upfront progressive politics and improvisational style made him a real mover and shaker.
Could This Technology Solve Electronic Ticketing Problems?
“As Citizen Ticket’s technology – BitTicket – is based on blockchain, it means that batches cannot be oversold and tickets cannot be copied or counterfeited, while the number of tickets in a transaction is also monitored.”
Jack Rabinovitch, 86, Had Major Impact On Canada’s Literary Scene
Mr. Rabinovitch died on Sunday at the age of 87, a few days after falling down the stairs of his Toronto home. On Wednesday he was laid to rest, with hundreds of mourners gathering at the city’s Beth Tzedec Congregation to pay their respects to the man who, through a small act of literary philanthropy, did more to alter the course of Canadian letters over the last few decades than just about anyone else in the country.