“Whenever anyone tries to argue that theatre shouldn’t ‘be political,’ I like to tell them the story of A Game at Chess. Thomas Middleton’s last play, which premiered in 1624, is mostly unknown outside of academia today; in the seventeenth century, however, it made quite a splash and resulted in the closure of the Globe theatre.”
Author: Douglas McLennan
What Music Did Alexander Hamilton Listen To?
“While rap aficionados and theater nerds have exhaustively cataloged the rich referential web of Mr. Miranda’s “Hamilton” score, little attention has been paid to the show’s engagement with the music that Alexander Hamilton would have known in his lifetime.”
Are Social Justice Warriors Making The World An Uglier Place?
“From declaring that one should interrogate one’s musical tastes for classism to fretting about yellow face in opera to musing as to whether a man can write a novel about rape culture, in the hands of the social justice warriors, artistic and cultural criticism is increasingly less about aesthetics and more about virtue signaling by the critic. Like all other fundamentalists, these secular descendants of the Puritans are so preoccupied with enforcing their rigid morality that they’ve forgotten the importance of beauty and creativity.”
Report: Today’s Books Have WAAAY More Profanity Than Those From Earlier Decades
“Books published in 2005-08 (were) 28 times more likely to include swear words than books published in the early 1950s,” the researchers report in the journal Sage Open.
Phillip Kennicott: Unique Louis Kahn Concert Hall barge Belongs In DC
“The boat belongs in Washington, a city both blessed and socially determined by its rivers. The nation’s capital was founded at the confluence of the Potomac and the Anacostia, near the ports of Georgetown and Alexandria, and is home to the country’s oldest naval base. At times, the city has embraced its river setting, most significantly in 1901 when the McMillan Plan created the Mall, new parks along the waterfront and Memorial Bridge, which created a symbolic (though often illusory) post-Civil War rapprochement between the North and the South by joining the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington Cemetery.”
If You’re All About Creative Placemaking, Best Consider The Place – And Now It Seems To Be Rural
As for this year’s finalists for ArtPlace grants, 34 percent hailed from rural areas. ArtPlace says it’s noticed an “increase in regional projects; many working collaboratively across adjacent rural communities.” It also said that proposed projects reflected a “sustained interest in water projects that, this year, focused on its use and preservation,” and requests for improving or introducing broadband access to rural communities to “increase economic opportunity.”
Met Museum Website Has A Digital Hit
“The Met’s website has seen a 64 percent increase in image downloads since Open Access was implemented, as well as a 17 percent bump in traffic to the online collection. Users who download photographs are now spending five times as long on the site.”
Why Are So Many Of Today’s Pop Singers Having To Have Surgery On Their Vocal Cords?
There is no precise data on the number of performers who have gone under the knife over the years. But several surgeons told me they estimate that vocal cord surgery has been performed on thousands of pop, rock and classical singers, as well as on theatre and stage musical stars.
Why Have So Many Music Festivals Gotten Into Trouble This Year?
“Between the councils, organisers, security and ticket companies, it’s often hard to know who was actually at fault, and although it might seem reductive to see individuals to blame for large-scale disasters like Hope & Glory, it might be not too far from the truth.”
Hey Jeff Bezos: How About Becoming The New Andrew Carnegie And Invest In Libraries?
Today, libraries are serving as essential civic places. Trusted by every part of American society, they’re the only noncommercial places other than city squares where people meet across genders and ages. They provide all kinds of services and programming—just visit the glorious Madison, WI Central Library, where a first-rate makerspace is under the same LEED-certified roof as local service agencies helping people sign up for health care and food assistance.