Author: Matthew Westphal

New Director Of Berlin’s Volksbühne Theater Has Been Getting An Ugly Introduction To His New Job

“The decision to appoint [Chris] Dercon, the former director of Tate Modern in London, to run the institution has spurred an angry debate, one that has
often conflated the issues surrounding his appointment with the larger challenges confronting Berlin, like gentrification, globalization and immigration. It has not always been a dignified debate. Along with the usual petition-signing, there have been ugly protests – some might call them a hazing – that even an avant-garde theater may find over the top.”

Do Museums Need Their Own Ethics Departments?

Yes, museums do have codes of ethics that cover the professional conducts of their staffs. Erich Hatala Matthes argues that that isn’t anough, as controversies from the fate of looted antiquities in collections to this summer’s outcries over Dana Schutz’s Open Casket at the Whitney Biennial and Sam Durant’s Scaffold at the Walker Art Center to the culture war over Confederate monuments demonstrate.

Why Michael Friedman Was The Best Musical Theater Composer You Had Probably Never Heard Of

Ben Brantley: “I don’t think Mr. Friedman” – who died last week at age 41 – “was accorded his due as an innovator. He wrote so fluently in so many styles, that it was tempting to dismiss him as a pastiche artist. … He was willing to let his music blend into the background in a way seldom associated with musical theater artists, who like to stamp their signatures big on a production.”

How A Streb Extreme Action Dancer Prepares Herself For All Those Dangerous Daredevil Feats

“When you’re performing with a whirling cinderblock or giant hamster wheel as your partner, there is no time for second-guessing your physical fitness. Fortunately, STREB EXTREME ACTION member Cassandre Joseph knows exactly what her body needs to stay safe, even when flying off 30-foot platforms. What are the five habits that prepare her to tackle anything that director Elizabeth Streb might throw her way?”

The (Very Hard) Work Of An Orchestra Librarian

“The orchestra’s librarians are responsible for obtaining the scores for each program, for making sure all of the markings are the same in all the parts, for putting the music on the stands before each performance, and for being physically present at each show in case of emergencies – even on tour. It takes about 100 hours, says Elizabeth Schnobrick, the National Symphony Orchestra’s principal librarian, to prepare the music for a single subscription program.”

An Earlier Generation Of Gay Plays Is Returning To The Stage – Are They Still Relevant? (Alas, Yes, Says Jesse Green)

“Many of us who arrived in New York in the last decades of the last century, looking to the theater for news about what it meant to be gay, found ourselves serially disheartened. … Yet, over the past 20 years, gay rights did expand, well beyond anyone’s imagining. This recently led me to wonder what a young gay man arriving in New York would find if he looked in the mirror of the mainstream theater today. Pretty much the same thing I did.”