“William Carden, who has been the artistic director of Off-Broadway’s Ensemble Studio Theatre since 2007, will step down from his position. A member of EST since 1978, Carden will continue with the company until a restructuring process is complete. EST intends to implement change throughout the organization and reconfigure the current leadership structure through the inclusion of Black, Indigenous, and people of color at the senior leadership and decision-making level.” – Playbill
Author: Matthew Westphal
MacDowell Artists’ Retreat Tries Virtual Fellowships
With the ongoing COVID epidemic making travel to its New Hampshire campus impractical at best, the no-longer-a-colony has invited this summer’s eight fellows to a four-week virtual residency that will include dinners and other events which the participants will join electronically. – AP
Saudi Arabia: We’ll Host The World Science Fiction Convention! Science Fiction Writers: Oh No, You Won’t
“A group of more than 80 science fiction and fantasy authors are protesting at the possibility of one of the genres’ biggest conventions being held in [Jeddah] in 2022, saying that ‘the Saudi regime is antithetical to everything SFF stands for’.” – The Guardian
‘Independent Cinema, As We Know It And As We Love It, Is Over’
Director and producer Oren Moverman: “The idea of independent financing, putting together films that have no home, taking them to festivals, trying to sell them — they’re going to have to take on a very different model, if they get made. A lot of producers I talk to are looking to set up projects with the streamers, the studios, whoever’s going to be left standing. Whereas the sort of grungy putting together of ten dollars here, ten dollars there to make a film — it’s possible from a financial standpoint, it’s just a question of where it will ever be seen.” – Variety
How America’s First Drive-In Classical Concert Since Lockdown Turned Out
San Diego’s Mainly Mozart got together an eight-member chamber group headed by L.A. Phil concertmaster Martin Chalifour to play octets by Mozart and Mendelssohn in the parking lot of a SoCal horse-racing track. – Newsweek
Giving To Arts Is Down In 2020: Study
The latest COVID-19 Sector Benchmark Insight Report, released by TRG Arts and data specialists Purple Seven, “includes data from 105 nonprofit organizations of all scales in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. The report reveals that there has been no aggregate growth in donations, but some individual organizations, particularly ones with a lower ratio of contributed income, have seen substantial increases in gift revenue.” – American Theatre
Picasso Murals Safely Removed From Doomed Building In Oslo
“The removal of a pair of concrete murals by Pablo Picasso was completed Tuesday from a government building in the Norwegian capital of Oslo whose demolition was under way.” (That building, called the Y block, was damaged in the 2011 bombing-and-murder spree by right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik.) “The total cost of the removal of the art pieces — to be preserved and installed elsewhere — and the demolition is estimated at 59 million kroner ($6.4 million).” – Yahoo! (AP)
Keith Sonnier, Playful Post-Minimalist Sculptor, Dead At 78
“In both the manifold building blocks of his works and their titles — Ba-O-Ba, Ju-Ju, Palm Saw Tooth Blatt, Bison Bop — Mr. Sonnier came off at times as an irreverent sensualist alongside peers like Bruce Nauman, Eva Hesse, Jackie Winsor and Robert Smithson, who employed some of the same materials.” – The New York Times
Crop Of Books Takes New View Of Old Epic Poetry
“Those second looks have turned up several shared themes. One is a new skepticism regarding the relationship that has developed between the epic and prevailing ideas about male heroism. ‘A lot of toxic masculinity has been shaped by imperfect understandings of epic poetry,'” said Maria Dahvana Headley, translator of a new edition of Beowulf. “That result, she and [Aeneid translator Shadi] Bartsch agree, is a consequence of particular choices made in reading, not the substance of the epics themselves.” – The New York Times
Want A COVID-Safe Space For Your Play That’s Easy, Quick, And Cheap? Try A Circus Tent
“Every day we read about a new proposed seating plan or air-filtering system being trialled in an Edwardian playhouse to enable safe, socially distanced theatre in a building designed for the opposite. A big top is far more spacious.” You can fit in hundreds of people with plenty of social distance, and raised sidewalls provide plenty of air circulation. What’s more, argues Circus250 ringmaster Dea Birkett, a big top offers plenty of advantages in terms of diversifying your audience. – The Stage