Author: Matthew Westphal

There Are Plenty Of Black Plays Ready For Broadway When It Reopens. Will Broadway Take Them?

“Interviews with artists and producers suggest that there are more than a dozen plays and musicals with Black writers circling Broadway — meaning, in most cases, that the shows have been written, have had promising productions elsewhere, and have support from commercial producers or nonprofit presenters. But bringing these shows to Broadway would mean making room for producers and artists who often have less experience in commercial theater than the powerful industry regulars who most often get theaters.” – The New York Times

Gunman Frees Hostages After Ukraine’s President Endorses ‘Earthlings’

A 44-year-old “animal rights activist” named Maksim Krivosh, who recently finished a prison term for fraud and weapons charges, ended a 12-hour standoff and released 13 hostages in the city of Lutsk after President Volodymyr Zelensky publicly endorsed a documentary about industry’s use and abuse of animals titled Earthlings and narrated by Joaquin Phoenix. – BBC

Christopher Dickey, Journalist And Memoirist, Dead At 68

“A foreign correspondent who wrote books about terrorism and international intrigue” — he worked at The Washington Post and Newsweek for many years and at his death was world news editor of The Daily Beast — “but who was perhaps best known for a revealing memoir about his tortured relationship with his father, the renowned poet and novelist James Dickey.” – The Washington Post

How Yayoi Kusama Became A Global Industry

“Kusama’s enormous popularity stems not just from the transformative experience of her photogenic art or its digital reach, but from her compelling personal narrative as well [as her] cultural brand as Pop Art’s eccentric auntie. … But it is also the result of a supporting structure that brings together [psychiatric] hospital, studio, fabricators, and galleries to surround her like an exoskeleton.” – ARTnews

Now Here’s A Black Female Composer Worth Rediscovering: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Wife

Shirley Graham Du Bois notched up plenty of achievements in her own right beyond the activism she shared with her husband: she was a novelist, playwright, biographer (of Paul Robeson, Booker T. Washington, and Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser), and radical who (in)famously joined the American Communist Party. But when she studied at the Sorbonne, her subject was music. The premiere run of her 1932 opera Tom-Tom was an enormous spectacle that drew audiences of 25,000 (the planned transfer to Madison Square Garden was derailed by the Depression), and David Patrick Stearns says a revival would be very worthwhile. – WQXR (New York City)

BalletX Is Turning Its Next Season Into A Film Festival

The plan just announced by artistic director Christine Cox is for “a new series launching Sept. 10 celebrating the company’s 15th anniversary with world premieres by 15 choreographers. She sees the season in terms of a subscription-based film festival with nine shorts and six features. The shorts will be dance films presented on a new virtual platform hosted on the company’s website called BalletX Beyond. The features are intended to be performed live in the spring or summer, depending on public health concerns, but they, too, may be turned into films, if necessary.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer