Deepa Fernandes visits with performers who are loosening up and becoming more visible, in clubs and in spontaneous street shows.
Author: Matthew Westphal
A Few Thoughts About British Actors Playing American (And African-American) Roles
Richard Brody considers Samuel L. Jackson’s controversial comments about the casting of black British actors in African-American roles (in particular, Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out and David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King in Selma) – in particular, how Jackson may have a point.
If Trump Axes This Program, ‘The Quality And Standing Of All American Museums Would Diminish Overnight’ – And The Program Costs Almost Nothing
The NEA’s Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Program has saved museums hundreds of millions in insurance premiums and made possible countless high-profile exhibitions that couldn’t have happened without it. But if the NEA is shut down, this program will be shut down with it – and there is no private-sector alternative.
Terracotta Warriors Museum Fights Copyright Battle With Chinese Amusement Park
“In February, the Emperor Qin Shihuang Mausoleum Site Museum in [Xi’an] accused an amusement park that features replica warriors of violating its registered copyright. … The 5,000-Year Cultural Expo Park in Anqing, Anhui province, contains a large pit of full-scale Terracotta Warrior models.” (Are we allowed to see some irony here?)
Off-Broadway’s Very-Long-Running ‘The Fantasticks’ Will Close – This Time, It Seems, For Good
“For nearly 42 years the show chugged along at the 153-seat Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village, finally closing in 2002 after 17,162 performances – a victim both of a destroyed downtown after 9/11 and a new edgy mood. It opened four years later at The Theater Center, an off-Broadway complex in the heart of Times Square, where it will end after a run of 4,390 shows.”
Today’s Composers Have Made The Concerto An Exciting Form Again
“A few decades ago, I would not have put money on the survival of the concerto, except as an antiquarian curiosity. Celebrity soloists continued milking the classics, but the rest of the music world seemed to have moved on from all that gladiatorial bravura.” Justin Davidson looks at four new concertos – by Sofia Gubaidulina, Lera Auerbach, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Timo Andres.
Former Chief Of English National Opera Forms New Company
“[John] Berry quit as artistic director of ENO in 2015 after 20 years with the company. He has now launched Opera Ventures, a charitable organisation that will produce opera and mixed-media performances in addition to providing workshops, classes and training.”
Met Museum’s Interim CEO Presents Plan To Get The Place Back In Shape
“Amid a dramatic management shake-up at the top of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this month, interim chief executive Daniel Weiss is moving in with a sweeping plan to balance the budget and provide a road map for renovations. The plan, to be presented to the Met’s board of directors on Wednesday, could amount to an audition by Mr. Weiss for the top job at the nation’s premier encyclopedic museum.”
Trisha Brown’s Multiple Revolutions
“Her treatise on ‘pure movement’ in the 1970s wiped the slate clean and reset modern dance in a search for movement itself. … She caused a revolution by simply, sweetly, turning to [performance] spaces that other dance-makers don’t … But she also caused a revolution in the space that is the human body.” Wendy Perron, who danced in Brown’s company in the 1970s, gives an extensive overview of Brown’s career.
Trisha Brown As Collaborator: Five Artists Pay Tribute
Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laurie Anderson, Stephen Petronio, Elizabeth Streb, And Terry Winter share memories of working with Brown.