Laura Collins-Hughes profiles Stephan Wolfert, who teaches acting classes specifically for vets, and who performs a solo show combining Shakespeare texts with his own memories of the military.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Why Rosalind Is Shakespeare’s Most Complex Character
Angela Thirlwell: “Rosalind is a grand paradox. Man and woman, authentically alive yet forever a fiction, ageless and modern … When she sprints into the forest of Arden as the boy Ganymede, she expands our ideas about gender, and epitomizes what love feels like for both sexes, through the whole gamut of human emotions, in every time and place.”
A Project To Recreate Frank Lloyd Wright’s Destroyed And Unbuilt Buildings
The Frank Lloyd Wright Revival Initiative, founded by documentary filmmaker Michael Miner, plans to start with a 1911 park pavilion (demolished) that Wright designed for Banff in the Canadian Rockies. But is this a good idea?
Ending Weeks Of Disasters, Fresno Grand Opera Shuts Down
The California company, founded in 1998, had faced cash shortfalls, unpaid musicians, allegations of financial mismanagement, the firing of its music director, and a defamation lawsuit.
Former Fresno Grand Opera Directors Sue Company For Defamation
Ronald Eichman and Thi Nguyen, who were general director and associate director until the end of 2014, allege that the company and Matthew Buckman (Eichman’s successor) falsely accused Eichman and Nguyen of financial malfeasance and conflicts of interest in several stories published in The Fresno Bee last year. (The company itself promptly closed down.)
Louvre Staffers, Sick Of The Vermeer Show Chaos, Go On Strike
On Thursday, more than 70 attendants at the Paris museum followed through on a threat to strike in protest of the disastrous planning for the big Vermeer exhibition that opened there in late February.
Painter Howard Hodgkin Dead At 84
His brightly colored paintings on wood made him one of Britain’s most popular living artists. While most of them appeared abstract, he insisted for his entire career that he was a figurative painter.
New York Times Critic Bonds With Taxi Driver Over Classical Radio
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim writes about the immigrant cabbie who ended up recommending to her a composer she’d never before encountered.
The Political Drama That’s Dividing France
“How much is at stake in France’s upcoming elections has become evident again in recent weeks as controversy has erupted over the new arthouse film This Is Our Land (Chez nous). … The debate stems from a supporting character named Agnès Dorgelle (Cathérine Jacob), a blonde leader of a far-right party associated with nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment, much like the real-life politician and presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen.”
Dave Valentin, 64, Leading Flutist Of Latin Jazz And World Music
“[He] was celebrated in Latin-jazz circles for more than 40 years, initially as a byproduct of his cultural foundation as a Bronx-born Puerto Rican. But he was wary of being typecast, preferring to describe himself as a ‘world artist,’ and playing … a Peruvian bamboo bass flute, a Romanian pan flute, Bolivian pan pipes, and various other kinds of flute from around the world, typically traveling with more than a dozen varieties.”