“The caveat here is that this [project] is not about handing out tambourines and triangles en masse, or thoughtlessly plonking any old instrument on the doorstep of every home, in the hope that a child will pick it up and become the next musical ingénue.” The plan, rather, is to focus on what one might call, in this context, infrastructure.
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Plight Of The Page Turner
“As the pianist strides onstage, the page turner, cloaked in muted hues, trails behind. She is not to bow, but rather to sit immediately on the spare chair beside the piano bench and hunch. She is to be small and silent. … At the performance’s close, she is the first to retreat. The applause is not hers. She is also rarely missed. Many a show has gone on without a page turner.” Jennifer Gersten looks not only at this silent assistant’s subordination, but also at the times she (or he) has gotten a laugh, saved the day, and even had a part written by the composer.
David Hyde Pierce On (Not) Coming Out
“Yeah, see, this always drove me crazy. Not that in particular, but just the parsing of what you had to say and when. I don’t like to be told what to do. … I didn’t come out to my parents. I didn’t accept or embrace that trope, and say, ‘Oh, this is a thing one must do.’ Instead, I introduced them to the guy I love and he ended up being part of the family.” From a long Q&A with E. Alex Jung.
Gender-Bending And Fluid Sexuality? In Japan, They’ve Been Doing That For Centuries
The “genderless” young hipster types in Tokyo and Osaka who’ve been getting press coverage lately are by no means a new phenomenon there. Anthropologist Jennifer Robertson, who has spent much of her life in Japan, gives the history, from cross-dressing eighth-century women to bisexual aristocrats in classical literature to foppish 19th-century “high-collar” men to the very popular Takarazuka Revue, considered avant-garde when it opened in 1914.
Why The Met Museum Should Appoint A Female Director
Liza Oliver, an assistant professor at Wellesley: “As a woman who works at a leading liberal arts college driven by female leadership broadly and by African-American women particularly, I can attest that there is no shortage of women who would be up for the task of director from both within and beyond the Met’s walls.”
There Are Plenty Of Great Roles For Women, So They Should ‘Get Their Mitts Off Male Actors’ Parts!’ Says The Telegraph
Dominic Cavendish on the current trend in London of prominent actresses playing the male leads in great classic plays: “Redress the balance? Fine. Let in some fresh air? Great. But the entrenchment of this tendency may also be stifling and oppressive.” It’s also, argues Cavendish, lazy: “Why bother finding new-minted female correlatives to Willy Loman or Jimmy Porter when you can just boot out the bloke, stick a woman in his place and defy anyone to raise an eyebrow?”
London’s First Big Boom In Theatre Started Decades Before Shakespeare
“A new project is aiming to rediscover some of the forgotten masterpieces and lost theatres that laid the groundwork for the Bard of Avon’s work.” Here’s a talk with theatre history scholar Andy Kesson, founder of Before Shakespeare. (audio)
Russian Oligarch Takes $60 Million Bath On Gauguin He Owned For Nine Years
So much for art – even older art as financial investment. Dmitry Rybolovlev paid €54 million (then $85 million) for Gauguin’s Te Fare (La Maison) in 2008; this week the painting sold for £20.3 million ($25 million) at Christies.
The New Yorker’s Cartoon Editor Is Stepping Aside After 20 Years
Fortunately, Bob Mankoff is going back to drawing for the magazine. “It’s a lot easier picking cartoons than doing them,” he says. “But it’s not quite as much fun. … Those are muscles that can atrophy, but I think they’re still there.”
Margaret Thatcher Campaigned Hard For Madrid’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Collection, Declassified Papers Reveal
And she would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling Baroness.