“Todd London reflects on why and how we gather, and looks at the canons-in-the-making of four African-American playwrights — Jackie Sibblies Drury, Aleshea Harris, Anna Deavere Smith, and Dael Orlandersmith — for how they serve as a map for this moment of revision.” – HowlRound
Author: Matthew Westphal
Smithsonian Chief Lonnie Bunch: ‘I Want Museums To Be A Place That Gives The Public Not Just What It Wants, But What It Needs’
“I believe very strongly that museums have a social justice role to play. … I’m not expecting museums to engage in partisan politics. What I’m expecting museums to be is driven by scholarship and the community. … And if that means that museums have to take a little more risk, … then so be it. I would rather the museum be a place that takes a little risk to make the country better than a place where history and science go to die.” – The New York Times
BBC Proms Announce ‘Flexible’ Plans For Two Weeks Of Live Concerts
After six weeks of “fantasy Proms” consisting mostly of rebroadcasts from previous years’ festivals, the hope is to present live performances (without live audiences) in the Royal Albert Hall from Aug. 28 through the Last Night on Sept. 12. But “organisers … are having to devise multiple programmes for every concert, because of uncertainties over how many performers will be allowed on stage due to the coronavirus pandemic. … Conductor Sakari Oramo says he is currently planning ‘four different options’ for the first night.” – BBC
Here Are The Ten Artists Sharing What Would Have Been The Turner Prize
“Tate, the British museum network that facilitates it, reconstituted the prize in light of the coronavirus pandemic. In lieu of the main £25,000 ($32,200) award, 10 artists and collectives are taking home what are being called Turner Bursaries awards of £10,000 ($12,500). … Half of the winners this time are nonwhite, and as usual for the Turner Prize, which often skews toward conceptual art, most do not work in traditional mediums such as painting and sculpture.” – ARTnews
Hugh Downs, Anchorman Whose Career Spanned TV History, Dead At 99
“In a broadcast career that spanned more than a half-century” — he began in radio in 1939 and was on television within a decade, ultimately hosting or co-hosting The Tonight Show opposite Jack Paar, the NBC News morning flagship Today, the game show Concentration, and the ABC primetime newsmagazine 20/20 — “Hugh Downs was one of the most versatile and durable personalities on television. A mainstay of American TV-watching rituals for generations, he held for years the world record for most time on air — more than 10,000 hours — before Regis Philbin officially surpassed him in 2004.” – The Washington Post
Conscripted To Be Private Bandleader For Central Africa’s Notorious Dictator-Emperor
Back in the late 1960s, Charlie Perrière was a struggling young musician in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, and about to leave for Congo when he was personally summoned by President Jean-Bédel Bokassa — the one who later crowned himself Emperor (just like his hero, Napoleon) and fed prisoners to crocodiles and lions. Bokassa told Perrière not to emigrate and subsequently drafted him to lead the president’s personal orchestra. Not only did Perrière survive, he became famous enough that, more than 40 years later, young rebels pillaging the capital spared his house. – Narratively
Four months of jazz adaptation, resilience, response to epidemic
From early March on, there have been increasing demonstrations of the jazz community taking care of itself and its own. – Howard Mandel
Two Silk Strings: Mehrinigor Abdurashidova at the Sharq Taronalari Festival 2019
I regret that I can only offer you my camcorder’s sound complete with audience noise. But there is enough spirit and inspiring artistry to make up for that, I think. – Michal Shapiro
I Was A Foot Soldier In The Dance Boom Of 1970s New York
Elizabeth Kendall remembers: “SoHo was dance spilling out into life. It was a grimy laboratory of the future. … In SoHo you could get a turnip soup with an asymmetrical bread chunk at an exotically rustic cafeteria named Food. You could climb leaning stairways to see free-form jazz men riffing in lofts. And you could meet other dancers on street corners and converse with them in the deadpan physical vernacular of [Yvonne] Rainer’s Trio A. Somebody would start those opening arm swings of the sloppy-tidy, faux-plebeian dance, and somebody else would cross the street and join in with the next move.” – The New York Times
Why Theatres In England Are Opening Up When They Can’t Present Plays
They’re showing movies in their auditoriums (social distancing observed, of course), opening their cafes and bars, presenting art exhibits — anything that can offer a place to (safely) gather. As the artistic director of a theatre in Chester put it, “People are desperate for contact again, to get back into community spaces, where they feel safe and connected. [Putting on plays is] not our mission. We put on plays in service of our mission.” – The Guardian