The playwright, seven fellow cast members and the director of Evening at the Talk House speak with Alexis Soloski about political theater versus entertainment in 2017.
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘By All Accounts A World First: Nude Dancers In Front Of Nude Paintings Before A Nude Audience’
Sydney Dance Company and the Art Gallery of New South Wales created a show for which Rafael Bonachela choreographed dances to be performed alongside such artworks as Rodin’s The Kiss and Francis Bacon triptych. Then they took the slowest-selling performance and branded it nude-audience-only; tickets sold out that day. Kate Hennessy went, and she writes about her experience there – as an art-lover and as a female.
A Female Flemish Old Master Gets Her First Modern Exhibition
“Michaelina Wautier is probably the first woman who successfully painted works in nearly all the genres – portraits, history pictures, still-lifes and scenes of everyday life. At that time most successful Flemish female artists specialised in flower compositions.”
Battle Over St. Petersburg’s Cathedral Gets Ugly (And Anti-Semitic)
Protests have broken out since the city’s government announced earlier this month that it was turning over custody of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, a 19th-century gem that was made into a museum by the Soviets, to the Russian Orthodox Church. Secular Russians fear that the church may not be a careful steward of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Tensions went even higher after parliament deputy speaker Pyotr Tolstoy, Leo’s great-grandson, gave a speech criticizing the protests that was widely interpreted as anti-Semitic.)
Holocaust Museum In Illinois Tries Rock ‘N’ Roll To Pull In The Crowd
“Located … in Skokie, about 20 miles northwest of the Loop, the [Illinois] Holocaust Museum is not exactly on Chicago tourism’s well-worn path. Yet it’s the third-largest of its kind in the world.” Says the museums VP of marketing, “We’re trying to move people from ‘something I’ve been meaning to do’ and always give them a reason to go.” And yes, the exhibit in question does have a Holocaust connection.
Poland’s Second World War Museum Under Threat After Court Allows Controversial Merger
“The €100m museum in Gdansk, which is scheduled to open to the public at the end of February, has become a political pawn in an ongoing battle over national memory, with the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) keen to control how the years under Nazi German occupation are portrayed.”
Dancers, Here Are Three Visualizations To Get You Past Audition Nerves
Corinne Haas, former member of Alonzo King LINES Ballet: “When your heart is pounding and your knees are trembling, it’s hard to cultivate a calm, confident persona at an audition. But if you practice that feeling before stepping foot in the room, you can improve your chances of success.”
What Happens In Your Brain When Your Life Flashes Before Your Eyes
“The phenomenon isn’t confined to fiction: Plenty of people have reported having what researchers call ‘life review experiences,’ or LREs.” So a group of neurologists set out to find what people’s reported LREs had in common and what areas of the brain might be involved.
Mary Tyler Moore, 80
“[Her] production company, MTM Enterprises, created groundbreaking TV shows during the 1970s and 1980s, including Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere. But she was primarily considered one of television’s finest comic actresses because of her roles on two of the most popular sitcoms of all time.”
‘A Rainbow-Colored Dream’: Check Out China’s International Ice And Snow Sculpture Festival
“Preparations for the event [in Harbin] begin months in advance, with workers digging huge ice blocks from the frozen Songhua River. … Sculptors compete to create more and more elaborate buildings of ice, all illuminated in multi-colored lights.”