“The idea of a pioneering, cutting-edge avant-garde, I am afraid, has more or less completely disappeared from the British theatre, and now you just have every artistic director with his or her eye on the box office, because that is the mood of the times.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Political Novel For The Age Of Trump
Terry Teachout: “When you consider how completely the pundit class failed to get the primaries right, I’d be more inclined to seek political wisdom in the pages of a novel written by a poet-professor who looked 70 years into the future and foretold the coming of a populist demagogue who spoke the language of the plain people.”
The Secret, Hidden Bedrooms In Berlin’s Subways
“Checked wallpaper decorated with a Matisse poster and a miniature portrait of the Virgin Mary. A black leather sofa. A single bed with electric-blue sheets. … At first, the underground workers who stumbled upon this scene in a disused U-Bahn tunnel in Berlin’s Reinickendorf district in mid-January assumed they had encountered an abandoned film set.”
NPR Sends Reporters To ‘Trump Training,’ Because Trump Rallies Can Be Dangerous
“[The radio network] has sent its political reporters to 90-minute hostile-environment awareness training, which in its typical form lasts a few days and prepares journalists for covering war zones or regions where terrorists are active.”
Is The Divide Between Fiction And Nonfiction Just An English-Language Quirk?
What we see as the clear-cut dichotomy between “the writing of imagination and the writing of fact” doesn’t exist in many languages, and in others the equivalent distinction is drawn along somewhat different lines.
San Antonio Symphony Musicians Accept Three-Week Furlough
“Facing a funding shortfall and mounting debt, the San Antonio Symphony reached an agreement with its 72-member orchestra for a temporary layoff during the 2016-17 season to help the organization shore up its finances.”
Multimedia, $5 Seats, Free-Form Season – PONY Is Upending The Way Orchestras Operate
New York’s newest orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra of New York (PONY), is commissioning new films to accompany its music, using drone cameras to show the audience the musicians in action, keeping ticket prices low ($5 to $40), and working from project to project without a season announced in advance. Can they make it work? (first four paragraphs, then scroll to 23rd paragraph)
Joe Garagiola, Sportscaster And TV Host, Dead At 90
After a mediocre career as a Major League Baseball player, “Garagiola called games at NBC for a quarter-century and served as a host on the Today show from 1967-73 and 1991-92. The likable St. Louis native sat in at times for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and hosted a number of game shows, including Joe Garagiola’s Memory Game, Sale of the Century, To Tell the Truth and Strike It Rich.”
‘Women Who Move Us’: Dance Theater Of Harlem Launches Female Choreographers Project
“Lately, the world of ballet has been scrutinized and criticized for two things: its lack of diversity and the paucity of female choreographers. Dance Theater of Harlem has the first one covered. This season, it will do something about the second.”
New York City Ballet Finally Commissions Some Dances From Women
“New York City Ballet announced Thursday that it would focus on new and recent works next season, with a spring festival dedicated to dances it has commissioned in recent decades, world premieres by Alexei Ratmansky and Justin Peck, and, after a notable absence of new works by women in recent seasons, premieres by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Lauren Lovette.”