“It sounds like the setup for some kind of droll joke: A lottery winner and a rhinoceros arrive at the birthday party for a dead mystic. Art, and a blowout brawl, ensues. An unusual stew of ingredients, some onstage and some off, has resulted in this strange spectacle’s move from Kentucky to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Scotland’s Arts Funder Under Fire For Supporting Artist’s ‘Poverty Safari’
“Creative Scotland launched a strident defence of their decision to put £15,000 into a project that sees artist Ellie Harrison not allowed to leave Glasgow for a year. The news of the Glasgow Effect ‘durational performance’ caused a social media storm with hundreds of people taking to Harrison’s Facebook page to attack both the artist and the funding body.”
China Is Moving Into Hollywood In A Big Way
“China’s film industry is healthy and prolific in its own right, and Chinese businesses are opening their pocketbooks with the aim of establishing a presence internationally. … The script has been flipped. Chinese money can now dictate details of American blockbusters explicitly, not just on the consumer end.”
‘We Can Get Up In Each Other’s Faces So Easily’ – Language In America In 2015
Linguist John McWhorter talks to Scott Timberg about ‘black bodies and the ‘blaccent’, gender and the pronoun ‘they’, and heated rhetoric and social media.
Pasadena Playhouse Artistic Director To Step Down
Sheldon Epps, who departs at the end of next season, “helped Pasadena Playhouse to become one of the most prominent regional theaters while making strides toward diversifying the shows it mounted and the people who came to see them.”
Off-Broadway Powerhouse Signature Theatre Hires New Artistic Director From Lincoln Center
“Signature Theatre has settled on a successor to founding artistic director James Houghton, who will step down in June after 25 years. Effective July 1, Paige Evans will take on the new role … after guiding Lincoln Center Theater’s emerging artists program, LCT3, since its inception in 2008.”
Who’s Brave Enough To Redo Jerome Robbins’s Choreography For ‘Fiddler On The Roof’? Hofesh Schechter
“[Jewish folk dance is] the DNA of my dance education. I have been to Orthodox weddings. I know how it looks like, how it has to feel. I didn’t have to research. My life is the research.” As for most of Robbins’s original, “for my taste, it was not energetic enough.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.07.16
The descent into order
Anyone who took physics or wore a black turtleneck and smoked clove cigarettes will know about ‘entropy’ – the tendency of a system to descend into disorder, to lose working energy over time. … read more
AJBlog: The Artful Manager Published 2016-01-07
Making the World Safe for Julius
Julius [Eastman] is not someone you spring on an unsuspecting public unprepared: how do you warn a wide audience that you’re performing pieces with titles like Crazy N… … read more
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2016-01-07
Cribbing from Frankie
I have never been one to post lists of what I’m listening to lately, for quite a number of reasons. One is that it would often be embarrassing. Right now I’m driving around listening to … read more
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2016-01-07
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Esquire’s New, Not-So-Overwhelmingly-Male List Of 80 Books Every *Person* Should Read
“What can we say? We messed up. Our list of ’80 Books Every Man Should Read,’ published several years ago, was rightfully called out for its lack of diversity in both authors and titles. So we invited eight female literary powerhouses, from Michiko Kakutani to Anna Holmes to Roxane Gay, to help us create a new list. Each participant made 10 picks.”
Ten Poems for People Who Hate Poetry
“This list is an olive branch to the poetry skeptics. Prose is great for fiction, essays, and belabored introductions to lists, but poetry has its own place in this world. … Many wonderful poems exist, but the following selections will appeal to readers of prose: work that is approachable, funny, smart, but still verse. Take a chance on these 10 poems.”