Matthew Westphal – Page 1777 – ArtsJournal Wayback

“Between Riverside And Crazy” By Stephen Adly Guirgis Wins Pulitzer For Drama

“[A] play about the police, race, a suspect shooting, and real estate,” with a retired African-American cop (shot and wounded by a white colleague) at its center, Between Riverside And Crazy debuted last summer at New York’s Atlantic Theater Company.

Cirque Du Soleil Hasn’t Been Completely Sold, Just Mostly Sold – For $1.5 Billion

The majority stake went to a U.S. private equity firm, with minority stakes going to a Chinese investment firm, Quebec’s pension fund, and founder Guy Laliberté. Plans are for a major expansion in China, though the owners insist that Cirque’s headquarters will remain in Montreal.

First-Ever Chicago Architecture Biennial Takes Shape

The 63 participants in the upstart exhibition … come from more than 30 countries on six continents. … They include architects whose designs range from a luxury Mexican house made up of pentagon-shaped pavilions to the painting of abandoned houses in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood in such colors as ‘Currency Exchange Yellow’. Some, like Chicago’s Jeanne Gang and the Danish firm BIG, already are well-known. Others have built little but have big ideas.”

Alison Bechdel Never Expected The Bechdel Test To Become A Real Thing

“I feel sort of funny about that whole thing because it wasn’t like I said, ‘This is the Bechdel test, and now you must follow it.’ It somehow just got attached to me. I mean, I did write down the principles in a cartoon, but this younger generation of feminists and film-watchers has adopted it in this way that I think is pretty cool.”

Why People Like Food Porn When They Can’t Eat The Photos And May Never Cook With The Recipes

On a basic level, the appeal of any sort of porn is what scientists call supranormal stimulus, “[an] exaggerated imitation [that] can cause a stronger pull than the real thing.” But food porn “is a visual experience of something that other people can smell and taste … something that, at its best, should manufacture a desire that it can’t satisfy.” So what happens in the brain that keeps people hooked on it?

Fired Bay Area Music Director Has Warm (And Strained) Farewell

“Nothing in the organization’s history has roiled the Vallejo Symphony like the board’s decision last summer to fire music director David Ramadanoff, 71, at the end of the current season. He had served in the post for 31 years and was credited by many observers” – and most of the musicians – “with bringing a new level of professionalism to what had begun as a spirited but ragtag ensemble.”

Ballet Instructor Fired For Nude Photos Of Students

“The Royal Winnipeg Ballet has fired 28-year veteran instructor Bruce Monk amid a police investigation into nude and semi-nude photographs of young women dancers in the 1980s and 1990s.” (includes video)

Choreographer Akram Khan Defends His Criticism Of British Dance Training

“It wasn’t about dropping a bombshell – if I didn’t give a shit about young dancers, then I’d just keep quiet. I don’t need to work with British-trained dancers as we have a bunch of dancers from Asia and get half of those in our company from PARTS [in Brussels]. The only reason why I am saying this is because I care for these young people.”

Can The Earth Be Conscious? Have We Built Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘Noosphere’?

Evolution, he claimed, was taking us toward what he called the Noosphere (“nous” is greek for mind) – a global unity of consciousness, a ” ‘thinking’ sphere circling the Earth above the biosphere, which [would comprise all] human reflection, conscious souls, and love.” But “a funny thing happened on the way to the New Age. Humanity ended up building an actual Noosphere (or at least its first draft). It was called the Internet.”

Author: Matthew Westphal