“On Dec. 3, a live version of The Wiz will make its debut on the network, produced in partnership with Cirque du Soleil’s theatrical division, which will then take it to Broadway for the 2016-17 season.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Venice’s Opera House Is Staying In The Black By *Adding* Performances
How do they do it? Don’t opera houses lose money on every performance? Not necessarily. And La Fenice is taking advantage of something Venice has more of than almost any other Italian city. (No, not water.)
Court Orders Turkish President To Pay Damages For Insulting Artist’s Work
Four years ago, when he was still prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described a peace monument by sculptor Mehmet Aksoy near the Turkish-Armenian border as a “monstrosity.” Under libel laws that Erdoğan has been quick to use himself against critics, he was ordered to pay Aksoy 10,000 lire (about $3,800). The president is appealing.
When People Were Scared Of Computers
“In the early 1980s, the age of the personal computer had arrived and ‘computerphobia’ was suddenly everywhere. … [The subject] came up in magazines, newspapers, computer training manuals, psychology studies, and advertising copy.”
When The Medieval World Had Robots
“Throughout the Latin Middle Ages we find references to many apparent anachronisms, many confounding examples of mechanical art. Musical fountains. Robotic servants. Mechanical beasts and artificial songbirds. Most were designed and built beyond the boundaries of Latin Christendom, in the cosmopolitan courts of Baghdad, Damascus, Constantinople and Karakorum. Such automata came to medieval Europe as gifts from foreign rulers, or were reported in texts by travellers to these faraway places.”
The English Language Stinks At Describing Smells
For instance, observes linguist Asifa Majid, there’s a Southeast Asian language that has a dozen different words that denote specific odor characteristics. Leaving aside words that refer to specific substances with particular scents (e.g., cinnamon, sulfur, burning rubber) English has – “musty”.
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Tomas Tranströmer, 83, Winner Of 2011 Nobel Prize For Literature
“He wrote in exceptionally pure, cold Swedish without frills. His descriptions of nature were as sparse and alive as a Japanese painting. … His sparse output was highly praised from the moment his first collection, 17 Poems, appeared in 1954 and he was acknowledged as Sweden’s greatest living poet long before he won the Nobel Prize. He was translated into more than 60 languages.”
The Curator Of MoMA’s Björk Disaster Should Be Fired
Christian Viveros-Fauné: “[Klaus] Biesenbach – the institution’s Übersocial, fame-obsessed, Chief Curator at Large – has seemingly finally come in for some in-house scrutiny. A growing consensus outside the institution says it’s about time.”
Who’s Really To Blame For MoMA’s Björkgate?
“This is obviously about the board members going to dinner parties and such, and being told by friends and associates that they should be embarrassed by the show. And they should be, I guess; the problem is that they refuse to accept any responsibility for fostering the conditions that allowed it to happen.”