“The Arts Index, which has been updated to include figures from 2012/13 and 2013/14, is described as a ‘health check’ on the arts in England and is measured by 20 indicators including financial inputs and outputs, and community and participation levels.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
‘The Human Earthquake Of Modern Theatre’ – Peter Brook At 90
Michael Billington: “Brook himself hates looking back over his career … [but] the rest of us are entitled to put his 70-year-long career in perspective and the stock idea is that it falls into two distinct parts” – the British period and the internationalist period. “It’s a neat division but, to me, Brook’s career is far more unified than it seems.”
French Comedian Convicted Twice In Two Days, For Condoning Terrorism And Inciting Racial Hatred
“A French court on Thursday fined Dieudonné 22,500 euros ($24,000) for anti-Semitic comments … It caps a bad week for the comic, who was on Wednesday handed a two-month suspended sentence for condoning terrorism after a comment suggesting he sympathised with one of the jihadists who attacked Paris.”
Are ‘Big’ Truths Better Than ‘Small’ Truths?
“Humans, with our finite lives, are naturally drawn to grand questions about time, space and the cosmos. But, astrophysicist Adam Frank asks, where does that leave life’s little truths?”
When ‘The Glass Menagerie’ Conquered Broadway
In an excerpt from his prize-winning biography, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, John Lahr recalls the atmosphere in New York and the rest of America at the time of the play’s Broadway success – the close of World Wat II.
‘No Bums Sticking Out’: Rehearsing A Ballet With Hofesh Shechter
Royal Ballet member Beatriz Stix-Brunell: “Performing the choreographer’s new commission for the Royal Ballet is like swimming through honey. Week by week, from our fingertips to our toes, our bodies begin to understand what they need to do.”
Karole Armitage Makes Eco-Dances
“In 2013, she created Fables on Global Warming, a performance-art ballet inspired by animal stories and, last year, presented an ecology-minded piece for families, Four Seasons – A Spinning Planet. Now with the premiere of On the Nature of Things, performed by Armitage Gone! Dance, March 25-27 at the American Museum of Natural History, Ms. Armitage’s activist side has grown even more brazen as she tackles climate change.”
‘Washeteria’ – Off-Off-Broadway Royalty Take Children’s Theater Through The Spin Cycle
This “theatrical installation” at a laundromat in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, “is the first for families ever produced by Soho Rep, the venerable downtown institution that has won 18 Obie Awards over the past decade.”
What’s The Deal With Mardi Gras Indians?
“The inevitable first question, though, can always be answered with: ‘No, they’re not Native American.’ This is a purely African-American tradition. … Some suggest it was a way of honoring Native Americans who sheltered runaway slaves, and also a means of paying respect to a culture that fiercely resisted European domination. Others say it arose after Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show passed through New Orleans in 1884.”
Japan’s Ministry Of Cool
“For over a decade, the country has embraced ‘Cool Japan,’ a government-supported movement focused on selling what many have described as its ‘gross national cool.’ … There is some irony at work here – an eagerness to promote something as trendy usually signals the opposite – but for years the country’s efforts have paid off. “