“He asks students to write bad plays, to write plays with their nondominant hands, to write a play that takes five hours to perform and covers a period of seven years. Ms. Satter recalled an exercise in which she had to write a play in a language she barely knew.” Yet his master’s program has been turning out some of New York’s most audacious – and lauded – young playwrights.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Pussy Riot Gets Buried Alive In First English-Language Video
“It’s called ‘I Can’t Breathe,’ and as the title indicates, the song is something of a tribute to Eric Garner, the Staten Island man who died last summer after New York Police Department officer placed him in an apparent chokehold. ‘I can’t breathe’ were Garner’s last words, repeated and captured on video.”
“They Are, In A Way, Aliens”: Helen Mirren On The British Royal Family
“The world they live in is so beyond our understanding. You’ve never queued for anything. Ever, for anything. Every time you go in the street, the traffic is stopped for you. It’s a world you can’t imagine. They are, in a way, aliens. But inside that, they are the same flawed, insecure, vulnerable, complicated human beings we are. It’s my job to get into the person who’s inside that world.”
Tamara Rojo Programmed An Entire Evening Of New Ballet By Women Choreographers – But It Wasn’t Easy
“There are so many talented female choreographers out there, but they’re much less quick than men to accept work. Some of the women I approached had little children and decided it was too much to deal with. Some felt they were not ready for a big London commission. … There’s no shortage of men who want to experiment and put themselves forward, but we have to go out to find the women.”
Meet The Healer To The Stars Of Ballet
“Since founding her practice in 2008, Rodriguez has become the go-to physical therapist for much of the ballet world’s elite talent, treating marquee dancers like Benjamin Millepied and Wendy Whelan, as well as members of companies including the New York City Ballet, the Alvin Ailey school and France’s Paris Opera Ballet.”
Go Ahead And Muck About With Shakespeare, Says Top British Shakespearean (He Can Take It)
“Despite his reverence for the Bard, Simon Russell Beale argues against a puritanical approach to his texts, suggesting that they should be seen as blueprints. Shakespeare is ‘big enough’ to withstand having scenes cut and lines transposed or obsolete words changed for the sake of clarity, he said.”
Five Common Beliefs About The Brain That Are Simply Wrong
You know what? There’s no such thing as “left-brained people” and “right-brained people,” and we use way more than 10% of our brains.
Mexico’s Modern-Day Diego Riveras
“In the 1920s and ’30s, Mexican muralists like Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco painted murals that powerfully illustrated the issues of their day. Today, street artists rule the nation’s walls, addressing its problems with an arsenal of wit and aerosol cans.”
Yes, We *Should* Fact-Check Movies About History
Edward Rothstein: “The historian is starting to be perceived as a pedant. And the ‘Gotcha Game’ – as one critic has called efforts to call out film inaccuracies – is being portrayed as a culturally philistine enterprise. … Actually, if these films didn’t make such claims on history, they would get considerably less attention. History, they insist, matters. But some also claim its mantle disingenuously, in order to give authority to their manipulations. Fact-checking is important because it helps disclose what is being changed and why.”
Top Chinese Director And Top Communist Party Newspaper Duke It Out Over Reality TV
“The spat began earlier this month, when director Feng Xiaogang lambasted the popularity of a spate of recent Chinese movies based on popular reality television shows. … That hurts genuine filmmaking, he argued, because it draws investor money away from more serious movies.” Arguing back was no less than the People’s Daily (sounding not unlike The Wall Street Journal, actually).