“Iranian cabs afford passengers a degree of anonymity, paving the way for uninhibited conversations and a new play.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Torturing The Slippers At New York City Ballet
Tiler Peck, for instance, bangs hers against a cinder-block wall. (It keeps them quiet.)
He Keeps The Opera House On The Amazon Running
“In 1973, Raimundo Pereira do Nascimento, known as ‘Nonato,’ walked into the Manaus Opera House with a contract to hang drywall and help with some restoration work. His deal was for three months, but he stayed on – and over the past 40 years he has held almost every job in the house, from box office clerk to usher to backstage technician.”
Give My Theatre Its Funding Or I’ll Drive My Car Into The Presidential Palace!
“An Italian theatre manager rammed his car into the iron gates of an entrance to the French presidential palace Thursday to protest against subsidy cuts for his Paris venue, police said. The action was seen as largely symbolic since Attilio Maggiulli ‘only succeeded in lightly hitting the grills at slow speed,’ a police source said.”
The 8 P.M. Curtain-Time Is Becoming Old-Fashioned
David Patrick Stearns: “Empires rose and empires fell, but if there was one thing the world could depend on, it was the 8 p.m. curtain time for theater, opera, and classical music performances. That, however, was back in the 20th century.”
Do You Know Handel?
Dear old Georg Frideric was quite a fascinating character: prosperous, gluttonous, gifted, truculent, generous, sometimes glowing with happiness – much more than the pious gentleman who composed oratorios like Messiah.
Marta Eggerth, Last Great Star of Viennese Operetta, Dead at 101
“[She] was a film and stage star in Europe in the 1930s, traveled from Hollywood to Broadway in the 1940s and continued to win audiences in cabaret performances well into her 90s.”
The Virgin Mary, Feminist
“Mother of God, become a feminist!” sang Pussy Riot in the protest that made them world-famous. But “is it just a crazy oxymoron to imagine the Virgin Mary, to whom a very large proportion of traditional Christian ritual and prayer is addressed, as a feminist heroine?”
Is Virtual Reality Finally About To Have Its Breakout?
Second Life founder Philip Rosedale: “There is nothing magical about the real world. There is no magical ether. There are no magical particles that enable us to be connected to each other only when we’re face to face.”
Why We Make Resolutions (And Why They Fail)
As Oscar Wilde wrote, “Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil.” Research psychologists have found that he had a point.