“Running one of Britain’s regional playhouses, a theatre director once told me, was a combination of ‘comedy on stage, tragedy off’. … So how do you construct a regional programme that will work?”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Johan Kobborg To Run Romania’s New National Ballet
The Danish dancer and choreographer – and the soon-to-be Mr. Alina Cojocaru – will move to his fiancés’s homeland next month ro run the new company, based at the national opera house in Bucharest.
What Happens When Ballet Dancers Date
“In this week’s episode of AOL’s City.Ballet web series, those questions are finally answered, and it’s just as gossipy as you might hope.”
The Roots Of Urban Planning In The Gardens At Versailles
An new exhibition at Louis XIV’s château posits that His Majesty’s landscape architect, André Le Nôtre, first put into practice ideas about layout that would influence urban planners for the next several centuries.
Cleveland Int’l Piano Competition Increases Top Prize By 50%
“Thanks to a gift from Mal and Barbara Mixon, the contest’s first prize now entails an award of $75,000, up from the previous $50,000. This makes Cleveland’s top prize one of the largest of its kind in the world.”
What The Ancient Greek Tragedians Knew About Today’s Politics
In an Out Loud podcast, classicist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn talks with Sasha Weiss about how issues ranging from the arguments over where to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev to Americans’ continuing fascination with JFK’s presidency and murder are reflected in Sophocles and Euripides.
The Great Literary Feuds Of 2013
“Among this year’s conflicts, presented here in rough chronological order, a few themes emerge: clashes over the function of online literary criticism, questions about gender and literature, and struggles over who controls an artist’s legacy and fortune.”
What It Feels Like For A Girl – To Read Roth, Kerouac, And Other “Midcentury Misogynists”
Sara Marcus: “I remember putting On the Road down the first time a woman was mentioned. I was just like: ‘Fuck. You.'” Emily Witt: “”I read the [coming-of-age novels] by men instead, until I was like, ‘I cannot read another passage about masturbation. I can’t.’ It was like a pile of Kleenex.”
Nadine Gordimer Remembers Nelson Mandela
The Nobel laureate reveals the terrible secret he told her after he was released from prison, recalls the joy of seeing crowds cheering him in Oslo after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, and recounts one telling instance she witnessed of his extraordinary capacity for forgiveness.
Nelson Mandela And War And Peace
The lessons Madiba learned from Tolstoy’s General Kutuzov, “whom everyone at the Russian court underestimated.”