Blanka Zizka, who founded the company with her ex-husband Jiri about 40 years ago and has been sole artistic director since a couple of years before his death in 2012, “has recruited three new co-artistic directors — noteworthy local playwright/director James Ijames, Russian-born director Yury Urnov (who’s had a long association with Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington), and Morgan Green of the New Saloon theater in Brooklyn — to share the AD responsibilities with her starting this summer.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer
Author: Matthew Westphal
Will UK Have To Return Elgin Marbles To Greece To Get Post-Brexit EU Trade Deal?
“That’s the message embedded within a clause recently added to the E.U.’s negotiating mandate, which says the British government should ‘address issues relating to the return or restitution of unlawfully removed cultural objects to their countries of origin.'” – ARTnews
For South L.A., A Sort Of African-American High Line
It’s not an elevated park, and it’s not on disused train tracks (in fact, it’s tied in with a new light rail line), but Destination Crenshaw (as it’s called) will be a 1.3-mile-long public space along Crenshaw Boulevard, with landscaping, murals and other public art, and plazas — all intended as community gathering places to affirm the area’s African-American identity as the pressures of gentrification increase. – New York Magazine
Actress Zoe Caldwell, Four-Time Tony Winner, Dead At 86
She began her professional career in her native Melbourne at age 9, went to England and joined the RSC at 26, and was a founding member of Tyrone Guthrie’s theatre company in Minneapolis. Though she appeared occasionally in TV and film, she was most famous for her stage performances. She won Tonys for playing Miss Jean Brodie, Medea, Maria Callas (in Master Class), and (her first) for a double-bill of Tennessee Williams one-acts that ran for a week. – The New York Times
Arts Council England Warns Organisations: Get More Diverse Or Give Up Government Funding
“Arts organisations and museums in England are being warned they will lose public funding unless they meet ‘stretching’ targets to create and attract more diverse workforces and audiences. … ACE has been publishing diversity data for five years but has often been accused of merely talking instead of taking strong action. The language this year is significantly more robust.” – The Guardian
‘True Grit’ Author Charles Portis Dead At 86
“[He] was a master of shaggy-dog stories set on the American frontier or just beyond the Southern border, where his characters journeyed to recoup a debt, mete out justice or track down a runaway spouse. … By 1998, when author and journalist Ron Rosenbaum called him ‘our least-known great novelist,’ four of his five books were out of print.” – The Washington Post
John Eliot Gardiner On Period-Instrument Beethoven
“What you get in a period orchestra are three things: greater individuality of timbre, more transparency of texture and an increased dynamism once all the instruments are stretched to their absolute maximum capacity of volume and expressivity. If you attempt that with a modern symphony orchestra, there will always be a certain comfort factor, a plushness, which, I feel, doesn’t help the listener to savor all that is most original in the score. It can sound a tad too comfortable.” – The New York Times
Following Netflix Series, Case Of Malcolm X’s Murder May Be Reopened
“Following the release of the six-part documentary Who Killed Malcolm X? – which launched on the streaming platform on 7 February – the Manhattan district attorney will look into the case of the civil rights activist, with the possibility that the case may be reopened.” – The Guardian
New Director Is Making Britain’s Oldest Dance Company Hot Again
The mission of Benoit Swan Pouffer, formerly artistic director of the now-closed Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and now at the helm of Rambert, “is to reinvigorate a repertory company founded in 1926, and he is well on track.” – Dance Magazine
Why Black English Is America’s Most Important Dialect
“All along, while standard American English was busy convincing everyone that it was a superior dialect, it’s Black English that’s been a true cultural and linguistic force in contemporary society. Standard English is in fact deeply indebted to this so-called impoverished speech. It’s Black English that has left its mark on the popular culture we participate in, sliding seamlessly into the language of art, music, poetry, storytelling, and social media. Perhaps no other variety of speech has been quite so significant, innovative, and influential to the development of standard American English.” – JSTOR Daily