Lyn Gardner: “I’d argue that no one ever became an actor expecting long-term job security, and while the freelance way of life does not suit [everyone], uncertainty can be a genuine spur to creativity, rather than stifling risk.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Acting After 70
The ability to memorize lines, the higher risk of injury, the sheer effort of doing eight shows a week – Derek Jacobi (almost 75) and Sheila Hancock (80) talk about why, despite those challenges, they and their colleagues like Vanessa Redgrave (76) and James Earl Jones (82) keep coming back to the stage.
At 81, Melvin Van Peebles Is Still A Baadasssss
“Mr. Van Peebles, best known for his pioneering 1971 independent film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, … is making his public debut as a visual artist. That adds to a résumé that includes filmmaker, composer, actor, novelist, Wall Street trader, San Francisco cable car driver, playwright, bandleader, vocalist and, by his own account, bon vivant.”
Remember That Dance For Garbage Trucks? Now There’s One For Power Company Cherry-Pickers
Allison Orr, artistic director of an outfit she named Forklift Danceworks had a YouTube hit with The Trash Project, which she choreographed for the workers and vehicles of Austin’s Solid Waste Services Department. Now she’s finishing up a new work, PowerUP, for the folks at Austin Energy.
If Space And Time Don’t Really Exist, How Should We Feel About That?
Q: “To a person who upon considering all of this, at best, feels an overwhelming rush of anxiety and at worst, now feels unmoored to existence, just floating through a universe without any familiar organizing principles, what would you say?” A: “Don’t worry!”
Dance UK Loses State Funding, Doubles Income
“Advocacy body Dance UK has nearly doubled its income in the past two years, despite losing all its regular Arts Council England funding in 2012.”
Bertolt Brecht: Theater Visionary Or Communist Relic?
“Is he still an irresistible force or simply a chapter in theatrical history whose reputation has declined with the collapse of eastern European communism? In weighing up the pros and cons, one has to start with a basic fact: as both a practising dramatist and visionary theorist, Brecht changed the face of modern theatre.”
Russia’s Culture Minister Denies That Tchaikovsky Was Gay
“Vladimir Medinsky claimed that there was no evidence to suggest the 19th-century composer was anything other than a lonely man who failed to find a suitable woman to marry.” Most historians argue that the evidence is plentiful.
Is A Cambodian Antiquities Smuggling Scandal About To Erupt?
“The return to Cambodia of two tenth-century Khmer sandstone sculptures, which had been displayed for nearly 20 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, … is now shining a spotlight on the degree of damage to Koh Ker and raises questions about a number of masterpiece sculptures in public and private collections.”
MOOCs Can’t Replace Colleges, But They Can Make Colleges Better
“The basic idea is to use MOOC-style video lectures and other online features as course materials in actual, normal-size college classes. By assigning the lectures as homework, the instructors are free to spend the actual class period answering students’ questions, gauging what they have and haven’t absorbed, and then working with them on projects and assignments.”