Over the last generation, “hundreds of studies have backed up the idea that when attention is occupied with one thing, people often fail to notice other things right before their eyes.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Ai Weiwei Says America’s NSA Is Becoming Like China
“Even though we know governments do all kinds of things I was shocked by the information about the US surveillance operation, Prism. To me, it’s abusively using government powers to interfere in individuals’ privacy. … I lived in the United States for 12 years. This abuse of state power goes totally against my understanding of what it means to be a civilised society, and it will be shocking for me if American citizens allow this to continue.”
Now Iran Has A Jon Stewart – And His Satire is Illegal
“[Kambiz] Hosseini’s scathing and hysterical news podcast is an essential part of the weekly media diet of Iran’s middle class. Produced by the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, and incorporating sound bites from the week’s headlines and commentary from Hosseini, the show channels the pathos of a generation desperate to intervene in a meaningful way in Iran’s political charades.”
‘Spectacular Blow-Up’: Why Opera Australia’s Ring Conductor Really Resigned
“A ‘spectacular blow-up’ between conductor Richard Mills and a senior cast member of the Melbourne Ring cycle was due to Mills’s inexperience in conducting the massive opera,” according to an unnamed backstage source.
Sylvie Guillem Performance In Italy Is Cancelled So Theater Workers Can Demonstrate
“Guillem has arrived in Florence to pre pare for Wil liam For sythe’s Step text. How ever with the uncer tainty of the future of the Mag gio Musicale Fiorentino, and with the almost cer tain elim in a tion of its dance com pany, MaggioDanza, the 10 June performance [was] can celled ‘to allow the theatre work ers to par ti cip ate in a demonstration’.”
Britain’s National Statistics Agency To Include Arts In Measures Of Well-Being
“The Office for National Statistics is to use responses from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Taking Part Survey – which details consumption of and participation in the arts and culture – in response to public demand for their inclusion in the Measuring Well-being Programme.”
Adapting A Play For YouTube
“In a small theater on the campus of East Los Angeles College, actor Christopher Gorham was performing a scene from the David Henry Hwang play Yellow Face over and over again as a camera crew went through several set-ups of the dialogue-heavy sequence.”
Why Natalie Dessay Is Leaving Opera For Theater
“There’s nothing left for me to sing. I’ve done most of the roles I could do. I don’t want to play Juliette. At my age? Please! Or Lucia or Adina or anything else like that. That’s why I’m quitting. You have to love your repertoire. For a while I thought it was fun, but no. On to something else.”
What Pussy Riot Won’t Do
Rioter Yekaterina Samutsevich: “Legal, paid music performances: We’re offered them to this day and we always turn them down. It’s just not what we’re interested in. In addition, there’s all sorts of commercial activities; we’ve been approached to make profit, and we’re against that. We’re also against any sort of public statement. What we specialize in are guerrilla performances.”
Joyce DiDonato Shows How To Handle A Cell Phone Interrupting A Concert
During a recital the mezzo gave at La Scala last weekend, just as she was the quiet ending of a Rossini aria, someone’s phone went off. She finished like the pro she is, but when she came back for a bow, she asked the audience if it had been Rossini calling to check in.