“No matter how much she may ever achieve, the most stunning fact of Michaela DePrince’s life will always be that it ever happened at all.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Word Aversion: When The Mere Sight Of ‘Moist’ Or ‘Slacks’ Makes A Person Cringe
“Word aversion is marked by strong reactions triggered by the sound, sight, and sometimes even the thought of certain words … ‘Not to the things that they refer to, but to the word itself. The feelings involved seem to be something like disgust’.”
With A New Play, How Much Does The Title Matter?
“With a new play, audiences never quite know what they’re getting, but early ticket-buyers for Anthony Neilson’s latest piece at the Royal Court were taking an exceptionally wild shot in the dark. Originally advertised several months ago as ‘Untitled New Play by Anthony Neilson’, it was only revealed to be called Narrative on 15 March, three weeks before opening.”
The Barnes Foundation’s Missing Piece Is Set To Reappear
When the staff was cataloguing all of Albert C. Barnes’s art collection shortly after his death in 1951, an ancient Greek earthenware vessel shattered; it and everything else in its display case were removed from view. Restorers are finally able to work on the piece, and the ensemble should be back in place this summer.
The Cut-And-Paste Gospel That Caught King Charles’s Eye
“Cutting apart printed Bibles with painstaking care, the Ferrar family and their co-religionists selected parts of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, each of which talk about Christ’s life from different perspectives. Pasted together in chronological order, the bits made a ‘Harmony’ – a complete story, split into 150 chapters.”
Her Gig Canceled After Anti-Gay Tirade, Michelle Shocked Plays Outside In Protest
Following her now-notorious remarks from the stage at a San Francisco in March, “clubs around the country responded by canceling bookings they had made with her. But that hasn’t stopped her: Thursday night she turned up outside one such club with her face covered and her mouth taped shut to protest the way she is being treated.”
Hollywood Stars Who Have Second Careers Acting In Other Languages
Kristin Scott Thomas (French) and Viggo Mortensen (Spanish) are but the best-known of anglophone film stars who are building respectable filmographies in other tongues. And there are even more of them who are fluent enough to do so if they wish.
Watching Crepe Paper Horses Dance Through Grand Central
The most recent of artist Nick Cave’s “Soundsuits” are big, brightly colored, puppet-like horses made out of raffia. Twice a day for a week, dancers got inside the horse-suits and performed a twenty-minute work by choreographer William Gill at the Manhattan transit hub.
No, Miss Thing, Camp Is Not Dead
“[The] whole project of the assimilation-directed gay civil rights movement of the past few decades is largely predicated on the suppression of queer quirks like camp. By that logic, old, mildewy camp should have burned off the moment the closet door swung open; yet, curiously, we’re still wading through its seductive musk 40 years later.”
Biggest Hit Exhibition of 2012: Dutch Masters In Tokyo
“The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum reopened after a refurbishment with paintings lent by the Mauritshuis … [that] attracted 10,573 visitors a day … It was a different story in the leading museums of New York, London and Paris, where contemporary and Modern art dominated the city’s top shows.”