Lyn Gardner: “I can only ever review what I see. I can’t review intent, and I can’t review the fact that the people putting on the show will almost certainly have expended much time and effort, and may even have mortgaged someone’s granny’s house to raise the money. So where does that leave the critic – and indeed the audience – when it comes to community or participatory theatre, where often the performance is but the tip of the iceberg?”
Author: Matthew Westphal
And Britain’s Best Work Of Art For 2012 Was – The Olympic Cauldron?
Jonathan Jones: “Thomas Heatherwick’s Olympic Cauldron has won the South Bank Sky Arts award for the best British work of visual art in 2012. Yet the Cauldron is not a work of art, and Heatherwick is not an artist.”
The Real Ballet War In Russia
The Tsiskaridze-vs-Filin (and almost everyone else) conflict that forms the backdrop to the current madness at the Bolshoi is part of a larger struggle within Russian ballet – especially at the nation’s flagship companies, the Bolshoi and Mariinsky – between traditionalists and modernizers. Yet there’s one company that’s straddling the divide with remarkable success.
Should Bigots Get Equal Time On Stage?
“When Ovalhouse’s director Deborah Bestwick chose to programme Boy in a Dress last year, she undoubtedly did so believing that David Walliams’ gender-bending play had the potential to increase acceptance of those for whom sexual identity is anything but straightforward. She was right, of course, but would Bestwick have backed a piece that suggested cross-dressing equated to having a mental health problem? Probably not.”
The Danger Facing Romanian Film: Romanians
“Does a new wave exist if there’s no one around to hear it crashing to shore? Festival audiences and international arthouse buffs [have] certainly marvelled at the high quality of the Romanian new wave.” Romanian moviegoers? Not so much – they prefer the product of the country’s nascent commercial film industry.
The Prize Formerly Known As Orange: Longlist Includes Kingsolver, Mantel, Zadie Smith
“Among the contenders for the leading prize for fiction written by women is a bestselling thriller and a how-to-live-your-life memoir so divisive it had some reviewers wanting to throw it across the room. Also in the running are novels by literary heavyweights Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith and Barbara Kingsolver.”
How Edouard Manet Changed The Way We Look At Art
“Manet portrayed his model as more than an object to be considered, but a subject who is also considering us. … [It] is her unflinching gaze that struck Manet’s contemporaries with feelings of violent unease. She was not just another nude model depicted for the pleasure of the spectator. Rather, in giving us a courtesan regarding us, Manet created a new kind of encounter between patrons and painting.”
Today’s Opera Singers Are Weak Wussies, Says Covent Garden’s Music Director
Antonio Pappano: “It happens more and more. There’s something about this generation of singers, that they are weaker in their bodies or don’t care. I don’t know what it is, but it’s something that is very, very frustrating for me personally.”
Mary And The Zombies: Can Science Explain Consciousness?
“We know that our experiences – of seeing red, feeling pain, falling in love and so forth – depend on physical systems like the brain that science can, in principle, exhaustively explain. But it’s hard to make sense of the idea that experiences themselves could be physical. No doubt experiences correlate with objective physical facts, but, as subjective phenomena, how could they be such facts?”
Here’s What Happens When A Philosopher Watches Too Much Reality TV
“I just had a dream the other night that, as a public philosopher, I was hosting a new show. Then, I realized that if it was a hit, I could have a huge new empire of reality TV shows on my hands. Here’s what I mean.” Tom Morris pitches his ideas for The Real Philosophers of Boston, Semantic Survivor: Plato’s Cave Version, and Top Sage, among other shows.