“Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones will reunite on stage next year in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at London’s Old Vic. The actors will star as reluctant lovers Beatrice and Benedick for the first time in their long careers. The play is being directed by Mark Rylance, actor and former artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Dallas Museum Of Art Returning Looted Mosaic To Turkey
“The Dallas Museum of Art continued its newsmaking ways Monday: It is returning a rare piece of Roman art believed to have been looted from Turkey, while at the same time collaborating with Turkey in a new international exchange program.”
Starting An Orchestra In An Alaska Women’s Prison
“After serving a 14-year sentence for murder, no one would have expected Sarah Jane Coffman to go anywhere near the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center once she was released. But every Saturday she makes the 10-mile drive with a viola in tow for orchestra practice at the prison just north of Anchorage.”
Head Of Scotland’s Arts Funding Body Resigns After Months Of Conflict
“The head of the under-fire arts quango Creative Scotland has quit in the wake of a growing rebellion over the running of the organisation. Andrew Dixon resigned on Monday following months of criticism of the flagship quango from angry artists and arts organisations.”
What Went So Wrong At Creative Scotland?
Andrew Dixon arrived at the funding agency in 2010 after helping turn Newcastle and Gateshead from decaying northern English industrial towns to thriving arts hubs? A look at how a tenure that seemed so promising ended up so badly.
Watching Actors Create And Destroy The Universe Over 29 Nights
Scholar David Shulman writes of experiencing the performance of a 130-hour epic kudiyattam – “a living tradition of classical Sanskrit drama that has survived intact for more than one thousand years” in the southwest Indian state of Kerala.
How Much Context Does A Dance Critic Need To Review A Piece? Can She Have Too Much?
Katie Colombus, after having interviewed Matthew Bourne: “I’m going to be at Sadler’s Wells on press night, covering Sleeping Beauty as a review, and it suddenly struck me – what if it’s shit? Would it sway my judgment of the piece, having talked to Bourne all about the show, having a little choreo-crush on him and a better understanding of the intricacies of the performance?”
Neuro-Aesthetics? Feh! What Neuroscience Can And Can’t Teach Us
“[The] growing chorus of neuro-critics are half right: our early-twenty-first-century world truly is filled with brain porn, with sloppy reductionist thinking and an unseemly lust for neuroscientific explanations. … [What] we need now is ‘the meticulous dissection of some elementary brain functions, not ambitious but vague notions like brain-based aesthetics, when we still don’t understand how the brain recognizes something as basic as a straight line’.”
‘The Most Overrated Value In Moviemaking’
Richard Brody: “And storytelling is the most overrated value and misattributed term in the world of moviemaking and, for that matter, criticism. The classic dichotomy of plot and character is beside the point; while following a character in action, the inner life can be reflected in a moment – or, catching a character in repose, stories can be spun out on the wing.”
Who Invented ‘OMG’? A WWI Admiral, Writing To Churchill
“It’s 1917 and Winston Churchill receives a letter from Lord Fisher. It contains the earliest example of OMG |(Oh My God). Did the toffs invent text speak? WTF! (Winston Talks French!)”