“During the era of agitprop theatre in the 1960s and 70s, when politically committed companies toured the UK, … no one would have imagined that a passionately leftwing theatre show would one day play to an audience of one billion and have a budget of £27m to spend. But, last Friday night and Saturday morning, that is exactly what happened.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Rome’s Colosseum, Now Beginning To List, Will Finally Get Renovation
“Long-delayed repairs to the 2,000-year-old Colosseum will begin in December in a project funded by Italian billionaire Diego Della Valle to save the crumbling monument”
How Was Social Inequality Born? With Domesticated Horses
“The association between horses and wealth was forged millennia ago. In fact, the first people known to celebrate hierarchies of power, whose inequalities of wealth were integral to their society and culture – the people you could call the first 1 percent – were the first people to ride horses.”
How Did Women’s Gymnastics Become So Graceless And Un-Dance-Like?
“By comparison to the ’80s and ’90s, the last decade’s worth of exercises are high on difficulty and tumbling but low on elegance and refinement. Instead of putting together complete routines, coaches, choreographers, and gymnasts treat the moments between tumbling passes as opportunities to rest, filling them with static poses, ill-timed to the music.”
Cuban Officials Shut Down Cabaret That Was Country’s ‘Largest Private Business’
“[When] President Raúl Castro urged Cubans to increase productivity by starting small businesses, [baritone Ulises] Aquino answered the call. He cleaned up a vacant, trash-strewn lot in Havana and built a restaurant and cabaret, El Cabildo, where his Opera of the Street could finally have a home. It was a big hit. And true to socialist principles, Aquino split earnings among his 130 employees, held free children’s theater on weekends and kept his prices low. But it didn’t last a year.”
Indian TV Network Sues Nielsen For Billions Over Alleged Ratings Fraud
“The Indian network, New Delhi Television, or NDTV, says the manipulated data cost it nearly a billion dollars in advertising revenue, and the suit is seeking several billion dollars in damages.”
Author Maeve Binchy Dead At 72
“[She wrote] 16 novels and several collections of short stories, most of which were built around the sometimes-awkward problems of women and families coming to terms with a changing Ireland in the second half of the 20th century. Although highbrow critics were not always kind to Ms. Binchy, her books sold more than 40 million copies worldwide and were translated into 37 languages.”
Innovation In Theater – Whose Job Is It?
Howard Shalwitz, co-founder of Washington, DCs Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, considered the question in this address to the Theater Communications Group’s 2012 national conference.
Unknown Goya Canvas Identified
“An early religious painting by Goya, which hung for more than 80 years unrecognised in a private collection, has been discovered and will be sold by Koller Auctions in Zurich in September. Paintings by Goya are rare, with fewer than 10 on the auction market in the past 20 years.”
Reviving Louis XIV’s 24 Violons Du Roi
On a commission from the Centre for Baroque Music at Versailles, instrument maker Antoine Laulhère and violinist/conductor Patrick Cohen-Akenine have set out to recreate to string orchestra that played for the court of Louis XIV. The major challenge: that band’s instruments came in five sizes, three of which have since disappeared.