54 Below – in the space below what used to be the nightclub Studio 54 – opens next week with with a fortnight of shows by Broadway royalty Patti LuPone. “[The club’s] aim is to tilt the axis of the city’s unpredictably evolving cabaret world” away from the old jazz standards and toward modern musical theater.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Stage Director Openly Calls Head Of Vienna Opera House A Liar
William Friedkin, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who has developed a sideline in staging opera, called Theater an der Wien Intendant Roland Geyer the l-word this week (causing a storm in the Viennese press) during a dispute over the company’s revival of Friedkin’s production of The Tales of Hoffmann.
How Amazon.com Changed Research (And Then Made Us Into Research)
“Devices and technologies that have become second nature to us – scanners and searchable PDFs, for example – first became familiar to many through Amazon. So did disintermediation: the sudden realization that” – thanks to the Search This Book feature – “we could work our way into a subject without taking a box of file cards to a reference room, riffling through catalogs and consulting librarians.”
The Joy Of Fact-Checking With Fred, Ginger, Adele, And YouTube
“Here is the best time an editor might ever have fact-checking: picking through a 3,700-word essay on the song-and-dance partnership of Fred and Adele Astaire.”
Mobile Theater Venue Seats Six, Can Go Almost Anywhere
“Designed by London studio Aberrant Architecture, the Tiny Travelling Theatre” – a red metal box with organ-pipe-style skylights and recessed seating along three walls – is “[i]nspired by small one-to-one spaces, such as a confessional booth or a peepshow.”
The New Yorker Gins Up The Old Prescriptivist-vs.-Descriptivist Language Battle (Again)
“Nature or nurture. Love it or leave it. If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit. If you didn’t already know that euphonious dichotomies are usually phony dichotomies, you need only check out the latest round” in the bogus usage wars – revived beginning last month in the famously fussy magazine (to much bemusement on the language geek blogs).
‘Empirical Hubris’: Data Study Says Contemporary Writers Aren’t Influenced By Classics
“In ‘Quantitative Patterns of Stylistic Influence in the Evolution of Literature,’ an article published in … The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, even today’s literary writers have little use for the classics. They are, the study asserts, much more influenced by their peers … And these researchers, being mathematicians, have the numbers to prove it.”
What’s The Best Music To Use As Torture, Erm, Enhanced Interrogation?
“Guards at Guantanamo Bay tried to coerce inmates into talking with songs from Sesame Street played on repeat, according to a new Al-Jazeera documentary. … What’s the best kind of music to use when you’re trying to break someone’s will?”
Russian Punk Rockers Facing Jail For Blasphemy Call For Help From Famous Westerners
“The lawyer for three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot, who are currently awaiting trial for an allegedly blasphemous protest in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral … says only appeals from Western celebrities and high-profile cultural figures can save them from further criminal charges and long jail sentences.”
Only Philosophers Go To Hell
“This is because only someone who understands exactly what she is doing in sinning or rejecting God could deserve such a fate as Hell, and only a philosophical education could provide that kind of understanding. So, it follows, only philosophers can go to Hell.”