David Plotz: “But there’s one literary depiction of mortality for kids so gripping and so terrifying that it has been haunting me – a fully grown man – since I read it. It is arguably the most disturbing book published in America since The Road. I refer, of course, to Mo Willems’ 2010 picture book, We Are in a Book!“
Author: Matthew Westphal
What Do You Get When You Cross Berlusconi With Putin? A Russian Theatre Finds Out
“BerlusPutin, which is based on Dario Fo’s play L’Anomalo Bicefalo (The Two-Headed Anomaly), imagines the outcome of half of the former Italian prime minister’s brain being transplanted into Putin’s head, following the former’s death from a heart attack.”
Booing Is A Good Thing, And We Should Do More Of It
“Let’s be clear – booing is not pleasant … And yet booing is also a sign of caring, honest: it’s a sign of direct and passionate engagement that returns us to art’s roots. … Likewise, it’s our responsibility as an audience to appraise, not merely soak up. Applause must be earned.”
UK’s National Gallery Saves Second Titian For Nation
“Titian’s masterpiece Diana and Callisto has been secured for Britain after the National Gallery stumped up £25m from its reserves and the painting’s owner dropped the asking price by £5m … It now joins its pair, Diana and Actaeon, in the shared ownership of the National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland.”
Barcelona’s Bad-Boy Director Hits The US Stage
Calixto Bieito has become notorious for his provocative, revisionist stagings of classic plays and operas (e.g., oral sex in a brothel in Mozart, a row of men sitting on toilets in Verdi). “The tension between lurid incitement and passionate tenderness is a crucial element in [his] style, but until now” – this month at Chicago’s Goodman Theater – “American audiences have only heard the incendiary sound bites.”
Charles Laughton’s Second Career As A Director
By the late 1940s, the man who had been Hollywood’s top character actor – Olivier called him a genius – was losing his way, parodying himself in mediocre films. Then he returned to the stage as Brecht’s Galileo, led a company of young movie actors in staged readings of classics, and ultimately directed Henry Fonda in The Caine Mutiny on Broadway and Robert Mitchum in The Night of the Hunter on celluloid.
Musicians’ Union Steps Up Campaign Demanding Jazz Clubs Pay Into Pension Fund
“Hoping to make it easier for the city’s hardest-working musicians to make a real living, Justice for Jazz Artists (a coalition of musicians and activists with Local 802) has worked to pressure some of the city’s major clubs , like the Village Vanguard and the Iridium, to provide musicians with access to pensions later in life.”
Who Cares If You Listen? Not Unrepentant Modernist Peter Eötvös
“I don’t think it’s important,” says the Hungarian-French composer. “If you start from a point of view of doing something for the public, you won’t create a new world. … Never give what the public asks. You must give the public what it needs – even if they do not always know it! Many people will understand 100 years later.”
The Most Popular Chinese Movie Of All Time
“An Eastern Western full of train robberies, masked bandits, and shoot-outs in dry gulches, … set in the 1920s during China’s Warlord Period,” Let the Bullets Fly is likely “the most savage anti-corruption movie ever made in China, and the most cynical comedy about state-sponsored criminality.”
Mark Morris Dance Group To Make Chinese Debut
“The Mark Morris Dance Group will make its first foray into China, performing in Guangzhou and Macao from May 25 to June 2, the company said on Thursday.”