“No longer merely the fusty home of antiques shows, the armory has recently unveiled art installations, staged dramas, presented operas and concerts and served as an outpost of the Whitney Biennial. Now it has … [named] its first artistic director, Alex Poots, who runs the Manchester International Festival in England.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
How Independent Bookstores Can Fight Back Against Amazon
Farhad Manjoo, following up on his already-notorious essay arguing that Amazon.com contributes far more to the health of the book business than do small brick-and-mortar outlets, has a suggestion or two for those retailers on how to compete with the online giant using Amazon’s tools.
A New Streetcar Adaptation From Scottish Ballet
“Scottish Ballet has announced a newly commissioned version of A Streetcar Named Desire, which is to tour to Scotland, London and Belfast in late spring 2012. The ballet … is to be created by theatre and film director Nancy Meckler with Netherlands-based choreographer Anabelle Lopez Ochoa.”
Blood, Blokes, And The Bard: On Tour With Propeller
Actor Nick Asbury: “In the Green Room there is blood on the teaspoons. A bowl of intestines sits in the sink. Leeks are in the fridge. I’m on tour in Henry V with the Propeller theatre company, an all-male troupe … Which means that backstage it’s very smelly, the language is of the gutter, and the testosterone is off the charts.”
Charlie Kaufman (Of All People) To Make A Movie Musical
Now the writer of Being John Malkovich, Synecdoche, New York and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is making a film where half the dialogue is sung. The story features a director whose movie gets 29(!) Oscar nominations, a popular and vicious film blogger who (yes) lives with his parents, and a robot head.
Think You Can Win People Over To Your Cultural Tastes Online? Forget It.
“Social media gives ordinary people unprecedented power to broadcast their taste in movies, books and film, but for the most part those tastes don’t rub off on other people, a new study of college students finds. Instead, social media appears to strengthen our bonds with people whose tastes already resemble ours.”
When Behavioral Economists Go Christmas Shopping
Dan Ariely: “Many of my economist friends have a problem with gift-giving. They view the holidays not as an occasion for joy but as a festival of irrationality, an orgy of wealth-destruction.” Yet for behavioral economists, “gifts aren’t irrational. It’s just that rational economists have failed to account for their genuine social utility.”
When Architecture Students Design Christmas Creches
Witold Rybczynski: “The French firebrand Le Corbusier was one of my early heroes, and I thought something along his line [i.e., white concrete] would be just the thing. … I had to admit it was a little stark, especially when I added the delicately colored figures. The wall didn’t look much like a stable, but that was the whole point – it was a modern crèche.”
The Juror Who Loves Theatre So Much, He’s Going To Jail For It
“A teenage juror, who interrupted a trial when he pretended to be ill so that he could go and see a London stage show, has been detained for 14 days.” The show that’s landing the young man on the cell block? Chicago, of course. (He had it coming.)
Barbara Hepworth Bronze Sculpture Stolen From London Park
“A Barbara Hepworth sculpture which is insured for £500,000 has been stolen by suspected scrap metal thieves from Dulwich Park in south London.”