“Set in modern-day San Francisco, the story follows young Miriam – the equivalent of Clara or Marie in other productions – from a family Hanukkah party to a dream in which she witnesses the battle fought by Judas Maccabee, the reconstruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the arrival of Jews from all over the world for the temple rededication.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Beatbox Nativity: Rapping Vicar’s Christmas Story Becomes YouTube Hit
“For many vicars penning their sermons is what gets the creative juices flowing. The Rev Gavin Tyte has gone a little further, producing a rap and human-beatbox version of the nativity story, and a video to go with it that has attracted thousands of hits on YouTube.”
Toronto Considers Selling Sony Centre For The Performing Arts
“The city should find a way to unload the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts and stop subsidizing its operations to the tune of more than $1 million a year. That is the most drastic recommendation of a report to Mayor Rob Ford from his task force on grants to major arts organizations and the future of three city-owned theatres.”
New York City Opera And Unions Headed Into Mediation
“New York City Opera is scheduled to begin mediation Monday with its two labor unions, in a bid to resolve a bitter contract dispute threatening to disrupt performances planned across the city this season, opera and union officials said.”
George Whitman, 98, Owner Of Paris’s Shakespeare & Co.
“[The] fabled English-language bookstore on the Left Bank in Paris [has been] a magnet for writers, poets and tourists for close to 60 years, … an offbeat mix of open house and literary commune.”
Auction Of Naguib Mahfouz Archive Arouses Anger In Egypt
“Sotheby’s announcement that it had scheduled a ‘highly significant archive’ of work by Nobel literature laureate Naguib Mahfouz for auction this Thursday has sparked vigorous debate in the author’s native Egypt.”
Spoken-Theater Scene Develops In China’s Regions
“Western-style ‘speaking theater,’ as it is known here, isn’t indigenous to China, where opera and other forms have long dominated the theater scene. But that is now changing. Festivals, like the one in Chengdu, are part of a national drive to bring a new kind of theater to smaller cities in China.”
Turkey’s Trailblazing Female Artists – Of The Ottoman Era
“‘Dream and Reality,’ a show at the Istanbul Modern art museum, pairs ‘nearly forgotten’ painters from the Ottoman era with some of the most intriguing artists in Turkey today. The common thread? All are women.”
The Man Who Made It OK For Philosophers To Believe In God
Alvin Plantinga “has led a movement of unapologetically Christian philosophers who, if they haven’t succeeded in persuading their still overwhelmingly unbelieving colleagues, have at least made theism philosophically respectable.”
What It Was Like To Dance For Merce
Robert Swinston: “[In] my early training at Graham, … one’s worth was challenged all the time. In the Cunningham Company, it wasn’t that way at all, but there wasn’t a lot of feedback either. You really had to figure out where you stood. You had to come to it and say: Well, here I am, and I guess it must be good enough, otherwise I would hear more about it.”