Two burglars cut through a fence at the artist’s Paris property and tried to take apart one of his sculptures made from the now-removed old lead roof of Cologne Cathedral, probably to sell the metal; they were scared away by a security guard. (In 2016, thieves tried to steal another Kiefer sculpture at his suburban Paris warehouse; they didn’t cart it away, but they did serious damage.) – Yahoo! (AFP)
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Ten (Actually 14) Most-Produced Plays In The U.S. For 2019-20
It’s a list packed with ties this season: A Doll’s House, Part 2 by Lucas Hnath and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time lead with a dozen productions each, there’s a two-way tie for third place, and nine plays with eight productions each complete the roster. – American Theatre
America’s 20 Most-Produced Playwrights In 2019-20
Lauren Gunderson leads the list for the second time, this year with 33 productions. Lauren Yee is runner-up with 18, while Lucas Hnath is tied with Tennessee Williams for the third slot (17 each). In a sign of progress, women outnumber men on the list 11 to 9. – American Theatre
Below The Line: Tales From The Behind-The-Scenes Pros Of TV And Film
“In this post and the series of corresponding profession-specific stories we’ve published, we’re going to be giving proper credit to those people whose work truly brings entertainment to life” — Foley artists, costume designers, visual effects artists, music supervisors, food stylists, location scouts, prop masters, animal trainers, stunt performers, and caterers. – Vulture
The Chasm of Disbelief
Think you (or your organization) don’t understand the people you are trying to reach? If you are talking about people other than your current attendees/donors and their peers, you are 100% correct; and they understand you even less. (And if you don’t think you don’t understand you are probably deluding yourself.) – Doug Borwick
Turkey’s Television Epics Are Conquering The World
“Thanks to international sales and global viewership, Turkey is second only to the US in worldwide TV distribution – finding huge audiences in Russia, China, Korea and Latin America.” Reporter Fatima Bhutto talks to people at the center of the Turkish TV industry about why these series appeal to worldwide audiences (and why the English-language market is an exception) and how the shows were a huge hit in the Arab world until, one day, they were pulled off the air. – The Guardian
Why Ruben Santiago-Hudson Is Taking August Wilson’s ‘Jitney’ On A Coast-To-Coast Tour
“Many audiences haven’t seen August Wilson’s plays done well, so my mission is to go out and do the plays well the way the author intended. The celebration of African American life and the way we navigate this landscape.” – American Theatre
How To Write Classical Concert Program Notes That Actually Engage An Audience
Lara Pellegrinelli writes that, “as a lover of words, I’d once held the opinion that ‘Notes on the Program’ are bound to be mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly boring – or one of the more effective embalming tools for classical music.” After seeing a few – too few – examples of genuinely fascinating notes, she thinks “that this genre of writing about music needs an intervention.” So she provides one, complete with six useful rules. – 21CM
In Rare Show Of Defiance, Russian Celebrities Rally Behind Jailed Actor
Pavel Ustinov, 24, was sentenced to 3½ years in prison for assaulting a police officer, though video shows that he was simply a bystander who was attacked by police at a demonstration. Many of his well-known colleagues are leading public calls for his release despite the risks to their own careers: most of them work in government-sponsored theatre, television and film. – The New York Times
Moscow’s Pushkin State Museum Will Take Over Nine Regional Contemporary Art Museums
“The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow will soon take over the running of Russia’s National Centre for Contemporary Arts, whose nine branches extend from Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea to Tomsk some 4,000km east. … Several new NCCA branches are under discussion for the university cities of Khabarovsk, Tyumen and Novosibirsk.” – The Art Newspaper