“As a recent graduate with a BFA in acting, I could have been stuck lip-synching to Buddy Holly at an amusement park or being cast as a Native American in a problematic outdoor drama in Chillicothe, Ohio. But here I was doing something respectable; noble, even.” Jeremy D. Larson recalls the three-hour load-ins for 8 a.m. shows. The flu passed from cast member to cast member when no one could sit out a show. The drink and drugs. The streaking. And the time they made the mistake of uttering the title of The Scottish Play out loud – The Outline
Author: Matthew Westphal
Comfort Reading: In Defense Of Returning To The Same Book Over And Over
Rebecca Jennings — who confesses to having read each of the Harry Potter books at least ten times and insists she’s “not advocating for laziness” — points to research on “repeated hedonic experiences” that explains why those repeated experiences are hedonic (that means pleasurable) and, in fact, good for you. – Vox
Anish Kapoor’s ‘Orbit’ — AKA Boris Johnson’s Giant Erector-Set/Sliding Board — Is Millions In Debt
The 376-foot sculpture was commissioned by Johnson, then London’s Mayor, for the 2012 Olympics, and he had hoped that it would become London’s answer to the Eiffel Tower (7 million annual visitors) or the Statue of Liberty (over 4 million). But Orbit never even cracked the 200,000-visitor mark — not even after it was bailed out by tycoon Lakshmi Mittal (which is why it’s now named ArcelorMittal Orbit) and Johnson had Carsten Höller add a sliding tube for which admission is now £17.50 ($21). (Maybe that’s why visitorship is down more than 20% from its peak.) Total debt on the contraption is now £13 million ($15.7 million). – Artnet
Inside India’s First-Ever Contemporary Sculpture Park
At the Madhavendra Palace, just outside Jaipur, “floral murals, elaborate arches, patterned columns, dark paneled doors, and stone-lined courtyards serve as maximal backdrops for sculptures — many of them site-specific — that simultaneously respond to the environment and introduce challenging new ideas into the space. Beauty and contemporary politics collide in room after room; visits to the palace become opulent treasure hunts.” – Artsy
Netflix India Has Its Own Version Of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
“It’s 2047, 100 years after India’s independence, and in the fictional nation of Aryavarta, water is scarce. The republic’s authoritarian rulers are seizing children of mixed parentage from their families, interning the mothers, and forcibly reprogramming them to serve the nation and to purify their defiled minds. … While it has drawn parallels with The Handmaid’s Tale thanks to its depiction of a draconian, patriarchal state suppressing women and restricting their reproductive rights, Leila‘s central themes also include climate change and a deeply hierarchical society organised according to religion, caste and wealth.” – BBC
Are We Reaching The Point Where Dancers Need Big Social Media Followings Just To Get Hired?
“New York City-based choreographer and director Jennifer Weber once worked on a project with a strict social media policy: ”Hire no one with less than 10K, period’ — and that was a few years ago,’ she says. ‘Ten thousand is a very small number now, especially on Instagram.’ … It’s unsurprising that profit-driven dance enterprises lead the pack when it comes to leveraging artists’ exposure; policies at nonprofit dance organizations are generally less defined or even in place. (Multiple major ballet companies declined to speak with us on the record for this story.)” – Dance Magazine
Audience Talks And Talkbacks, And Keeping Them On Track
Says the former director of public programming at Lincoln Center, who has moved on to a new arts center in Abu Dhabi, “I’m someone who dreaded talkbacks and Q&As. While I was in New York, a lot of the time it was just audience members trying to show off how smart they were.” Journalist Zachary Whittenburg talks with presenters and artists about how they direct the focus of audience engagement events. – Dance Magazine
The Access Conundrum At The Heart Of Popular Music Journalism
There are more and more outlets, but they pay writers less and less; there are huge quantities of new music pouring out, but large bodies of readers are going to click on pieces about artists they’ve already heard of; those famous artists have less and less time to make themselves available to journalists, whom they no longer need to reach their fans. Jeremy Gordon looks at this conundrum and seeks a way beyond it. – Columbia Journalism Review
L.A.’s Flagship Arts Complex Was Built As A Shining, And Remote, City-On-A-Hill. Will Its Redesigned Central Plaza Make It More Welcoming?
“We shouldn’t be a white castle on the hill. Our new vision is about deepening the cultural life of every resident in the county. That is a very outward vision,” says Los Angeles Music Center CEO Rachel Moore. Carolina Miranda looks at the Music Center plaza’s new redesign — “less a full-blown re-do than a careful surgical intervention” — and whether it will serve that vision. – Los Angeles Times
Female Comics Are Taking On A Previously Off-Limits Topic: Abortion
“Given the trend over the last few years to use comedy as therapy, to use laughter to counterpoint pain, a complicated subject like abortion is no less likely to be a topic for comedy than mental health, toxic masculinity or sexual abuse. … [And] in the face of [a wave of restrictionist] legislation, comedy is being used as a weapon.” – BBC