Video game culture in general in India is relatively new. So when PUBG (official name PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) skyrocketed in popularity in the months after its release, a nervous backlash developed among those given to moral panics, with warnings about the game’s violence and addictiveness. But the major cities in the state of Gujarat went farther, actually banning the game — and that ban wasn’t just for show. – BuzzFeed
Author: Matthew Westphal
Why, Amidst All The Musical Comedies, It’s Important Every So Often To Have A Musical Tragedy
Rachel Chavkin, director of Hadestown: “This gets now into very old Greek theater, but the idea of catharsis and working through something together and the tragedy as a crucible that the audience travels through as a community and mourns together. … I think there something is so medicinal in that purgation. That’s how the Greeks used that word, catharsis, both spiritually and physically — which of course wasn’t separate for them — as medicinal.” – Slate
A Dialogue: ‘All That Would Ever After Not Be Said’
Norman Ogue Mustill (1931-2013), longtime friend and collaborator, was a little-known master collagist. – Jan Herman
Does Classical Ballet Qualify As Camp? (A Lot Of People Seem To Think So)
“Ballet might have been considered camp from the start in its original French context,” allows Madison Mainwaring. (But then, so could most things at Louis XIV’s Versailles.) “If there is a camp essence in [today’s] Romantic style of ballet, with its jeweled costumes and feathered headdresses, it is related to the worship of a style that is no longer of its time.” – The New York Times
Noah Webster Didn’t Just Create A Dictionary — He Wanted To Establish One American National Language
Emphasis on the one. “For Webster, new nationhood provided unique opportunities for language reform — opportunities that would fade quickly, he warns, if not grabbed before America’s language, like Britain’s, deteriorated owing to homegrown ‘corruptions’ such as regional dialects, affectation, nostalgia for English manners and customs, class divisions, and innumerable other evils.” – The Atlantic
The ‘Goddess Of Democracy’: The 30-Year Afterlife Of The Statue That Symbolized The Tienanmen Square Demonstrations
The original statue, modeled on the Statue of Liberty, was crushed by a tank when the People’s Liberation Army wiped out the multi-day protest in Beijing on June 4, 1989. But every so often a replica appears, particularly in Hong Kong. – Global Voices
’13 Reasons Why’ Does Not Lead To More Teen Suicide: Showrunner Refutes Reports On Study
Brian Yorkey: “As the Los Angeles Times recently reported, a new study using Centers for Disease Control data claims to show a correlation between 13 Reasons Why and an increase in teen suicide. However, the research failed to substantiate the author’s own hypothesis. … [In fact,] the show’s positive impact has been observed in numerous independent pieces of research.” – The Hollywood Reporter
For The First Time, Meredith Monk Allows Another Director To Stage Her Work
Says Yuval Sharon, who’s directing a revival of ATLAS for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, “It’s a big deal to me, and it’s a very big deal to Meredith. It’s a huge risk on one hand, but I feel it’s coming at a really important moment. The transference of her ideas is central to who she is and how she works.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
Out Of Debt And With A CEO Who’s Sticking Around, Orlando Ballet’s Terrible 2010s Are Over
This decade has been pretty rough for the company, which lost its home to mold, cycled through executive directors at an alarming rate, and nearly closed for good in 2015. Now Orlando Ballet’s in the black, audiences are up 40% in two years, its shows are hits, and its new HQ is being built. – Orlando Sentinel
Michelle Terry Loves Running Shakespeare’s Globe, But Starting The Job Was Not Easy
She had plenty of experience in that theatre as an actor, but taking over the artistic directorship after the contentious departure of Emma Rice was quite a challenge: “The big learning curve was understanding my place as artistic director in the organisation, at a point when it was bruised and people needed healing. It was traumatic.” – The Stage