Netflix has already done small-screen versions of Springsteen on Broadway and American Son, and they’re now working on feature versions of Broadway’s (recent) The Boys in the Band and (current) The Prom. Fox is working on its own jukebox musicals. Where will the genre go from there? – Dance Magazine
Author: Matthew Westphal
Hollywood Has Spent Lots Of Money Setting Up Production Facilities In Georgia. With Controversy Over Abortion Laws, Will The Studios Back Away?
“Georgia’s recent passage of a highly restrictive abortion law has turned its once cozy relationship with Tinsel Town into a fraught one, and put Hollywood’s liberal politics on a collision course with its own economic interests in the state. … But the industry’s response to the law has been far from unified. There have been pledges to boycott Georgia and promises to stay. Most strikingly, there has been near total silence from top studio brass.” – The New York Times
PBS NewsHour Gets $1.7 Million Grant To Beef Up Arts Coverage
Conductor Alan Gilbert On The New York Philharmonic And The Hamburg Elbphilharmonie
“The 2019-20 season will be Alan Gilbert’s first with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester in Hamburg. On paper, a German radio orchestra, with the system’s long tradition of advocacy for new repertoire, would seem to be an excellent fit for Gilbert. Over two conversations, one in a Hamburg café, the other on the phone, we talked about how taste is made, gender quotas for orchestras, self-doubt, and parenthood.” – Van
London’s Philharmonia Orchestra Names Successor To Esa-Pekka Salonen
Santtu-Matias Rouvali, 33, begins his 10-weeks-a-year, five-year contract term at the start of the 2021-22 season. He is also chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony (which is the official national orchestra of Sweden), where he just extended his term for four years), and the Tampere Philharmonic in Finland’s second city, where “the Rouvali effect” has seen extra concerts scheduled to meet audience demand. – The Times (UK)
Cabaret Star Baby Jane Dexter Dead At 72
“[She] first gained acclaim in the 1970s, when she appeared in New York nightclubs as a bluesy singer with a powerful voice and presence. She dropped out of show business for a decade before returning to the stage in the 1990s, using elements from her personal life — her size, her experience of sexual assault and depression — to heighten the emotional intensity of her performances, which were often so intimate that they seemed to be exercises in group therapy.” – The Washington Post
No One Can See Or Touch These Objects But Ordained Ethiopian Priests. The British Museum *Might* Take Them Out Of Storage And Loan Them To Ethiopia
The objects are called tabots, they’re plaques meant to respresent the Ark of the Covenant, and their presence is what makes an Ethiopian church a sacred space. The British Museum has 11 of them, most of them looted by soldiers after the 1868 Battle of Maqdala; since no layperson may see them (including museum curators), they’re kept in a locked basement. The government of Ethiopia has requested their return; a spokesperson says “the suggestion of a long-term loan of the tabots may be discussed.” – The Art Newspaper
For The First Time, The Met Museum Will Put Sculpture In The Sculpture Niches In Its Façade
Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu is casting works to be displayed in the empty niches this fall, while Cree Canadian artist Kent Monkman is creating large-scale site-specific paintings for the museum’s Great Hall. (Meanwhile, the museum’s board presented the first balanced budget in three years.) – The Art Newspaper
Political Protest Becomes Conceptual Art: Kazakhstan Police Arrest Man For Silently Holding Up A Blank Poster
The “culprit” was Aslan Sagutdinov, a blogger in the city of Uralsk. In a video taken of his arrest, he said, “I want to show that the idiocy in our country has gotten so strong that the police will detain me now even though there are no inscriptions, no slogans, without my chanting or saying anything.” (The writer of this report compares Sagutdinov’s action to John Cage’s 4’33”.) – Hyperallergic
Actor Geoffrey Rush Wins Largest Defamation Payout Ever Awarded In Australia
A federal court in Sydney ordered that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. must pay the Oscar winner A$1.98 million (US$1.36 million) compensation for economic loss on top of the A$850,000 (US$584,000) in punitive damages awarded in April for a Sydney Daily Telegraph story accusing Rush of “inappropriate behaviour” towards the actress playing Cordelia to his King Lear at the Sydney Theatre Co. in 2015. (Rush had earlier offered to settle for A$50,000; News Corp. rejected the offer.) – Reuters