“Polish police say Elżbieta Podlesna put up posters of the revered Black Madonna that showed the Virgin Mary and Jesus with rainbows from the LGBT flag as the halos. Now she could face two years in prison for [the crime of] offending religious feelings.” – CNN
Author: Matthew Westphal
Ballet Memphis Finds Its New Artistic Director In-House
“Steven McMahon, 34, was named Artistic Director on Tuesday, taking over half the role occupied by company founder Dorothy Gunther Pugh since 1986. While Pugh will stay on as C.E.O., McMahon will take charge of the artistic and programming decisions and continue to choreograph new works.” He has been with the company as dancer and choreographer for 15 years. – KUAF (Memphis)
Woolly Mammoth’s Howard Shalwitz Checks Out Russia’s Contemporary Theatre Scene
The co-founder and recently retired director of DC’s famed theatre company reports from this year’s Golden Mask Festival, where selected companies from all over the vast country meet to show their best work. – HowlRound
Hong Kong’s Long-Delayed New Arts Mecca Is About To Start Hemorrhaging Executives
Five key high-level staffers of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority didn’t renew their contracts and are leaving between now and the fall. And one much-anticipated venue in the WKCD, a flexible theatre called The Box at Freespace, did not open as scheduled last month; another, the contemporary visual art center M+, was supposed to open two years ago and may not open for another two. – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
How Do You Bring Hong Kongers Back To Boring Old Cantonese Opera? Write One About Donald Trump, Zombies, And ‘The Sound Of Music’
Trump on Show, which ran for four days last month at the city’s last commercial Cantonese opera theater, “tells a story of Mr. Trump’s long-lost twin, Chuan Pu, who was raised in China and works at a crematory. There he meets the undead corpse of Liu Shaoqi, the Chinese leader who died during the Cultural Revolution. The opera includes a Ping-Pong game between Mao and Nixon, who later gets stumbling drunk at a state banquet; a visit to the White House by a scheming Kim Jong-un; the ghost of Lincoln; Mr. Trump’s disappearance on an extraterrestrial spacecraft; and multiple singings of ‘Edelweiss.'” – The New York Times
‘Treachery’ Is What Killed Woodstock 50, Says Founder (That And Theft, Too)
The attorneys for Woodstock 50 co-founder Michael Lang have shared a furious letter he has written to Dentsu, the Japan-based international ad agency that had been lead investor for this summer’s festival, only to abruptly pull its funding and announce the festival’s cancellation last week. – Vulture
How Can We Prepare Arts Students From *All* Backgrounds For The Arts Workforce?
“Many programs focus exclusively on craft and artistry, but rarely — if ever — address the nitty-gritty topics such as finding work, money management, or entrepreneurship, although these are all critical to finding success in many areas of the arts.” Camille Schenkkan writes about how she’s worked on these issues as Next Generation Initiatives Director at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. – Americans for the Arts
How Suzanne Farrell Came Back To New York City Ballet, 26 Years After Peter Martins Fired Her
Amy Brandt, who danced in Farrell’s company in Washington, DC, talks with Farrell about her return to the troupe where she became a star, and watches her coach Sara Mearns and Russell Janzen in a piece that Balanchine choreographed on her: the “Diamonds” act of Jewels. – Pointe Magazine
Putting Saul Bellow’s ‘Adventures Of Augie March’ Onstage — Can It Work In 2019?
In Chicago, where Bellow spent his life, playwright David Auburn (who won the Pulitzer for Proof) has reshaped the hefty novel into a single-evening play with 13 actors portraying 40 characters. But will today’s audiences relate to a story by an author who, as one of his biographers puts it, is “lucky he did not live to see the #MeToo movement”? – The New York Times
How, And Why, I Founded One Of The First Site-Specific Theatre Companies
Way back in 1985-86, Anne Hamburger started up En Garde Arts in place of writing a master’s thesis at the Yale School of Drama. (“At the time, no one knew what that was; audiences identified theatre companies with the buildings they occupied.”) In this essay, Hamburger explains how she put together some of her early successes, why she closed En Garde Arts in 1999 and reopened it a decade later, and why that intervening decade completely changed how her company works. – HowlRound