The daring stage director Milo Rau and his Belgian theater comany have adapted the Aeschylus trilogy to the Iraqi city that was occupied and devastated by, then liberated from, ISIS. Said one cast member, “We do not need to act a tragedy. This play is just talking about the reality of Mosul.” – The New York Times
Author: Matthew Westphal
Iraq Bans Fortnite And Other Popular Video Games For Being Too Violent
The legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament gives the reason for the ban as “the negative effects caused by some electronic games on the health, culture, and security of Iraqi society, including societal and moral threats to children and youth.” – Reuters
When Theatre Turns Audiences Into Activists
Tita Anntares writes about two recent productions — one depicting a U.S. immigrant’s deportation hearings, another the monologue of the ghost of a young Black Panther shot by Chicago police in 1969 — that actually moved their audiences to into taking actions on those issues. (Having activists on-site as the show ended helped.) – HowlRound
To Be Returned? Met’s Own Notre-Dame Sculpture Figures in Museum’s Program on the Cathedral
The Met is presenting a free “informal program” about Notre-Dame this coming Monday, but the list of speakers seems unusually high-powered for an informal educational event on a weekday afternoon … – Lee Rosenbaum
When Zora Neale Hurston And Langston Hughes Took A Grand Southern Road Trip
The two great African-American writers happened to run into each other on the street in Mobile, Alabama on a summer day in 1927, and she invited him to ride along with her to Tuskegee and beyond, through Georgia and South Carolina and ultimately home to New York. As biographer Yuval Taylor recounts, they visited a traveling rural school, saw a Bessie Smith traveling tent show, had a session with a conjur-man, and plenty more. – Longreads
Florida’s Salvador Dalí Museum Plans $38 Million Expansion With Virtual Reality Exhibits
The St. Petersburg museum will add a 20,000-square-foot extension to house educational and community events and elaborate digital facilities, including virtual reality tech along the lines being used in its current “Dalí and Magritte” exhibition. – ARTnews
That Drunk Guy Who Broke A Thumb Off An Ancient Chinese Terra Cotta Warrior? His Trial Got Really Weird
A young shoe salesman from Delaware, who now has no idea what he was thinking at the time, did the deed at an Ugly Sweater party at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 2017. He was tried last week under an art theft law that could have sent him to prison for decades. Expert testimony got so strange that the jury hopelessly deadlocked. Jeremy Roebuck explains how it all went down. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
It’s Final: All Of Kafka Archives Will Go To National Library Of Israel (And Who Knows What They’ll Find Inside?)
“A district court in Zurich upheld Israeli verdicts in the case last week, ruling that several safe deposit boxes in the Swiss city could be opened and their contents shipped to Israel’s National Library. … The Swiss ruling would complete the acquisition of nearly all his known works, after years of lengthy legal battles over their rightful owners.” – AP
Unpublished Daphne Du Maurier Poems Discovered Tucked Into Picture Frame
“The two unknown poems were found tucked underneath a photo of a young Du Maurier in a swimming costume standing on rocks, which was part of an archive of more than 40 years of correspondence between the author and [a] close friend.” – The Guardian
UK Theatre Industry Says It Has A Gender Wage Gap Because There Are So Few Women Doing Tech
“Participating employers” — those with more than 250 employees, among them Ambassador Theatre Group and Delmont Mackintosh as well as the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and the RSC — “identified technical departments as the biggest driver of pay inequality between men and women in the sector, with many pledging to explore flexible working initiatives and offer better support to parents as a way of balancing the workforce.” – The Stage