Author: Matthew Westphal

This African Country Has A Stultifying Theatre Culture. Here’s How To Change That

“Attend three and you will start feeling the monotony in all of it; it is like each performance, each story, is the same,” writes Malawian theatre artist Isaac Mafuel. The problem, he says, is that theatre there has been used primarily as a tool for teaching schoolkids English as a second language, not as entertainment (let alone serious art), and Mafuel offers some ideas for changing that. – HowlRound

We’re In A Golden Age Of Advice Columns. Why Is That?

John Paul Bremmer (who writes the column “¡Hola Papi!” for Out): “This advice renaissance might seem paradoxical: Why hasn’t distrust in the media as a whole negatively affected advice columns, where you would think that trust is paramount?” His answer: “a growing desire among the public for members of the media to express moral clarity.” – Columbia Journalism Review

Thomas Krens Says Museums Should Be More Like Theme Parks (Seriously)

In a speech in North Adams, Mass., which he wants to transform into “the number one cultural destination in the country,” the man who tried to plant Guggenheims all over the globe argued that museums should become experience destinations with “a for-profit model based on private investment; integrated use of technology like digital modeling and augmented reality; and the ability to draw from ‘deep pools of content’ with ‘huge narrative potential.'” (Oh, and they should maintain “impeccable aesthetics.”) – Hyperallergic

John O’Neal, Who Brought Theater To Southern Blacks Who Had None, Dead At 78

“Mr. O’Neal was still in his early 20s in 1963 when he, Doris Derby and Gilbert Moses founded the Free Southern Theater, which presented free productions throughout the South. The troupe often performed in small towns to largely black audiences with little access to the theater.” As he told an interviewer, “In the South it has been very hard for a Negro to look at and see anything but a distorted view of himself.” – The New York Times

The Incredibly Tangled History Of The Verb ‘To Be’

“The most commonly used verb in the English language (and indeed many other languages) has a strange history. The fact that it has so many more forms than other verbs, which are quite unlike each other (be, being, been, is, was, were, am, are) gives us a clue as to its Frankensteinian origins.” (And plenty of languages don’t even use it.) “It’s what some linguists have called ‘a badly mixed up verb.'” – JSTOR Daily

Tyler Perry Writes His Farewell Letter To Madea

“I understood very early on that this mostly blue-collar African-American audience was feeling inspired. They were getting answers to a lot of what was going on in our community that no one was talking about. … I could lift them with humor and use that laughter as an anesthetic and talk about really deep, sensitive issues that were destroying so many of us. – The New York Times