The budget shortfall for fiscal 2018 was $1.3 million, but that’s down from $4.2 million the previous year. At the orchestra’s main venue, Severance Hall, attendance rose by 8%, while audience numbers for summer concerts at Blossom Music Center were up by 28%. — The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
Author: Matthew Westphal
University Group Asked Comedians To Sign ‘Behavioural Agreement’ Before Benefit Performance
A student group supporting UNICEF at the School of Oriental and African Studies, a prominent research institution in London, booked five comedians for a benefit performance. Then it sent them a contract “agreeing to our no tolerance policy with regards to racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia or anti-religion or anti-atheism. … All topics must be presented in a way that is respectful and kind.” — The Guardian
Alvin Epstein, One Of America’s Great Classical Stage Actors, Dead At 93
He was Marcel Marceau’s assistant in his U.S. debut tour, played the Fool to Orson Welles’s Lear, was a founding member of both Yale Rep and American Rep Theatre, and acted in everything from the Greeks to Shakespeare to Brecht and Weill. But he made his biggest mark in the plays of Samuel Beckett. — The New York Times
I Was An Unhappy, Aging Academic Until Flamenco Transformed My Life
Author and professor Catherine Taylor offers an impressionistic longread, with plenty of video clips, about how her midlife crisis moved her to travel to southern Spain for serious study of the form — and about how its aesthetic and mindset changed her way of being. — The Believer
Tasmanian Billionaire Is Building Hotel-And-Arts-Center Next To His Modern Art Museum
Gambling mogul David Walsh, who built and opened MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) in Hobart in 2011, has announced plans for a complex he’s calling Motown. In addition to 176 high-end hotel rooms, Motown will include a 1,000-seat theatre, a conference center, a library, a gallery, and a spa designed by no less than James Turrell and Marina Abramović. — The Art Newspaper
Literary Hoaxes: Why They Work, And Why They Make Readers Angry (And Some Onlookers Gleeful)
Louis Menand: “If we pick up a novel about life in the barrio, or a book by a Tibetan monk, or an avant-garde literary magazine, we know what we expect to find. We are complicit in the attempt to get us to believe because we already want to believe. Writing … has to rely on readers bringing a lot of preconceptions to the encounter, which is why it is so easily exploited. Does this mean it’s all a game? Yes, in a sense.” — The New Yorker
The Day Lorraine Hansberry Schooled Robert F. Kennedy
“You have a great many very accomplished people in this room, Mr. Attorney General, but the only man you should be listening to is that man [Jerome Smith] over there. That is the voice of twenty-two million people. … I am very worried about the state of the civilization which produced that photograph of the white cop standing on that Negro woman’s neck in Birmingham.” And then she led those very accomplished people in walking right out of the room. — Salon
Meet The Guy Who Makes Sure The Guthrie Theater’s Shows Are Accessible To Folks With All Sorts Of Disabilities
Says one of many admiring advocates and clients, “If a school is supposed to make programs accessible to students with disabilities — say, blindness — they might put things on tape and say it’s accessible. They don’t say to the person: What would be your preference? Hunter [Gullickson] does that. And he’ll get the program on tape, but also in Braille.” — The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
A New York Times Critic Explains How (And Why) They Do What They Do
A.O. Scott: “We assume that readers are looking not only for advice, but also for ideas, arguments, provocations and the occasional joke. … Some of the time some of our readers might think we’re wrong, but being wrong — starting an argument about what matters to us — is one of the ways we can be most useful.” — The New York Times
Not Only Will The Nobel Prize In Literature Survive This Scandal — It Needs This Scandal
“My research finds that a prize’s long-term success actually depends on these kinds of low and embarrassing episodes, which attract public investment into the very market for symbolic capital that makes prizes necessary and keeps them afloat.” James English explains how this phenomenon plays out. — Public Books