Author: Matthew Westphal

Could Ancient Theatres Provide A Model For COVID-Safe Venues Today?

“In the relationship between ancient theater architecture and nature, one can discern in the Greco-Roman school of thought a particular interest in creating the conditions for a salubrious experience of drama. … As an extant example of a remote, outdoor theater flushed with fresh air, Epidaurus has become something of a touch point for theater producers, designers and historians looking to the past to find a way forward.” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine

Closed Captioning: A Brief History

“Hundreds of millions around the world rely on closed captioning to be able to understand what they’re watching on TV. While the idea seems simple — just add words to relay the dialogue and describe any sounds — it took decades to mandate processes for making entertainment accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing community, as well as the elderly.” Here’s an overview of how that happened — and at how captioning happens today. – Quartz

Anna Netrebko Hospitalized With COVID

The soprano was admitted to a Moscow hospital with pneumonia on Sept. 12, just days after she sang in two performances of Verdi’s Don Carlo, the Bolshoi’s first production since the pandemic shutdown. A third performance, scheduled for Sept. 10, was cancelled after another cast member, bass Ildar Abdrazakov, fell ill and tested positive for the coronavirus. – The New York Times

Being A Booker Prize Judge Is Hard Work, Even During A Pandemic

Each of the five jury members had to read through 162 books, getting a stack each month and then meeting in London to decide which ones advance to the next round. Then came the lockdown: no more trips to England (or anywhere else) and the books arriving as PDFs. At least, said juror Lemn Sissay, “there was nothing to do but read. There will never, ever, be a judging panel that has so much time to just focus on the books.” – The New York Times

Maybe Dance Should Use Intimacy Coordinators, Too

“Dance … is an art form that frequently involves the kind of bodily contact that, in a nondance context, would be watched extremely closely, perhaps nervously. … Despite — or perhaps because of — the fact that dancers are often nearly as comfortable with other bodies as they are with their own, it’s important to make and maintain space for honesty about personal limits and power dynamics.” Zachary Whittenburg looks at how the techniques and principles that intimacy coordinators use in theater and film can be applied to concert dance. – Dance Magazine

Watching How Trisha Brown Meticulously Built Her Dances

Fortunately, she meticulously documented them, too. “Over the years, thousands of hours of rehearsal footage accumulated in Brown’s archive, most of which make up 1,200 videotapes known as the Building Tapes. … After an extensive search for the right home, the company is placing its founder’s archive — including the Building Tapes and corresponding notebooks, known as the Building Notebooks — at the … New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.” Siobhan Burke takes a look at what’s in there. – The New York Times

Two D.C. Stage Companies Create Video Responses To City’s Black Lives Matter Protests

The projects, The 51st State from Arena Stage and an anthology of short videos that Studio Theatre simply calls creative responses to the August 28 March on Washington, “have propelled stage artists in new directions,” writes Peter Marks, “to memorialize galvanizing public events … [with] the fresh lens these companies have been able to train on their convulsed city.” – The Washington Post

Columbia University Marching Band Disbands Itself For ‘A History Riddled With Offensive Behavior’

For 116 years, the ensemble (a term loosely applied, at least musically) has been both beloved and disdained for its un-march-like on-field scrambles; its sometimes witty, sometimes tasteless, always irreverent satirical routines; and its on-campus pranks. This week, more than 20 members voted “unanimously and enthusiastically” to shut the group down for its history of “sexual misconduct, assault, theft, racism and injury to individuals and the Columbia community as a whole.” (Some observers are hoping that this, too, is a prank.) – The New York Times