Author: Matthew Westphal

Here’s What The Classical Industry Thinks Of Anthony Tommasini’s Proposal To Scrap Blind Auditions

“[The] reaction to the essay was spirited — and mixed, a sign of how unsettled the debate remains. A sampling of artists and administrators spoke with The New York Times, sharing their thoughts on blind auditions and offering ideas to make orchestral hiring more equitable. Here are edited excerpts from the conversations.” – The New York Times

Boris’s ‘Festival Of Brexit’ Is Now Accepting Proposals

“Critics have dubbed it a ‘festival of Brexit’ and pilloried it as a waste of £120m of public money, but the first plans for the festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland … will officially launch on Wednesday. Using the working title Festival UK * 2022 organisers have opened applications for teams who wish to be commissioned to come up with ideas for the event.” (In fact, Theresa May first proposed the arts festival, but just about everyone associates it with Boris Johnson.) – The Guardian

Boris Johnson Announces Plan To Restart Performances By Testing Audience Members On Site

“Addressing a press conference at Downing Street on Tuesday, [the British prime minister] said, ‘Theaters and sports venues could test an audience, all audience members, one day and let in all those with a negative result, all those who are not infectious. Work places could be opened up to all those who test negative in the morning to behave in a way that was exactly as in the world before COVID.'” The scheme will be put to the test in October in Salford, near Manchester. – Variety

‘She Has Developed A Completely New Video Language That Warms This Cool Medium Up’ — On Pipilotti Rist

“She has done more to expand the video medium than any artist since the Korean-born visionary Nam June Paik. Rist once wrote that she wanted her video work to be like women’s handbags, with ‘room in them for everything: painting, technology, language, music, lousy flowing pictures, poetry, commotion, premonitions of death, sex, and friendliness.’ If Paik is the founding father of video as an art form, Rist is the disciple who has done the most to bring it into the mainstream of contemporary art.” – The New Yorker

At 84, David Gordon Learns To Choreograph For, And Via, The Internet

“An Obie Award-winning director and founding member of the 1960s collective Judson Dance Theater, [he] may not grasp the ins and outs of TikTok, but it seems as though he’s been preparing for digital dance … his entire career.” Gia Kourlas talks with Gordon about The Philadelphia Matter — 1972/2020, a video collage, commissioned for this year’s virtual Philly Fringe festival, of 30-odd Philadelphia dancers performing various segments from three of his works from the 1970s. – The New York Times

A New Yorker Writer Watches Herself And Her Mother Get Turned Into Chinese Propaganda Grotesques

Jiayang Fan: “I find a story about my mother and me in the Global Times, a state-controlled Chinese newspaper with twenty-eight million followers on Weibo. It has been picked up by the country’s most popular news aggregator and then energetically disseminated on various platforms. The more I read, the more fascinated I become by the creation of this alter ego. I am watching a portrait of myself being painted, minute by minute, anonymous hands contributing daubs and strokes, the more lurid the better.” – The New Yorker

How Theatre Schools Are Teaching Set, Lighting, And Costume Design During The Pandemic

As one design-and-production professor puts it, “One thing we’ve learned is there’s a lot of technology that we haven’t utilized because we’ve had the luxury of being together in a room.” Says another, “It’s given us the headspace to shift our daily routine, which in turn I think is going to really benefit and shift the student experience quite a bit.” – American Theatre

Holding Toronto Film Festival Online Is Good For Film Criticism And For Films Themselves

“The word-of-mouth reactions that take hold there are leveraged by marketing teams and Oscar campaign consultants, and a consensus emerges that underpins the entire awards season. … Multiplied by thousands of bloggers, critics and everyday festivalgoers, one tingle can go from a feeling to an entire business model.” That can’t happen this year, and Ann Hornaday makes the case that this is a very good thing. – The Washington Post

Guardian Publishes Essay Written Entirely By AI Bot

Says the Editor’s Note appended at the end of the article, “For this essay, GPT-3 was given these instructions: ‘Please write a short op-ed around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI.’ It was also fed [an] introduction. … Overall, [this piece] took less time to edit than many human op-eds.” – The Guardian