The theatre cited “financial reasons” when it called off the production of playwright Abhishek Majumdar’s Pah-La scheduled for last fall. Newly-released correspondence says that the British Council warned the Royal Court that going ahead with the play could interfere with “significant political meetings” happening in China at the time and could jeopardize a project the Royal Court had planned with 16 Chinese writers.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.04.18
Can Orchestras Be Re-Invented?
Theater companies have dramaturges. Museums are staffed by scholars. But orchestras, despite their reverence for great music of the past, don’t even care about their own backstories. … read more
AJBlog: Unanswered Question Published 2018-04-04
Juilliard Dancers Predicting Spring
Watching the Juilliard School’s annual Spring Dances, I think of young racehorses turned loose on a course. The Juilliard performers aren’t as young as those ballet dancers who join companies while still in high school; after four years at the school, they’ll graduate with BFAs. However, all that they’ve learned, and are still learning, is on the line in these performances, and often, they’re being shown in choreographic masterpieces. … read more
AJBlog: Dancebeat Published 2018-04-04
Now Here’s An Old Easter Tradition We Could Revive: Priests Dancing Through Labyrinths Tossing Balls
“In Auxerre Cathedral in northern France, and most likely in cathedrals in Sens and Amiens (and perhaps Chartres, as well), clergy gathered around the labyrinth [patterned into the floor of the nave], danced in a circle, and tossed a ball from person to person. These games, according to medieval religious observers, had ties to pagan practices. In certain places, they were incorporated into church rituals for hundreds of years.”
With Emergency Campaign, Elgin Symphony Orchestra In Metro Chicago Saves Its Season
“The Elgin Symphony Orchestra’s season finale concerts were saved by ‘an outpouring of support’ from the community, which donated more than $140,000 since a public plea 10 days ago, orchestra officials said.”
‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ – How The Extraterrestrial Epic ‘Changed The Very Form Of Cinema’
“As Stanley Kubrick’s monolithic movie celebrates its half century, special effects gurus, directors and those who worked on the film consider its legacy.”
Do Flashbacks In Literary Novels Even Work, Really?
Tim Parks: “Every few days, working on my new novel, my thoughts flash back to something Colm Tóibín said at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival nine months ago: that flashbacks are infuriating. Speaking at an event to celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of Jane Austen’s death, Tóibín said Austen was marvelous because she was able to convey character and plot in the most satisfying way without the ‘clumsiness’ of the flashback. Today, on the other hand, we have to hear how a character’s parents and even grandparents met and married. Writers skip back and forth in time filling in the gaps in their shaky stories. It is dull and incompetent. Is Tóibín right? I worry, as I prepare to put together a flashback myself. Is there no merit or sense in the device? Didn’t Joyce use it? And Faulkner? Or David Lodge, for that matter? Or John Updike?”
Reckoning With The Wreckage On Reality TV
“The obvious question to bring up here is: Are we complicit? ‘We’ meaning you and me but also, in that awful think-piecey way, standing in for the culture. Sure. I suppose we are complicit. The attention given to sociopaths, and the public pain that results from the potent mixture of attention and sociopathy, exists only because there are reliable consumers who enjoy the cocktail. And then we wait for more of the same, so more of the same is provided.”
Philip Astley, The Man Who Invented The Modern Circus
“The 250-year history of circus would have been very different if a man from Newcastle-under-Lyme had got on better with his father, and been happy to become an apprentice cabinet maker. … Philip Astley … in 1768 drew a 13 metre (42ft) diameter ring on the ground and filled it with men and women standing on the backs of cantering horses plus clowns, jugglers and other marvels – [and thus] the modern circus was born.
Putting Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between The World And Me’ Onstage
“It won’t quite be a play or a straight recitation … Excerpts and fragments will be read either solo or in groups by a cast that includes the actress Angela Bassett and the rappers Common and Black Thought. Projections visualizing Mr. Coates’s vivid imagery will tower behind them, and the jazz musician Jason Moran will perform a live score with a trio.” Kamilah Forbes, executive producer for the Apollo Theater, tells a reporter how she’s gone about adapting the award-winning book by Coates, a close friend from college.
Why Do We Need A Disney Princess Who [Blanks]?
“Twitter illustrated the enduring obsession with the latter last week when the ‘We need a Disney princess who’ meme – which ranged from earnest (‘We need a Disney princess who’s vegan and fights for animal liberation’) to bizarre (‘We need a Disney princess who is literally Shia LaBeouf on PCP’) – reached a flashpoint after a regional Planned Parenthood center’s account tweeted, then deleted, ‘We need a Disney princess who’s had an abortion.’ The outrage from the anti-choice right that followed was understandable enough. But what accounts for the internet’s chronic royal fever?”