“For Lindsay Acker and Austin J. Sachs, students at Eastern Mennonite University who spent 3½ months last year in the Middle East, the one-man play that came to their campus compelled them to grapple with all sorts of wrenching memories. … And for Gassan Abbas, the Palestinian actor from Israel who has been performing I Shall Not Hate in one college town after another, the experience has broadened his understanding of the compassion in this country – as well as a sense of its myopia about the world.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Setting ‘The Crucible’ In An Orthodox Jewish Settlement In The West Bank
An Israeli critic reviewing the production at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theater “wrote that he went into ‘aesthetic shock’ when he realized that he was not watching Puritans in colonial New England, but a far more familiar group, one that Miller himself, disillusioned and ailing, had called ‘an armed and rather desperate society at odds with its neighbors but also the world.'”
Sherman Alexie Responds To Accusations Of Sexual Harassment
The celebrated Native American author “issued a statement Wednesday acknowledging that he’s hurt people over the years, addressing for the first time anonymous accusations of sexual harassment against him that have swirled on the internet for days. In breaking his silence, however, Alexie said he rejected ‘the accusations, insinuations, and outright falsehoods’ made by another writer who, while not accusing him of sexually harassing her, ‘has led charges against me,’ he said.”
Record-Setting Picasso Leads $189 Million Auction At Sotheby’s
Picasso’s Femme au béret et à la robe quadrille (1937) sold for $69.2 million, the second-highest price ever paid at auction for a single artwork in Europe. Two other Picassos, Le Matador and Tête de femme, sold together for $31.7 million. Other artist whose work sold for seven figures or more included Derain, Boccioni, Dalí, Magritte, and Lynn Chadwick.
In Two Days, A Single Firm Spends $156 Million On 13 Picassos
“Gurr Johns, which buys and sells on behalf of clients, won four pieces by the Spanish artist, totaling £73.8 million ($102.4 million) at Sotheby’s on Wednesday, according to the auction house. One day earlier, the company won at least nine other Picasso works at Christie’s, … to the tune of £38.9 million” ($53.5 million).
Sean Lavery, New York City Ballet Star, Dead At 61
“As a principal dancer with City Ballet in the late 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Lavery was described as a workhorse and, in his best performances, a wonder.” In 1986, aged only 30, he developed a spinal tumor that forced him to retire; after his recovery, he spent years as a teacher and administrator at the company.
High Court Finds German Language’s Gender Rules Unconstitutional
“The ruling – the first of its kind in Europe – found that having only two genders for official purposes was unconstitutional. The court recommended creating a third gender category for people born with ambiguous sexual traits and those who do not identify as either male or female, or even dispensing with gender altogether in public documents.”
How Nigeria’s Famous Floating School Won Architecture Awards And Then Literally Fell To Pieces
One week after architect Kunlé Adeyemi collected the Silver Lion at the 2016 Venice Biennale, “the Makoko Floating School collapsed. All that remained of the structure heralded as a bellwether of change for a slum and its inhabitants was a flattened pile of planks adrift in the waters of a polluted lagoon. What follows is an account of the school’s stunning rise and fall.”
Judge In Brazil Lifts Ban On Play About Transgender Jesus
“In a unanimous decision, the São Paulo [State] Court of Justice said an injunction to block the performance of The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven – in which the trans artist Renata Carvalho plays a transgender Jesus Christ – was unconstitutional.”
What Could Be The Next Great Source Of Pigments? Genetically Engineered Bacteria
“The model organisms used for [a new] study were colonies of flavobacterium, a rod-shaped bacteria found in soil and freshwater; the colonies were naturally a rich, metallic green hue. By altering the genetic makeup of the flavobacterium, the scientists found they could also change the color of the bacteria. Not only could they produce any color of the rainbow, they could control the intensity of each shade” – and the resulting pigments are brilliant and iridescent, like peacock feathers.