Author: Matthew Westphal

Turning The Edinburgh Fringe Virtual

“For the first time in its 73-year history, the Edinburgh Fringe will not take place as an official live event in 2020. But this has not deterred companies and venues from developing creative online solutions. They speak to David Pollock about adapting to the pandemic, crowdfunding and the appetite for change in the sector.” – The Stage

Beirut Explosion Wrecks Galleries And Museums

“The damage rocked an already fragile Beirut to its core and wreaked havoc on the city’s renowned art scene. Major art galleries, including Marfa Gallery, located close to Beirut’s Port, and Galerie Tanit were completely destroyed. … The Sursock Museum, once the centre of Beirut’s cultural life in the 1960s and which was reopened in 2015 following a costly restoration, was severely damaged.” – The Art Newspaper

Theatre’s Overlooked Casualties Of The Pandemic: Publicists

Says the co-director of one London theatrical PR firm, “At the end of the day, we are not the people putting on the shows, but we make a crucial contribution. What we do is bespoke, skilled and comes with specialised knowledge often honed over many years. We are the translators between the artists, the journalists and the people on the street.” – The Stage

The Muppeteers Need To Concentrate On Some Other, Any Other, Couple Than Kermit And Miss Piggy

Never mind the enormous catalogue of their incompatibilities and the exhausting ups-and-downs of their relationship. “The Muppeteers’ obsession with Piggy and Kermit has come at the expense of nearly every other character. Sure, Fozzie briefly dated a human. But we know so little about, say, the long-term love of Gonzo and Camilla the chicken, or Janice’s romances with various members of Electric Mayhem, or what is actually the deal with Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker. Share the spotlight a little, you attention hog (and attention frog)!” – Slate

Even Out At The Beach, This NYC Dance Festival Couldn’t Go Ahead This Year. Here’s What Happened Instead

“Every August for the past five years, Beach Sessions Dance Series has been an exciting fixture on the sands of Rockaway Beach in Queens. The festival brings contemporary-dance luminaries to share their work through free, outdoor site-specific performances, all while raising environmental awareness through beach cleanups and other collaborative programming. But as coronavirus began to decimate the plans of other summertime dance festivals, it might have seemed inevitable that Beach Sessions would also be forced to take the year off. Enter TikTok.” – Dance Magazine

Reclaiming The Life Story Of America’s First Published Black Poet

In 1761, at roughly age 7, the girl who would become Phillis Wheatley was taken from Africa to Boston and sold to the wife of a local merchant who educated her. Within a dozen years, she had published a book of verse in London and become perhaps the most famous Black person in the British Empire as well as a symbol for anti-slavery campaigners. Until recently, though, we knew her life story only through a tendentious memoir, written well after her death, by a woman who claimed to be a relative of her mistress. – The New Yorker

God, What A Treat To See Live Dance Again, Writes New York Times Critic

Gia Kourlas: “It didn’t bode well that the first live dance I was going to see since mid-March was one I had seen many times before. Sunshine, a Larry Keigwin war horse set to the Bill Withers classic ‘Ain’t No Sunshine,’ can give a dancer the opportunity to really feel the music in all the worst ways. It’s treacly stuff. So I’m happy to say that as soon as Melvin Lawovi began to move, my chest tightened; I even sensed — the horror — some tears.” – The New York Times

A COVID Face Mask That Can Translate Eight Languages And Take Dictation

“In conjunction with an app, the C-Face Smart mask can transcribe dictation, amplify the wearer’s voice, and translate speech … between Japanese and Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indonesian, English, Spanish and French.” Naturally, it was the Japanese who dreamed up and developed it; the company that makes it is called Donut Robotics. – CNN

James Silberman, Who Edited Books That Changed America, Dead At 93

Among the many important titles he midwifed over a long career at Dial, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Little Brown were James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and The Fire Next Time, Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest, Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room, E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels, Seymour Hersh’s The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House, and Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. – The New York Times