The Arden Theatre Company, launched 30 years ago by a couple of young Northwestern grads, started out in the little upstairs space at America’s oldest theatre (the Walnut Street). In 1994 they bought a 50,000-square-foot building a couple of blocks from the old waterfront, more or less under the Ben Franklin Bridge. Subscribers started going there – and eating dinner beforehand. Now the Old City neighborhood is Philly’s nightlife capital, and Arden has three stages and an apprentice program, and regularly wins critical acclaim and awards.
Author: Matthew Westphal
A Visit To Yayoi Kusama’s New Museum In Tokyo
“Even the restrooms are covered in polka dots.” Motoko Rich meets the artist and tours the five-story museum, which opens October 1. (Timed tickets are already sold out through November.)
Latest List Of America’s Most Banned Books Is Dominated By Picture Books
“Some things will always remain the same – some books will always be challenged, and libraries and schools will always fight to keep books available and preserve peoples’ freedom to read. But this year’s Banned Books Week features a striking new trend: Half of the top 10 challenged books of 2016 were illustrated narratives, more than ever before. And this year, the main reason for objection to books was sex and gender issues.”
Like It Or Not, ArtPrize Is Now Political
The competition was founded by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s son and is heavily funded by her family, the leading philanthropists in ArtPrize’s location, Grand Rapids, Mich. While the event’s officials say that the family’s influence on operations and choice of participants is minimal, “‘Any artwork put into ArtPrize is going to be about ArtPrize, the DeVoses and Trump,’ said Eric Millikin, an artist in Detroit whose entry, Made of Money, used a weave of actual dollar bills and digital manipulation to produce portraits of accomplished people who died poor.”
‘Still Powerful, Still Relevant’ – The Guardian Publishes An Editorial On Opera
“Opera, so often derided as elitist, has played an active role in society and politics throughout its life – sometimes as a direct conductor of political ideas, invariably as a mirror of the power structures that produced it. … And opera in Britain has a vivid life outside the famous houses. Young artists still want to sing it; young composers still want to write it; it still has things to say.”
Albert Innaurato, Playwright And Opera Maven, Dead At 70
His biggest hit, the 1976-77 play Gemini, is still one of the longest-running straight plays ever to have appeared on Broadway, where it played for more than four years. He was also well-known, or perhaps notorious, as an extremely knowledgeable and often ferocious critic of opera, under both his own byline and the screenname of Mrs. John Claggart.
Ayad Akhtar And Lucas Hnath Win $50K Steinberg Playwright Awards
“Akhtar, whose work largely centers around the Muslim-American experience, earned a 2013 Pulitzer Prize for his drama Disgraced, which came to Broadway in 2014 and earned a 2015 Tony nomination for Best Play. Akhtar’s other plays include The Who & the What, The Invisible Hand, and Junk, coming to Broadway [next month]. … Hnath made his Broadway debut last season with A Doll’s House, Part 2, earning a 2017 Tony nomination for Best Play. His other work includes Hillary and Clinton, Red Speedo, [and] The Christians.”
Hugh Hefner, 91, Once Called ‘The Most Famous Magazine Editor In The History Of The World’
“From the first issue of Playboy in 1953, which featured a photograph of a nude Marilyn Monroe lounging on a red sheet, Mr. Hefner sought to overturn what he considered the puritanical moral code of Middle America. His magazine was shocking at the time, but it quickly found a large and receptive audience and was a principal force behind the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Mr. Hefner brought nudity out from under the counter, but he was more than the emperor of a land with no clothes. From the beginning, he had literary aspirations for Playboy, hiring top writers to give his magazine cultural credibility.”
Composer Arvo Pärt Wins Theology Prize From Vatican
The 81-year-old Estonian, who is the world’s most-performed living classical composer (and who is not himself Roman Catholic), is one of three recipients of this year’s Ratzinger Prize, named for Pope Benedict XVI (né Joseph Ratzinger) and given to “people who answered to the challenge of fostering a deep dialogue among science, theology and philosophy.”
Improving Schools Is Not The Key To Upward Mobility For Poor Children, Finds New Research
UC Berkeley economist Jesse Rothstein “found that differences in local labor markets – for example, how similar industries can vary across different communities – and marriage patterns, such as higher concentrations of single-parent households, seemed to make much more of a difference than school quality. For Rothstein, there’s no reason to assume that improving schools will be necessary or sufficient for improving someone’s economic prospects. ‘We can’t educate people out of this problem,’ he says.”