The puppeteers, volunteers, board and donors all got together to save the Marionette Theater after Baker died in 2014 – and after the theater was evicted from its space in 2018. Now, explains one of the puppeteers, when the show goes up in the revamped theatre, she’ll be “worried about the manipulations of the puppet in hand, but my fear goes away when I see the audience’s reaction. Everything becomes muscle memory. All you hear is your own breathing and comments from the audience, and you feel the warmth of the lights.” – LAist
Author: ArtsJournal2
Musicians Are Finding That Streaming Doesn’t Pay
Musicians get paid 75 percent less – yes, 75 percent, not a typo – for playing on soundtracks and songs for streaming services. And they’re fed up. They get a base wage for playing on streaming shows, “but residuals generally account for 50 to 75 per cent of a musician’s overall compensation for performing on a score. Actors, writers and directors, even singers, all currently receive residuals on streaming projects. … Score musicians and the AFM aren’t upset with their creative partners; they’d just like to be considered on a similar level, as fellow creatives.” – CBC
The Business End Of U.S. Theatres’ Reliance On ‘A Christmas Carol’
Sure, it’s an almost guaranteed moneymaker, but it’s also “a community builder, a gateway drug, and a holiday tradition.” – American Theatre
Greta Thunberg’s Book Wins A British Bookseller Award
The book, No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference, is a collection of the Swedish teenager’s speeches. Waterstone’s said Thunberg, its author of the year, “had an ‘urgent message.'” – BBC
Depressed? You Could Do Worse Than Watch Cheesy Holiday Movies On Netflix
Maybe not 29 movies in a row, of course. But. One writer explains that she opened Netflix in the depths of a serious depression and started watching Christmas Prince. “The movie was terrible. But it was also wonderful. Within a few minutes, I felt something bubbling in my chest. Something I hadn’t felt in weeks. A small spark of happiness. Soon it had grown enough that it actually burst from me in a smile, which became a laugh. I was actually laughing. Half an hour before that I’d been, to quote Anne Shirley (as I always try to do), in the depths of despair, and now I was laughing.” – BuzzFeed
Elizabeth I Has Been Revealed As The Translator Of An Ancient Roman Text Into English
Of course she was; Tacitus’ Annals “described the high politics, treachery and debauchery of the Roman elite.” – Reuters
Can We Make A Better Social Media World?
One science fiction writer and futurist says we can – but a lot will need to change. “The issue isn’t technical. It has to do with the way business is being done in Silicon Valley. The problem, as most people know by now, is that tech companies want to grab a ton of private data from their customers without telling anyone why they need it. And this … is bad design for users.” – The New York Times
Does Venice Have A Future?
Yes, the water’s up, but the population is also dropping fast. “In the central Castello District, master artisan Paolo Brandolisio — one of only four remaining makers of oars and oar posts for the city’s legendary gondolas — is trying to put his workshop back in order. Brandolisio is trying to salvage his waterlogged oak worktable.” Brandolisio says, “If no one’s left to make wooden boats, they’ll disappear and be replaced by plastic ones.” – NPR
In Kodiak, Alaska, Fed-Up Residents Open Their Own Bookstore
Since the last bookstore closed, people in the town on Kodiak Island have had to use thrift stores and online purchases for their books. But two residents who moved back home to care for ill parents are changing that. One says, “I’ve been surprised to learn what a bookshop means to a community. … I inherently love books, and it was natural that that would be what we chose to pour all of our energy and passion into, but I didn’t realize how much people missed it in our town.” – Anchorage Daily News (Kodiak Daily Mirror)
A Decade After ‘The L Word’ Ended, It Returns To Get More Things Right This Time
Lesbians, the producers of The L Word thought after the show ended its run in 2009, would become more omnipresent in mainstream U.S. culture. Maybe true, but no queer women’s ensemble show arose in its wake (unlike the many, many, many, many, many ensemble shows about straight folks that have been on TV in the past decade). So, what the heck, it’s back – but new, fresh, and much more in tune with what it calls “Generation Q.” – The New York Times