When it came to making the new Dora the Explorer movie, the production company worked hard to get things right for indigenous representation. Did it pay off? “Live-action still-pan-Latina Dora, who also speaks Quechua, was created with the help of a consultant to help ensure that the indigenous language and elements were accurate.” (And the lead actor recorded and re-recorded her lines in Quechua to make sure they were correct.) – The New York Times
Author: ArtsJournal2
Women At Edinburgh Fringe This Year Report That Sexual Harassment Was Common
The reports are to the BBC and other media, and to an actors’ union as well, but not to police. A lot of the harassment takes place on the Royal Mile as women flyer for their or their companies’ shows. And this is just disgusting on the reviewers’ part: “Another woman said many like her felt pressured into putting up with the unacceptable behaviour of show reviewers – who can make a great difference in getting more people to watch their performances.” – BBC
The Forgotten New York Photographer Finally Getting (Some Of) The Attention He Deserves
Alvin Baltrop only had a few shows while he was alive, one of which was at a gay nightclub. Now that he’s getting more attention, we can see some of the “real” New York of the 1970s and 1980s – the impoverished city that couldn’t rebuild a collapsed West Side highway, the piers where the Whitney Museum now stands, the cruising that happened under those piers, the time between Stonewall and the AIDS crisis. (Oh, and they tell a lot of architectural history, too.) – The Guardian (UK)
The World Seems To Be In Love With Long – Really, Really Long – Audiobooks And Book Theatre
War and Peace? Bring it! Every single word of Silas Marner? Amateurs! What about 72 hours of Sherlock Holmes? Bliss! “‘There is an appetite for the epic that has simply surpassed our expectations,’ says Celia De Wolff, who has produced and directed a marathon adaptation of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, to be broadcast over three days” in Britain. “Event radio like this gives the audience a sense of achievement.” – The Observer (UK)
The Nashville Symphony Is ‘Taking A Break’ From Its Free Day Of Music
The claim: The event takes up an incredible amount of time and money, and the symphony says “our understanding of our role in the community has begun to change.” Therefore, “the staff is evaluating [Free Music Day] and a lot of other programs to determine if they are the best offerings for listeners and performers.” – The Tennessean
The Director Happily Tackling Six Hours Of Shaw
Kimberley Rampersad was a dancer who started to sense that dance jobs would dry up – and it was time to move into directing. Now, she’s got Man and Superman, all six hours of it, on her plate, thanks to her previous work – and to Mark Rylance. – The New York Times
An Author Won A Prize For Her Debut Novel, And She Split The Prize With The Other Nominees
Olivia Laing won a £10,000 prize for her novel Crudo over the weekend. But Laing said, in her acceptance speech, “Crudo was written against a kind of selfishness that’s everywhere in the world right now, against an era of walls and borders, winners and losers. Art doesn’t thrive like that and I don’t think people do either. We thrive on community, solidarity and mutual support and as such, and assuming this is agreeable to my fellow authors, I’d like the prize money to be split between us, to nourish as much new work as possible.” – The Guardian (UK)
Orwell Is Being Rewritten Into Newspeak (On Amazon)
Sure, some of this is funny – “One edition of Animal Farm: A Fairy Story referred to itself on the back cover as Animals Farm: A Fair Story. The preface referred to another great Orwell work, Homage to Catalonia, as Homepage to Catalonia – but overall, not so great (or funny). “Until recently, improving Orwell was not a practical business proposition. Then Amazon blew the doors off the heavily curated literary world.” – The New York Times
How Fandom Endangers Women Musicians
Singer/songwriter Lucy Dacus: “Music is magic, yes, and many people use it as an outlet for their animal emotions, but I just wish people would let loose their feelings while still keeping their behavior under control.” (Examples of said behavior include a man chasing a musician down the street, screaming, “I would never chase you!”) – Nylon
Phone Booths Are Mostly Dead, But Not All Dead, In Spain
Is the phone booth a thing of art? Of commerce? Or is it just a piece of trash from an older age – a piece of trash no one, including the phone companies, wants to deal with? While Spaniards use their mobiles to call someone around 100 million times a day, and use WhatsApp for messages 125 million times a day, the number of phone calls from or between pay phones is a low 6,180. And then there are the reasons to use them: The authorities say it’s “to send a threat, claim a debt in an unorthodox way or for a date between lovers or adulterers who must hide their relationship. The advantage of the phone booth over the mobile is that the calls leave no trace.” – El País