Theatre itself can be activism, of course, through subject matter and through subtle casting changes or donation asks at the end of the play or musical. But “public service” – part of most nonprofit theatres’ mission statements – shouldn’t end at the theatre doors.
Author: ArtsJournal2
The British Home Office Keeps Refusing Visas To Writers And Artists, Causing Big Problems For Festivals
The UK publisher of a Palestinian journalist whose visa was denied and denied before finally – too late for her to get to the festival, of course – being OK’d at the last minute: “It feels like we’re all sleepwalking into a new age of nativism. … We’re not just talking about classic, difficult-to-prove institutional racism. We’re talking about quiet, effective cultural censorship. The Home Office is saying, in effect: British readers shouldn’t be hearing from other perspectives at our book festivals; their voices are of less worth; British voices first.”
The Impossible Legacy Of V.S. Naipaul
This is what the NYT, and everyone, meant by calling him “controversial” – a lot more than a couple of issues. “As much as any single great writer of the 20th century, Naipaul is present in everything he wrote. His life story; his caustic, penetrating, often callous opinions; his cruelty; his genius: All are there, in his novels and nonfiction. Naipaul inflicted extreme psychological abuse on his first wife, Patricia Hale, beat his mistress, and seemed defiantly proud of his racism, misogyny, and toxic political views; to talk about separating the art from the man seems especially futile in his case.”
The Actor Who Spent Years (Accidentally) Prepping For His Role In ‘Crazy Rich Asians’
Jimmy O. Yang says that even his Uber job – a job he got after buying a car with the money he made doing three days of filming for the show Silicon Valley – helped him prep to be a comedian. “There were some stupid drunk people every now and then but, for the most part, people were very nice, and I’m a people person. In a way, I was just kind of running my stand-up material on some of these people, just chatting them up.”
These Architects Turned Their Office – Logically, They Say – Into A Working Farm
And it’s in London – as in, in the city. “Many architects have a yearning for the primitive hut, but few can boast pigs outside the window of their office. ‘It does lead to some awkward phone calls. … Clients ask what the grunting noise is in the background.'”
Robot Intimacy Can Never Be Enough For Humans
Just in case you were worried, sex is going to keep happening – between (and among) humans, even when we have sex robots – and humans will still need other humans to take care of them as well, not just care robotos. “This is an intimacy that does not make room for human empathy or what human beings in their bodies experience as the fear of death, loneliness, illness, pain. We diminish as the seeming empathy of the machine increases. It is technology forcing us to forget what we know about life.”
Critics To The Academy: Just No On The ‘Popular Oscar’
And the changes in ‘streamlining’ the awards ceremony by cutting the designers out of the telecast? Whew. “The folks below-the-line are the artisans and craftspeople that make a movie speak and sparkle. … You’d think one night a year, Hollywood could find the time to acclaim them for the magic that would be impossible without them.”
A Director With A History Of Violence Quits A Jessica Chastain Movie
The Australian director Matthew Newton, who has convictions for domestic abuse and who also has a history of punching men (a taxi driver and a hotel clerk), wrote the action movie Eve. Chastain’s production company is one of the producers of the movie, and she was set to star in it. “Ms. Chastain’s involvement with Mr. Newton’s movie was particularly jarring to many of the critics. The actress has spoken out in the past about increasing gender diversity in Hollywood, and has said she refused to work with Harvey Weinstein because of his reputation.”
Restoring Some Painted-Over Banksy Murals In Glasgow
The murals were part of the artist’s early work, in a 2001 exhibition. “Six years later, and long after Banksy had established himself as an international artist, the murals were covered with grey emulsion during refurbishment work at the nightclub.” Oops. Now, carefully, they’re being uncovered again.
The Push To Erase A Monumental Gender Gap
Time’s just about up for dude-focused statuary: “In the United States, there are about 5,200 public statues depicting historical figures, according to The Smithsonian’s Art Inventories Catalog. Very few of those — fewer than 400, according to one account in The Washington Post — are of women.”