Author: ArtsJournal2

Walter Dallas, The ‘Heartbeat’ Of Philadelphia Theatre For Decades, Has Died At 73

Dallas, who had pancreatic cancer, was a playwright, musician, teacher, and, most notably, a director. He led Philadelphia’s Freedom Theater, one of the nation’s pre-eminent African American theatres, for 16 years, and worked at New York’s Public Theater and Negro Company, among others, as he directed 25 world premieres. An actress who worked with him for three decades: “For him, joy was serious business, especially as a black man who had grown up in the segregated South. … An actor would start a passage and break into tears, and he would say: ‘There is power in sorrow and trauma, but there’s so much more power in digging deep and asking what brings you joy. Then the tears and the angst will come.’'” – The New York Times

Who Has The Rights To The Omegaverse?

You might (or might not) consider wolf erotica a niche market. It’s a bigger niche that is now walking through a minefield of copyright questions, with larger implications for genre writing. “As the genre commercializes, authors aggressively defend their livelihoods, sometimes using a 1998 law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, to get online retailers to remove competitors’ books. When making a claim, a creator must have a ‘good faith belief’ that her ownership of the work in question has been infringed. But what does that mean when the ultimate source material is a crowdsourced collective?” – The New York Times

Georgia Issues Guidelines For Film Shooting To Start Again

Tyler Perry wants to start filming in early July, and Georgia seems amenable – as long as the actors follow guidelines including dealing with clear barriers between them until just before a shoot begins, and as long as craft services provide individual food packages, and as long as SAG-AFTRA eventually signs on to Georgia’s recommendations (not a given). – Los Angeles Times

Against Hype, A Few Films Actually Are Different From Anything That Came Before Them

Take Daughters of the Dust, for instance. ” Julie Dash’s astonishing debut is a portrait of a multigenerational South Carolina Gullah family as they prepare to migrate north in 1902.” (But truly, you could get a decent film education watching most of these movies as lockdown continues, or staying at home seems the safest move.) – The Atlantic

American Museums Start To Reopen With Timed Entry, Masks, And Many More Rules

Of course, it all begins in Texas, where (as in other areas), Houston’s Fine Arts Museum has coordinated with other museums to create shared ideas of just how to do this. “The Fine Arts museum waited until it had firmed up protocols and obtained necessary supplies, Mr. Tinterow said, including ‘500-gallon barrels of sanitizer, tens of thousands of masks and gloves for staff interacting with the public.'” – The New York Times

Making Art On Instagram During A Shutdown

The Strip may be closed, but Las Vegas is so much more than gambling – or at least that’s what its chroniclers show. “In the absence of take-my-hand influencers, creative control of Instagram is free to return to the first group who adopted it: artists and photographers. If you give an artist a tool like Instagram and a bunch of idle hours, he or she will find a way to build a project.” – Las Vegas Weekly

Los Angeles City Council Moves To Help Artists And Arts Organizations With Emergency Grants

The grants, which are also available for live performance spaces, “will take arts fees paid by developers in support of now-canceled or planned cultural events and instead make the money available as small-dollar grants.” One city councillor said, “Whether a poet, a painter or a dancer, Los Angeles needs its artists right now … and artists need our help.” – Los Angeles Times