Professional playwrights still need commissions, and honestly, people still need theatre even when we can’t go to the theatre, so: “Theater companies big and small across the country, including Berkeley Repertory Theatre, New York’s Public Theatre and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., have asked dozens of professional playwrights to create short dramas for people to perform at home. The play scripts, part of a new initiative called Play at Home, have been downloaded 20,000 times since the start of April.” – KQED
Author: ArtsJournal2
Director Lynn Shelton Has Died Of A Rare Blood Disease At 54
Shelton created and directed many small-scale, intimate indie films, funding those well-reviewed passion projects with tons of TV show work, including, recently, four episodes of Little Fires Everywhere. Her partner, the actor and podcaster Marc Maron, said, “Her spirit was pure joy. She made me happy. I made her happy. We were happy. I made her laugh all the time. We laughed a lot. We were starting a life together. I really can’t believe what is happening. This is a horrendous, sad loss.” – The New York Times
Inside A Lockdown Bubble, Can Literature Help?
The eternal debate about what books are good for – “I feel that literature is rarely of immediate practical help. I think the kind of knowledge reading fiction imparts is stealthy and slow-burning, and that novels rarely work as instruction manuals that we can pull off the shelf in case of emergency” – turned out to be incorrect. What’s good is that books about quarantines and lockdowns help manage the psychological aspects of the times. – Irish Times
Astrid Kirchherr, Whose Black And White Photos Set Our Concept Of The Beatles, Has Died At 81
Kirchherr, a 22-year-old art and photography student, captured the young lads when they were in Hamburg, playing scruffily in the red light district. – The New York Times
Add ‘Quarantines’ To The List Of Things Jane Austen Can Get You Through
If you’re a Janeite, you already know this. If not, truly: “To be a woman of a certain class in Regency England was to be socially distanced by default—isolated in the country-side, living at the pace of the seasons, beholden to restrictions set by others (namely, men). Set aside the reasons for being confined and we’re left with a defining commonality: the need to fill our days at home.” – Time Magazine
This Theatre Critic Confesses The Screen Isn’t To Her Taste
Jayne Blanchard isn’t into the National Theatre’s (wildly popular) streams. She’s not thrilled with the general flatness of screens compared to, well, face to face. It is, he says, mostly like “looking at the striking stage effects, lighting and choreography and thinking ‘This must be amazing in real life.'” – DC Theatre Scene
Marquees Without Movies Can Be, It Turns Out, Quite Performative On Their Own
A funny, sweet message from a theatre in Oregon caught on with the Instagram crowd, and it’s not the only one. Its creator, who says his small movie theatre provides a true home for cinephiles during non-quarantine times: “The fact that it did catch on made me happy because it essentially showed there’s a place for more hopeful messages; that dark humor isn’t the only way we can express ourselves.” – The New York Times
Brits Are Missing Live Performance, And Not Planning To Go Back Anytime Soon
With 93 percent of those polled saying they miss live theatre, it’s perhaps a surprise that only 19 percent of those polled said they would buy tickets immediately when theatres and other live performance venues reopen. Or perhaps that’s just grim reality. “Most (74%) cited the buzz of live performance as the thing they missed most, with other popular choices including seeing performers they admired and supporting local venues.” – The Stage (UK)
Uh-Oh: What Does Facebook’s Purchasing Of Giphy Mean For Other Apps?
If the internet has come to rely not entirely, but very near universally, on visual culture and then Facebook buys that visual culture, what does it mean? – The Verge
Louis Delsarte, Muralist Of African American Experience, 75
Delsarte’s large-scale public murals are his best-known works, but he also painted and created drawings and prints. His murals, though, they’re the ones that everyone in New York (and elsewhere) knows. “‘Whenever I see Louis’s work, I see a bunch of black people looking good, from anywhere and everywhere in the diaspora,’ said Arturo Lindsay, an artist and professor emeritus of art and art history at Spelman College in Atlanta. ‘Just showing black people looking good and happy is a hell of a political statement.'” – The New York Times