“The banning of Rocketman, a biographic film about the life of musician Elton John, in Samoa has prompted criticism by human rights activists of ‘selective morality’ in a country where transgender women are widely accepted.” – The Guardian
Blog
‘Arts & …’ — New Cross-Sector Impact Grants From South Arts, Inc.
“Cross-Sector Impact Grants is a new program of grantmaking, open to all art forms, for partnership projects taking place in one of South Arts’ nine member states. For FY20, eligible projects will feature ‘Arts & …’, for example, arts and the military, arts and aging, arts and community revitalization.” – South Arts
The Forces That Create Celebrity Culture
Social media amplifies and speeds up interactions between audiences, media and stars, but YouTube and Twitter did not invent modern celebrity culture. That happened more than 150 years ago, thanks to the popular press, commercial photography, railways and steamships, and national postal systems. – Aeon
Designing For A More Circular World
“Today’s linear economy is a straight line, no matter how efficient you make it. If you make a car with less material, if you make a car using less energy, you’re still using stuff. You’re still consuming materials. Whereas within a circular model, from the outset you design in a way whereby that product comes back into the system: the components are recovered, the materials are recovered.” – dezeen
Next Challenge For Virtual Reality: How Do You Register Emotion?
“Emotions are more complex and socially determined than the simple positive-negative, strong-weak arousal model suggests. Even distinguishing fear, anxiety and disgust on physiological grounds turns out to be extremely problematic.” – The Daily Beast
Hartford Stage Gets New Director
Cynthia Rider, who was executive director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival from 2013 to 2018, will begin her new job at Hartford Stage July 1, the theater announced Wednesday. – Hartford Courant
A Timeline Of Barnes & Noble’s Storied History
Founded in 1971, the worldwide chain enjoyed decades of dominance in the book retail market — until the internet blew up. – New York Magazine
A Case For Cutting Back Our Digital Clutter
By depriving ourselves of face-to-face contact with others, we widen the sea of angst that no amount of “likes” can ever hope to bridge. This phenomenon is borne out by research into college-age students, who experienced a radical increase in anxiety-related disorders around 2011, the same year that smartphones became widely available to consumers and teenagers began owning their own phones. – Los Angeles Review of Books
Robert Kelley On 50 Years Of Running TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, This Year’s Regional Tony Award Winner
“Actually, our growth curve as a company parallels almost exactly the growth of Silicon Valley as a thing. And I credit our success and durability as a company with the fact that we were in this unique area that was changing rather dramatically over time over this same period. It was becoming one of the most international and diverse places on earth, really. And diversity is one of the big commitments of TheatreWorks, one of our core values, and that was something that made the company, we think, increasingly attractive to people in the region.” – American Theatre
David Lang holds no prisoners in his new, gloves-off opera
David Lang’s music is too pleasurable to be called experimental – it’s the message, not the music, that may make some listeners uncomfortable. – David Patrick Stearns