Some props haul their own metaphors on stage with them. – David Jays
Blog
Let’s Twist Again: partying with the Don and the Donald
The first two new productions in Garsington Opera’s 30th anniversary season both feature wild parties with lots of on-stage dancing. – Paul Levy
A Disaster For Music: How A 2008 Fire Destroyed One Of The World’s Most Important Troves Of Music
UMG’s accounting of its losses, detailed in a March 2009 document marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” put the number of “assets destroyed” at 118,230. Randy Aronson considers that estimate low: The real number, he surmises, was “in the 175,000 range.” If you extrapolate from either figure, tallying songs on album and singles masters, the number of destroyed recordings stretches into the hundreds of thousands. In another confidential report, issued later in 2009, UMG asserted that “an estimated 500K song titles” were lost. – The New York Times
There’s One Corner Of Hollywood Where Women Are Making Real Progress: Animation
“Women hold half of the leadership positions at the major film animation companies, new research has found. And, of the top 120 animated films over the last dozen years, nearly four in 10 had female producers, which is more than double the number of women who produced live-action films in that time.” (Things don’t look as good for nonwhite women, though.) – The New York Times
Concerns That Arts Council England Is Stepping Away From Funding Excellence
“Some members felt that the proposals were signalling a profound shift from ‘Great Art and Culture for Everyone’ to ‘Everyone has the right to access some art and culture’.” They “felt very strongly that the outcomes suggested the only justification for publicly funded arts and culture was public demand”. – Arts Professional
How Sacha Baron Cohen Tricked Dick Cheney Into Signing A Waterboarding Kit On-Camera
On pretending to be a bogus Israeli anti-terrorism expert for his film Who Is America?: “The character creation is a reverse character creation. You have to think, Okay, we got Dick Cheney, he’s agreed to do this. How am I going to convince one of the most cynical, suspicious, brilliant minds that I’m real? How am I going to get him to say things he’s ultimately going to regret? That becomes the process of fully learning your character and making sure there are no holes in your character.” – Vulture
Hackers Stole And Demanded Ransom From Radiohead. So The Band Is Releasing The Music Tracks With Proceeds To Charity
The group announced on its social media platforms today that the archive—consisting mostly of unfinished music and clips from the mid-90s—had been stolen last week. The hacker, or hackers, demanded $150,000 to keep it from being released to the public, Radiohead said. In response, the band decided not only to ignore the ransom demand but release the entire trove of music to Bandcamp in aid of Extinction Rebellion, the new climate change movement. – Newsweek
Twin Cities’ Theater Mu Hires New Artistic Director To ‘Reunite’ Company Following #MeToo Scandal
Lily Tung Crystal began her career as a news journalist who did stage acting on the side. She now says that “theater is the hobby that became a job” — in 2010, she co-founded the Bay Area Asian-American theater company Ferocious Lotus. She comes to Theater Mu following last December’s dismissal of artistic director Randy Reyes. – The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
Seattle Art Museum Picks A New Director
Amada Cruz comes to Seattle after leading the Phoenix Art Museum. – Seattle Times
Arts Philanthropist Lewis B. Cullman Dead At 100
Heir to a tobacco fortune who made another fortune as an investment banker, Cullman gave away hundreds of millions to, among many other organizations, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art, public television station WNET, and the American Museum of Natural History. And he publicly encouraged his fellow moguls to give away as much as he did. The New York Times