Will Harry Potter and the Cursed Child get a sweep? Will Hadestown dominate in the musicals? Here’s what New York Times readers said, and at the link in this post, find out what Los Angeles Times theatre writers think. – Los Angeles Times
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YouTube Spends A Week Bungling Announcements, Making Harassment Worse
Reading the history of this week of YouTube announcements, discussions, demonetizing of right-wing accounts, and the subsequent high-profile, high-volume, high-intensity harassment campaign against Vox journalist Carlos Maza, well … “In short, YouTube’s big policy announcement ended up acting as incitement to harassment against one of its own creators.” – Vice
The Comedians Confronting Darkness And Mortality
Natasha Lyonne and Maya Rudolph are two of the funniest stars out there, but on Russian Doll and Forever, they’re forced to put that humor to use in the middle of some pretty intense situations. Lyonne has a serious theory about Rudolph’s ability to move back and forth: “Because of SNL and, first, The Groundlings, that there’s a deep training ground in there that’s very real. You give them what’s really a very formal education: Under all conditions, the highest of stakes, at the most pressure in the world, deliver.” – Variety
A Classic Book Of Japanese American History Gets Reissued By A Major Press – But Who Owns The Copyright?
A University of Washington professor worked hard to get the overlooked and forgotten 1957 book No-No Boy republished through the university press, and it’s become an Asian American literary success story. Then Penguin Classics stepped in. “Dorothea Okada, John Okada’s daughter, said her family was unaware of any issues with their claim to the copyright, and that the family wasn’t contacted by Penguin before the new edition was published.” – The New York Times
Cindy Sherman Has A Complex Relationship To Making Art That People Can Understand, And Buy
In short: “Hers is an art of shape-shifting and disguise, artifice and camouflage. It draws on high and low culture: European and Hollywood films, 1950s television sitcoms, art history, high society, fashion, forensic science, drag, pinups and pornography; the esoteric and the everyday, the glamorous and the grotesque.” – The Observer (UK)
Interviewers Are Super Obsessed With The Kitchens And Dining Rooms In Movies Directed By Women
Nancy Meyers and Mindy Kaling agree that this is clearly related to gender. Look at Wes Anderson’s kitchens and dining rooms – or have you noticed articles about them? – Variety
The Met Scales (Way) Back On A Production Whose Technological Demands Just Can’t Be Met
The opera will go back to concert productions of Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust next year, because, well, the production that was scheduled was way too demanding. The Met “decided not to revive the production after officials realized that they would need to revamp some elements of it to meet newer industry safety standards, refurbish some of its automated mechanical systems, and update video projections that are more than a decade old.” – The New York Times
Our Obsession With Old Diaries And Other ‘Found Texts’
The author, or is that “the author,” of a new book that emerged from a diary found in 2004, says that she learned to write while reshaping the diary into a book, and that there’s a certain cost to that: “By selecting and shaping the material in this way I’ve distorted, misrepresented the ‘real life’ of the diary to suit my purposes—or, as Davis says, I’ve made it into a fiction.” – The Millions
Critic Margo Jefferson On Coming To Terms With Her Writing About Michael Jackson
Jefferson, author of On Michael Jackson: “Am I chagrined and shamed that when I wrote my book I couldn’t push myself to acknowledge that this damaged man was almost certainly a sexual predator? Of course I am. As a critic I’m invested in believing I’m not in the grip of naivety or denial. … [But] the crises that have created #MeToo and similar movements show how little we knew and how little we chose to know.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Backstage ‘Nests’ Of Broadway
Harvey Fierstein (who prefers a riot of color): “Superstition demands that a dressing room cannot be decorated until the reviews are published. It’s the old ‘counting your chicks before they’re hatched’ deal. But some actors take the monastic approach even further.” – The New York Times