“Students performing a play about the dangers of mindless political indoctrination were disqualified from a Broward County theater competition after cutting up an American flag, as judges questioned the legality and offensiveness of that act.”
Blog
Valuing Live Theatre In A Digital World
The art of theatre seems stubbornly rooted in the pre-digital age. But maybe that’s not a bad thing. “Plenty of academics … have argued that the communal experience of live performance will only get more attractive as technologized art grows in influence. Surely people will need and crave external escape from the isolating forces of a digital age that traps them for more and more hours in front of a two-dimensional screen.”
More Choice = Tyranny Of Minorities
The proliferation of TV channels has “brought about the tyranny of the largest minority. Because reality shows are hot right now, most networks throw them up willy-nilly, holding their noses all the way. And news, which networks used to treat more like a public trust in exchange for their licenses to operate over public airwaves, has become another profit center. Viewers bring profits, and because the people want Michael Jackson ‘news’ more than, say, foreign trade news, they get Michael Jackson news. But now rapidly burgeoning digital technology is threatening to narrow those audiences even further.”
Participatory Artocracy
“From musicians to Hollywood studios, and from network executives to owners of newspapers such as this one, the creators and purveyors of arts and letters are realizing that Americans increasingly are unwilling to sit down, shut up and consume their culture in the time-honored fashion of grateful passivity.”
City Ballet Balanchine – In Need Of Help
As New York City Ballet’s Balanchine celebration wends on, Tobi Tobias laments the state of the company’s custodianship of its illustrious founder’s legacy. “The two-dimensional condition I find in many of the NYCB’s Balanchine productions is not simply physical. I’d dare to say—though now we’re getting into the dangerous realm of the intangible—that a spiritual dimension is lacking as well. Is the present manner in which the NYCB dances its Balanchine capable of remedy? Some of the erosion that has occurred is inevitable, given the absence of the choreographer as chief custodian of his work. But I’m convinced that…”
What Really Happened…
“Are we living in a golden age of conspiracy theory? And if so, what stands behind this apparent upsurge in global anxiety? Fortunately, no shortage of observers has turned their attention to such questions…”
Did Dickens Die From Performing?
Charles Dickens was a wilfly popular performer. “As well as being our greatest novelist, Dickens developed a new, composite art form in his stage performances, acting out specially adapted passages from his own works and varying his expressions and speech patterns, so that it seemed as if he were becoming possessed by the characters he created. His reading tours won him huge popular acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. And in all probability they contributed to his premature death, from a stroke, in 1870.”
Does Taste Matter?
One man’s taste is another’s “funereal” ugliness. “Taste is what we share with others, as well as what sets us apart. The word has sharply contrasting meanings, when taken individually or collectively. The history of taste, an absorbing subject, tends to concern itself with generalities, and its great categories apply across the board…”
The Modern Artist’s Challenge In Depicting Religion
An artist trying to depict Christ faces a series of challenges, writes Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The challenges have evolved over time, but “all in all, it is no surprise the contemporary depiction of Christ is so complex a task.”
Of Photos, Pictures, And Art
Where is the line between photo-journalism and art? “On the aesthetic side, many photographers are going through a soul-searching similar to that of painters in the late 1800s when, for some at least, photography made figurative, naturalistic work redundant. Now photographers are questioning their own realistic conventions and, above all, reacting against the new digital technology.”