KDH, an Austin, TX dance group “planned to present ‘At a Distance’ for free over the course of couple of weekends. The show would be pop-up style — informal, free and no seating would be offered. In fact, the dancers would move slowly down the lake to discourage any crowding along the lakeside. Kathy Dunn Hamrick didn’t publicize the plans widely, just a few social media posts. However, somehow, just days before the first the city’s Office of Special Events got wind of the performance plans. Stephen Pruitt and Hamrick were told they could not stage their show.” – Sight Lines
Blog
The Wow Factor In Martin Amis’ New Autofiction
The difference between autofiction and a “loosely” autobiographical novel, broadly speaking, is the difference between Amis’s new book and one he published ten years ago, “The Pregnant Widow.” Both tell the story of a middle-aged baby boomer looking back on a formative erotic encounter that took place in the nineteen-seventies, during the heyday of the sexual revolution. – The New Yorker
A Critics’ List: Books To Read About Theatre
For now, if we can’t be inside the theatre, at least we can be all about it in our reading and our thinking. – Aisle Say
Live-Streaming Concerts People Will Pay For
Some acts have reaped serious money from ticketed livestreams: Pollstar reports Laura Marling sold 4,500 (UK) tickets at £12 each for her show at London’s Union Chapel in June; YouTube says Japanese artist Reol made $130,000 from a livestream on its platform in August; and BTS’s management company Big Hit said they had 756,000 fans watch their Bang Bang Con live stream in June, each paying between 29,000 won (£19.41) and 39,000 won (£26.10), meaning a minimum gross of £14.6m. – The Guardian
Fun To Think About: Are We Living In A Computer Simulation?
“Some have tried to identify ways in which we can discern if we are simulated beings. Others have attempted to calculate the chance of us being virtual entities. Now a new analysis shows that the odds that we are living in base reality—meaning an existence that is not simulated—are pretty much even. But the study also demonstrates that if humans were to ever develop the ability to simulate conscious beings, the chances would overwhelmingly tilt in favor of us, too, being virtual denizens inside someone else’s computer.” – Scientific American
A Social Media Horror Story: “Our Social Dilemma”
In horror, “the narrative is driven by the question of whether the creature can be destroyed.” In The Social Dilemma, the creature is you and me, or at least the tech-addicted, algorithmically-modeled version of ourselves disclosed by big-tech behaviorism. So the film’s horrifying question is this: are you willing to destroy a part of yourself, that Twitter-refreshing creature within? – 3 Quarks Daily
Disney’s Pivot To Streaming Suggests Rough Times Ahead For Traditional Entertainment
Amongst its portfolio of businesses, Disney+ is the only clear winner, with the service gaining over 60.5 million members in just ten months since launch. The COVID-19 pandemic, on the other hand, crushed Disney’s cruise, theme park, cable TV, live sports, cinema and retail businesses, resulting in losses over US$4.7 billion in the financial quarter ended June 27. – The Conversation
What Does It Mean To Make “Relevant” Art?
“Artists feel the anxiety of relevance during every season of fellowship applications, those rituals of supplication, when we have to make a case for ourselves in a way that feels entirely foreign, for me at least, to the real motivations of art. Why is this the right project for this moment? these applications often ask. If I had a question like that on my mind as I tried to make art, I would never write another word.” – Harper’s
Wagner – Too Big To Cancel?
It is his instability—which enlists the audience in active and ongoing negotiation and interpretation, changing as we grapple with him at different historical moments—that makes him relevant. The music may be astonishing, the ideas volatile. Which will have the longer and more consequential afterlife? Perhaps more compelling than either, Ross suggests, is the irreconcilability of the problem. – Slate
Actors Unions Fight For Who Represents What
SAG-AFTRA, which has long claimed jurisdiction over the taping of live shows, offered Equity a limited waiver during the pandemic, but Equity rejected it, accusing SAG-AFTRA of “looking to use a pandemic to claim jurisdiction in Equity workplaces now and into the future in a way they haven’t had before,” and disrupting the relationship between employers and actors “that has existed for years, if not decades.” – Deadline