Camille Brown burst into Broadway with her choreography for the award-winning revival of Once on This Island, and now she’s everywhere, even using a dramaturg to help tell stories on Broadway, through dance. – Playbill
Blog
A Visual Love Letter To New York
In If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins and cinematographer James Baxton worked with location designers who knew the details both of the New York of today and of James Baldwin’s New York. That meant letting the Bronx stand in for Greenwich Village, and not letting Washington Square Park, which is “like Versailles” compared the park of Baldwin’s story, be itself. – The New York Times
Theatre Has A Problem Dealing With Older Women, And They’re Sick Of It
Director Marianne Elliott, whose Company just won a best musical award, says that older women in every area of the theatre world are sidelined “because they are perceived as ‘not valuable and something to laugh at.'” – The Stage (UK)
Opening The Door For Darker-Skinned Men In Hollywood
William Jackson Harper wants dark-skinned actors to have a lot more choices – and for himself, personally, aside from playing a nerdy, dead ethics professor on The Good Place, he wants more: “Stories of the black community in the U.S. Like right after the civil rights movement, I’m really interested in that because I feel like there’s a shift that — I’ve asked my mom about it because I remember her saying that growing up in our neighborhood was very idyllic in a lot of ways. And it was a black neighborhood, and it was the ’60s, and I was like, ‘Oh, wow, OK.’ So at what point did the neighborhood become less idyllic?” – HuffPost
As Facebook Turns 15, Only Disconnect
The 2010 movie Social Network isn’t perfect – though the fact that it looks like a horror movie now feels eerily accurate. But “the movie mocks one of the ideas that, from the beginning and definitely in the nearly 10 years since The Social Network premiered, has become one of Facebook’s own dearest myths: connection. Connection as origin; connection as mission; connection as justification.” – The Atlantic
The Bozeman Symphony Is Investigating Allegations Against Its Conductor
The board is investigating a series of allegations against its music director and conductor, Matthew Savery, while he remains in his job. A letter accusing him of serious bullying “was signed by 14 people, including former and present musicians, staff members and donors.” – Bozeman (Montana) Daily Chronicle
Speaking Of Those Super Bowl Ads: An Evaluation
NPR’s TV critic, Eric Deggans, explains the great, the not-so-great, the surprising (spoiler alert: There were a lot of ads with surprise celebrity sightings), the useless (Pepsi, please just stop), and the bad. – NPR
Yes, That Was Andy Warhol In The Burger King Super Bowl Ad
He had 45 seconds in this particular iteration of his fame. – AdAge
Margo Rodriguez, Who Turned The Mambo From Nightclub To Popular Craze, Has Died At 89
Rodriguez, together with her husband Augie, brought the mambo to life on TV, including on The Ed Sullivan Show and Broadway Tonight. “At the height of their fame, they danced in London for Queen Elizabeth II and at the White House for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon.” – The New York Times
The Latest In The Digital Media Apocalypse
Yes, it’s old news (a week old) that BuzzFeed was laying off huge numbers of journalists. And HuffPost. And TechCrunch. But it’s more recent – if still last week’s – news that Vice is laying off journalists too. What gives? No surprise: Facebook. “Digital media companies typically generate ad revenue based on the size of their audiences, and consumers discover many of those videos and articles through sites such as Facebook and YouTube.” – Los Angeles Times