It’s a global phenomenon, and people ask me, “Why take on a global phenomenon?” You know what else is a global phenomenon? Gone With the Wind. I think Hamilton is probably the biggest consumer fraud since The Blair Witch Project. – The Observer (UK)
Blog
The Mister Rogers Phenomenon
“When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see, or hear, or touch. That deep part of you, that allows you to stand for those things, without which humankind cannot survive.” – New York Review of Books
Generational Change: Regional Theatre Pioneer Emily Mann Leaves McCarter
Mann didn’t just lead Princeton’s $23 million theatre from a respected regional outpost to a Tony-winning incubator of new work and new talent. While there she also built on an already ground-breaking career as a documentary-play creator and feminist director to create signature American works as Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years. Her stamp is on not only generations of theatre artists but creative administrators as well. – American Theatre
Is It Problematic To Present All-Male Plays?
White, black, young and old: this is what an inclusive theatre looks like. That is absolutely what theatre should aspire to, but it does not mean that works of art should not tell stories that are rooted in specific communities. – The Stage
Boy With Allergy Denied Enrollment In Theatre Program, Igniting Conflict Over Access
The conflict that ensued over how the theater could accommodate Mason Wicks-Lim’s allergy eventually grew into a legal battle that created a rift in the community, highlighting the social struggles that people with food allergies often contend with, even as they fight for equal access. – The New York Times
Boogie Fever: The Dance Plagues Of Medieval Europe
A widespread belief of the 15th century held that the bite of a tarantula could only be treated by wild, mad dancing; groups of people would be possessed by a compulsion to dance, and towns would pay musicians to play for the sufferers. (Hence the dance called the tarantella.) “In fact, mass epidemics of dancing have afflicted various parts of Europe since the seventh century, breaking out particularly in times of famine, disease, and political unrest.” — JSTOR Daily
Anne Midgette: I Was Wrong About Movie Music And The Concert Hall
“I saw ‘A New Hope’ with both the NSO and the BSO in September and found that the experience confirmed something I had started to suspect: As a classical music critic, I was clueless. That is: While I liked John Williams’s music just fine when I first saw the film at age 12, by the time I had attained legal adulthood, laden with a cargo of acquired snobbery about the superiority of Western civilization, I had learned, and bravely parroted, that ‘film music’ was somehow beneath me.” – Washington Post
The Renoir Family Had Daddy Issues
“The filmmaker Jean Renoir made a career of dismantling the beliefs of his absentee father, the painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Jean satirized the aristocracy and upended his father’s saccharine scenes of leisure.” — The Paris Review
DNA From Ancient Bones Has Researchers Rewriting Ideas About Our Origins. But.
But – these stories have been rewritten before in earlier scientific study. And before we declare a definitive new theory, there are questions… – The New York Times
Developing Authentic Disability Theatre, And Bringing It To The Public
“Theatre has the power to help us recognize the social forces that we have created as a society and allows us to envision how we can change them. To incite positive social change and critically alter the way society views differences, voices from the disability community must be included in what we present onstage.” Seattle dramaturg Andrea Kovich, who identifies as disabled, writes about two projects focused on the work of Deaf and disabled playwrights that she recently did with Sound Theatre Company. — HowlRound