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Now’s the time

The Wall Street Journal pays me to go see plays each week and write about them, which is my idea of a terrific way to earn a living. I have yet another reason for loving my job, though, one that might just be of even greater importance, which is that it forces me to engage each week with a brand-new set of experiences.

What Drone Photography Brings To The Artistic Table

Drone photography could be described as a collaboration or a co-production between man and nature. It allows nature to speak on its own terms but in a novel new way. If photomicrography undresses nature, drone photography with its plumb-line overhead view shows us nature at an angle we’ve never seen before, exposing its pixel treasures, many of which throw a shade over any abstract art produced by an artist.

Isabella Stewart Gardner Heist: Whitey Bulger Gave Stolen Art To IRA, Says Investigator

“Following a network of leads, many from underworld contacts, [former Scotland Yard detective Charles] Hill is convinced that the Gardner treasures are still stashed in the Republic of Ireland. ‘Even if Bulger did not order the robbery originally, he would have muscled in and taken control of the haul soon after it took place. … Whitey felt he owed one to his friends in the Republic. I believe he offered them the paintings.”

An Orchestra Should Be A ‘Community-Building Mechanism’, Says Oakland Symphony Music Director

For Michael Morgan, “art and politics are, to varying degrees, indivisible: There’s no either/or. In the end, he’s interested in community, in blending cultures, the power of diversity, and the intersection of music and well-being, imagination, and hope. His obligation is to find that intersection over and over again — that’s his revolution.”

Actors Call For UK Production Companies To Get Tax Breaks If They Employ More Women, Minorities And Disabled

Actors Call For UK Production Companies To Get Tax Breaks If They Employ More Women, Minorities And Disabled
“The actors Lenny Henry, Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor were among the signatories to a letter to The Guardian that said similar moves had been successful before and should be tried again. … Also putting their names to the letter were the Paralympic athlete and television presenter Ade Adepitan, the playwright Lucy Prebble and Jodie Whittaker, the first female actor to play Doctor Who,” as well as playwright and Young Vic artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah.

English National Opera To Project Ads Onto Its Stage’s Safety Curtain

“The company, based in the Coliseum in London, has submitted a proposal to Westminster City Council that would see its safety curtain repainted to incorporate a ‘plain white painted area’ … [which] would be ‘used as a projection surface pre-show and at the interval to project films showing the ENO forthcoming opera seasons’. It is not clear whether this could be extended to external advertisers in time.”

How Thomas Campbell Ended Up In San Francisco

“There are several large questions there. The Met is obviously an enormous institution—it’s the supertanker of the museum world—and change is complex there, since it’s an administration-heavy institution. I’m looking forward to working in an institution where I can have more direct contact with many of the key players and the program, where the touch on the tiller is faster and more responsive than it is in a big, bureaucratic institution like the Met.”

Is There An Executive Exodus At This North Texas Theater?

Joanie Schultz will have been on the job for only two years when she leaves the WaterTower Theatre in Dallas County. Her unexpected resignation comes just a few months after the departure of Nicholas Even, the second managing director to resign from WaterTower during Schultz’s term. Also, one major donor family had its name removed from WaterTower’s stage because they were offended by Schultz’s production of Robert Askins’s extremely irreverent play Hand to God.

Cuban Ballet Dancers Who Defected Make Emotional Return To Island

“[Five] renowned defectors from the Cuban National Ballet took the stage at the 26th Havana International Ballet Festival as part of a wide-ranging and profound reconciliation between Cuba and its millions of expatriates and exiles around the world. … Asked about his feelings upon performing once again in Cuba, [one of the returnees] began to cry.”