After seven months of pandemic shutdown, “India’s Ministry of Home Affairs has decreed that cinemas and multiplexes can reopen [on Oct. 15] at 50 percent of their seating capacity, a full month before the all-important Diwali holiday, which in normal times is a box office bonanza.” – The Hollywood Reporter
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Hollywood Says Movie Theatres Won’t Survive Without Federal Help
“Absent a solution designed for their circumstances, theaters may not survive the impact of the pandemic,” the industry groups said in the letter. “Cinemas are an essential industry that represent the best that American talent and creativity have to offer. But now we fear for their future.” – Los Angeles Times
Are Our Universities Becoming More Intolerant?
Universities everywhere have hosted eccentric cults and the gods of reason have somehow survived them. What was new in Critical Theory – at least in its latter-day incarnation – was its adoption of militant direct action to enforce its creed. – Times Literary Supplement
How Big Tech Corrupted The Idea Of Creative Destruction
There is an odd tension in the concept of disruption: it suggests a thorough disrespect towards whatever existed previously, but in truth it often seeks to simply rearrange whatever exists. Disruption is possessed of a deep fealty to whatever is already given. It seeks to make it more efficient, more exciting, more something, but it never ever wants to dispense altogether with what’s out there. This is why its gestures are always radical, but its effects never really upset the apple cart. – The Guardian
UK Government Warns Cultural Institutions Not To Remove Statues
In a letter sent September 22 to several public bodies, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media, and sport, Oliver Dowden, set out the government’s position on contested heritage: “The Government does not support the removal of statues or other similar objects.” – Artnet
Peter Marks: What I Learned Watching An Experiment Unfold
“Rex Daugherty — whose work I’ve reviewed several times — and I were both interested in how artists and critics could learn more about each other’s functions, could demystify our roles in some small way. Social media has brought many reviewers into far closer proximity with theater artists than ever before. It occurred to us that exploring how the mistrust that often develops between critics and artists might be mitigated was worthwhile, especially when live theater has been sidelined and many theater events are occurring in the digital space. I ended up learning far more than I contributed.” – Washington Post
Why This Social Practice Arts Organization Decided To Hibernate
Deborah Fisher, A Blade of Grass’s executive director, had to make an unenviable decision. She could retrofit the organization’s model to a pandemic-shaped world, continuing to employ her full-time staff, and ask an increasingly depleted pool of cultural funders for more and more money. Or she could make changes—big, fundamental, tough changes that would necessitate the sacrifice of people’s jobs for the prospect of a brighter future. – Artnet
Here’s An Antidote To COVID Grief: Studying Indian Classical Dance Via Zoom
In which Sejal Shah reconnects with Rathna Kumar, with whom she took master classes in South Indian dance three decades ago, and joins “Vintage Kuchipudi Divas,” Kumar’s WhatsApp group for middle-aged former students who take video dance classes together every week. – The Guardian
Think Of A Debate As A Public Space. This Is What Happens When You Litter It
The beach or the park succeeds based on the willingness of everyone who enters to uphold commonly accepted expectations. Maintenance of the space becomes reflexive, a civic habit that is self-reinforcing: When you enter a beautiful space, you are inclined to keep it beautiful, no public shaming required. Unfortunately, the inverse is also true. If it isn’t a beautiful space, then most people aren’t inclined to keep it beautiful. And when these conditions begin to prevail, public spaces fail, often precipitously. – Washington Post
$5 Million From Mellon Foundation To Support Black Theaters
“The initiative, known as The Black Seed, is described as the first national strategic plan to provide financial support for Black theaters across the country. It is backed by a $5 million lead gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; … according to a news release, [it] is the largest-ever one-time investment in Black theater.” – The New York Times