“Jean-Claude Arnault, a major cultural figure in Sweden and the husband of Swedish Academy member Katarina Frostenson, was on trial for two counts of rape of a woman that allegedly took place in 2011. The accusations against him triggered a crisis within the prestigious academy, with seven members quitting and the body announcing that no prize will be awarded this year.” At prosecutors’ request lest Arnault flee the country, the trial judge ordered him held in custody until the verdict, expected early next week.
Blog
How They Handled The Gender Switch At The Center Of Sondheim’s ‘Company’
With the much-talked about London revival of the musical now arriving on Broadway, reporter Sopan Deb talks to director Marianne Elliott, co-producer Chris Harper, and star Rosalie Craig about changing the main character from confused bachelor Bobbie to commitment-phobic hetero single woman Bobbie.
18 Unreleased Short Stories By Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz To Be Published
The late Egyptian novelist, best known in the West for ‘the Cairo Trilogy’ (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street), won the Nobel for literature in 1988; he remains the only Arab to do so. These unpublished stories were discovered by a journalist who was researching a history of one of Mahfouz’s most controversial books, Children of Gebelawi.
Eight Years After Earthquake, Haiti’s Theatre Scene Is Finally Climbing Back
“A decade ago, posters advertising glamorous theatrical productions lined Rue Pavée, a main road in [Port-au-Prince,] Haiti’s capital city. Local theatre was on the rise here until the devastating 2010 earthquake destroyed much of the city, including progress for the arts.” Once the National Theatre was reopened in 2013, stage artists began trying to rebuild the scene for live drama, with small companies and playhouses producing new work alongside the larger venue.
Afghanistan’s Orchestra For Young Women Faces Continual Threats And Pressure. Nevertheless, They Persist
“Violence and social pressures have not deterred members of the country’s nascent orchestra of mostly young girls from using music to ‘heal wounds’ and promote women’s rights in the strictly conservative Muslim society. The ensemble, known as Zohra, was founded in 2014 as part of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) in Kabul.”
Iran’s Art Scene Has Been Booming – Could Trump’s Sanctions Stifle It?
“In 2016, a Tehran art auction attracted record sales of $7.4 million, sparking hopes that the market was buoyed by cooling relations between Iran and the West. … [Yet,] from trade sanctions to the travel ban, global power politics may be influencing the way the West views Iran. For the country’s artists, this raises questions about whether the art boom will be halted — or even reversed — by the Trump administration’s deteriorating relations with their government.”
Turf War Between New Zealand’s Two Largest Orchestras?
The Auckland Philharmonia has reportedly complained to the national ministry of culture about an increase in the number of performances scheduled for Auckland next year by the New Zealand Symphony, the national orchestra, which is based in Wellington (the capital) but gives an equal number of performances in Auckland, which has three times Wellington’s population.
Prominent Writers Protest Removal Of NY Review Of Books Editor
DNA Tests Are DNA – They Don’t Tell You Your Culture
There’s an Ancestry ad where a man trades his lederhosen for a kilt. And another where a woman traces her ancestry to the matriarchal Akan people of Ghana to conclude, “When I found you in my DNA, I learned where my strength comes from.” And yet another where a man bonds with his Irish neighbor after finding out his own DNA is 15 percent Irish. But marketing campaigns for genetic-ancestry tests also tap into the idea that DNA is deterministic, that genetic differences are meaningful. They trade in the prestige of genomic science, making DNA out to be far more important in our cultural identities than it is, in order to sell more stuff.
Why “Grime” Has Caught On As A Musical Genre
At first, it lived primarily on pirate radio, that great British tradition in which people scale the tallest building they can find and hide makeshift transmitters. In the eighties and early nineties, new strains of dance music, like hardcore rave and jungle, evolved on such stations. In part, grime was a reaction to how posh the world of dance music had become by the late nineties.