There are other pop-up drive-in theaters in North Texas, but none are as focused on bringing back the performing arts as Tin Star. “I’ve lived my life in theaters,” Nolan McGahan says. “Just because there’s a pandemic doesn’t mean you have to give up on your dreams.” – Dallas News
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PEN America’s New President On Cancel Culture, Literature And Politics
Pulitzer-winning playwright (Disgraced, The Invisible Hand, Junk: The Golden Age of Debt) and novelist (the new Homeland Elegies) Ayad Akhtar: “I’m not convinced that literature is the best way to form political opinions. It’s the great form of nuanced intellectual discourse. We can have profound conversations about literature, but I’m not sure that political opinions — like who to vote for — are the purview of literature. But increasingly everything has become politicized, and I think an organization like PEN has to acknowledge that.” – The New York Times
Is Online Streaming Of Performances Here To Stay?
“While widespread live performance without social distancing remains unlikely until 2021, streaming platforms have found their moment in the spotlight, offering audiences access to a library of theatre. Key figures in the digital theatre movement tell Tom Wicker about what the future holds for streaming services.” – The Stage
Official Report On Abuse At Berlin State Ballet School Released
“The report spoke of failures in school leadership and oversight. While it did not describe individual incidents, it said physical and psychological abuse had been taking place for years without consequences. Current and former students spoke of ‘lots of drilling and physical stress’ including beatings, verbal attacks and humiliation by instructors. The expert commission demanded the SBB be fundamentally reformed and democratized.” – Deutsche Welle
Notre-Dame Reopens Its Crypt For The First Time Since The Fire
“Before the crypt could reopen, masses of toxic lead dust from the fire had to be removed, ancient stones cleaned, ventilation systems vacuumed, lighting and interactive programs reorganized, molds eliminated and anti-COVID measures imposed. … The crypt celebrated the opening with an exhibition on the two 19th-century men who helped restore the 850-year-old medieval monument to greatness: the novelist Victor Hugo and the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.” – Smithsonian Magazine
Here’s What The Classical Industry Thinks Of Anthony Tommasini’s Proposal To Scrap Blind Auditions
“[The] reaction to the essay was spirited — and mixed, a sign of how unsettled the debate remains. A sampling of artists and administrators spoke with The New York Times, sharing their thoughts on blind auditions and offering ideas to make orchestral hiring more equitable. Here are edited excerpts from the conversations.” – The New York Times
Boris’s ‘Festival Of Brexit’ Is Now Accepting Proposals
“Critics have dubbed it a ‘festival of Brexit’ and pilloried it as a waste of £120m of public money, but the first plans for the festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland … will officially launch on Wednesday. Using the working title Festival UK * 2022 organisers have opened applications for teams who wish to be commissioned to come up with ideas for the event.” (In fact, Theresa May first proposed the arts festival, but just about everyone associates it with Boris Johnson.) – The Guardian
Boris Johnson Announces Plan To Restart Performances By Testing Audience Members On Site
“Addressing a press conference at Downing Street on Tuesday, [the British prime minister] said, ‘Theaters and sports venues could test an audience, all audience members, one day and let in all those with a negative result, all those who are not infectious. Work places could be opened up to all those who test negative in the morning to behave in a way that was exactly as in the world before COVID.'” The scheme will be put to the test in October in Salford, near Manchester. – Variety
How Disney’s New “Mulan” Is A Travesty Of China’s History
The rotten heart of Mulan as a film, rather than its production process, is the accidental regurgitation of China’s current nationalist myths as part of a messy, confused, and boring film. The title card fades into a location said to be the “Silk Road, Northwest China.” This is, of course, Xinjiang—here set up by the narrative frame as an inalienable part of China that Mulan must defend for her father, her family, and her emperor. That’s not the historical reality—or even the reality of the original poem the stories are based on, which depicts Mulan as the servant of a khan of the Northern Wei dynasty, not an all-powerful Chinese emperor. – Foreign Policy
The Music Of Biology And The Biology Of Music
The argument that there is both an aliveness and a wholeness to organic life which is potentially recognizable to musicians in musical terms has in the past been easier to make for those immersed in the invisible, mycorrhyzal webs of oral traditions than in the architectural solidity of art music, with its notations, institutions, theories and formal pedagogies. But let’s not get stuck in these academic distinctions. – Resilience