“The obvious question to bring up here is: Are we complicit? ‘We’ meaning you and me but also, in that awful think-piecey way, standing in for the culture. Sure. I suppose we are complicit. The attention given to sociopaths, and the public pain that results from the potent mixture of attention and sociopathy, exists only because there are reliable consumers who enjoy the cocktail. And then we wait for more of the same, so more of the same is provided.”
Blog
Philip Astley, The Man Who Invented The Modern Circus
“The 250-year history of circus would have been very different if a man from Newcastle-under-Lyme had got on better with his father, and been happy to become an apprentice cabinet maker. … Philip Astley … in 1768 drew a 13 metre (42ft) diameter ring on the ground and filled it with men and women standing on the backs of cantering horses plus clowns, jugglers and other marvels – [and thus] the modern circus was born.
Putting Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between The World And Me’ Onstage
“It won’t quite be a play or a straight recitation … Excerpts and fragments will be read either solo or in groups by a cast that includes the actress Angela Bassett and the rappers Common and Black Thought. Projections visualizing Mr. Coates’s vivid imagery will tower behind them, and the jazz musician Jason Moran will perform a live score with a trio.” Kamilah Forbes, executive producer for the Apollo Theater, tells a reporter how she’s gone about adapting the award-winning book by Coates, a close friend from college.
Why Do We Need A Disney Princess Who [Blanks]?
“Twitter illustrated the enduring obsession with the latter last week when the ‘We need a Disney princess who’ meme – which ranged from earnest (‘We need a Disney princess who’s vegan and fights for animal liberation’) to bizarre (‘We need a Disney princess who is literally Shia LaBeouf on PCP’) – reached a flashpoint after a regional Planned Parenthood center’s account tweeted, then deleted, ‘We need a Disney princess who’s had an abortion.’ The outrage from the anti-choice right that followed was understandable enough. But what accounts for the internet’s chronic royal fever?”
The Enormous Project Of Replacing The Met Museum’s Skylights
Reporter James Barron follows Keith Christiansen, the chairman of the Met’s European paintings department, up into the rafters and onto the roof to see why the skylights need replacing, why the project will cost $150 million, and how the museum will shift around some of its most celebrated artworks as the work proceeds.
Why Everything These Days Is ‘Curated’, Even Bookstore Inventories And Beer Menus
“‘Curation’ lends to the proceedings a certain air of quasi-professionalism. It seeks to claim for the proprietors an exquisitely refined faculty of discrimination, a sense that ‘objective’ higher standards are being enacted and adhered to. The selection that has been made, we are being assured, was not a product of whim or fancy, let alone crass commercialism. It reflects deep wisdom and heightened competence, a sensibility like that of the museum curator or wealthy collector, or the sommelier who truly knows his wines.”
This Little-Known Paris Museum Doubled Attendance In Four Years
“The very day [in 2013] that Sophie Makariou took over as the director of Paris’s Musée Guimet, she met a young Indian doctor on a train. ‘I would love to see some Indian art while I am here,’ he said. ‘Go to the Guimet,’ responded Makariou, to which he replied: What is that?’ The fact that he had not even heard of the venerable institution, founded in 1889 by Emile Guimet and holding one of the world’s top collections of Asian art, showed Makariou the extent of the task ahead of her.”
Playing Othello As An Out Lesbian General
Says director Gemma Bodinetz, “I wanted to make a modern audience sit up and feel something of what a Jacobean audience must have felt at seeing a black man commanding an army.” Star Golda Rosheuvel: “Some men have a terrible fear of women, particularly powerful women. They would prefer not to see change, and this Othello is part of change. She is a woman who has power over all these men, all that testosterone. How does she negotiate that? Then she goes further and brings her lover – Desdemona – into that arena. It’s a scary thing to do.”
Choosing The Right Title For A Museum Show Is A Very Tricky Matter
“Depending on the institution, curators will go back-and-forth with artists, colleagues, advisers and, more frequently now, marketing and public relations staff. The case of [the abandoned title] Going Native also signals the stakes involved – the curatorial pitfalls and political landmines that may linger in words. But museums stress that the process is not algorithmic but the occasionally serendipitous pursuit of a magic phrase.” (And is it even possible to title an exhibition without using a colon?)
Why Choreographers Need Dramaturgs
“Clare Croft, a dance dramaturg and assistant professor of dance at University of Michigan, answers all our questions on what dramaturgs actually do, and how to best take advantage of one.”