Senior stage manager Johanna Adams-Farley and deputy Sarah Woodward talk about their work at Covent Garden, from productions that have been the company has known for ages (“Manon has been in the rep for so long it almost runs itself”) to preparing world premieres.
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Small Study: Virtual Reality Experiences May Boost Creativity
To assess their creativity, all students performed a series of problems from the Alternative Uses Task, a common measure of creative ability in which one is asked to come up with novel uses for a common object. Half came up with offbeat uses as they walked down the virtual corridor (whether or not doing so necessitated breaking down walls), while the others did so immediately afterwards. Either way, “superior creative performance was observed in the ‘break’ condition,” the researchers report. This result supports the thesis that the “bodily experience” of breaking down barriers “would spread to conceptual processing.”
Why Elena Ferrante Doesn’t Like Exclamation Points
“Mainly, this is because I’m afraid of excesses – mine and others’. Sometimes people make fun of me. They say: ‘You want a world without outbursts of joy, suffering, anger, hatred?’ Yes, I want precisely that, I answer. … But as the world isn’t going in that direction, I make an effort, at least in the artificial universe that is delineated by writing, never to exaggerate with an exclamation mark.”
Why Theatre Directors Don’t Get Enough Recognition
“One reason for this is that they do not appear on stage. Unlike conductors, who stand in front of an orchestra and wave a baton, they are invisible artists whose work is done when the curtain goes up, and their methods differ so greatly that the art they practice defies succinct definition. Moreover, directors work not only with actors and playwrights but also with the designers of the sets, costumes, lighting and sound for their shows, making it still more difficult to single out their contribution to the theatrical process. It follows that directing should be as hard to teach as it is to define.”
How A Young Violin Prodigy Survived A Nervous Breakdown And Remade His Life
“In the 1960s, [Saul] Chandler was one of the most promising classical violin prodigies in New York. … But when Mr. Chandler turned 16, the pressures of producing excellence consumed him, and he had a nervous breakdown that derailed his career. He estranged himself from classical music and in an act of reinvention legally changed his name. He would lead a circuitous life that has since involved running a seedy hotel in Times Square, a successful career in mathematics and dramatic voyages at sea. Thirty years ago he started building boats on City Island, where he found peace on its waters.”
Prominent Shakespeare Scholar Has Trouble Getting His Work Published
According to Sir Brian Vickers, a major reason he has not yet found a home for his complete edition of works by Thomas Kyd is that his “reputation as a scholar has been damaged by a string of hostile reviews by people associated with the New Oxford Shakespeare”.
After 75 Years, How Well Has Rodgers And Hammerstein’s ‘Oklahoma!’ Held Up?
“Said another way: Whose America did Oklahoma! depict?” (For one thing, the show is lily-white, and the state at the turn of the 20th century was decidedly not.) “And is the musical’s vision of the nation relevant today?”
He Gave Up A Strad For A 27-Year-Old Violin, And He’s Very Happy About It
“There are violinists who talk about Strads, which are old, and Zygs, which are less old. The violinist Chad Hoopes, who used to play a Strad, now plays the other. The word ‘newer’ would have been tidier in that first sentence. But ‘less old’ seemed appropriate after Mr. Hoopes, who went from playing a Strad made in 1713 to playing a Zyg made in 1991, said that the Zyg is ‘not a new violin.’
‘It’s older than I am,’ he added, quickly.”
Why Did Wes Anderson Set ‘Isle Of Dogs’ In Japan, Anyway?
Nina Li Coomes: “In the film, the country is a plot device that creates a vague sense of unfamiliarity to move the story forward and explain away bizarre narrative elements. … [In other words,] using Japan as a way to normalize outlandishness, thus creating the illusion of a cohesive story.”
What It’s Like to Watch ‘Isle of Dogs’ As a Japanese Speaker
Emily Yoshida: “I reached out on Twitter to a handful of native and/or fluent speakers of Japanese who saw Isle of Dogs on opening weekend … [and] what I found, even in this small sample size, was a similar dynamic I’ve seen before in debates about Asian culture as reflected by Western culture – perspectives can vary wildly between Asian-Americans and immigrated Asians, and what feels like tribute to some feels like opportunism to others.”