“We’re experiencing a Native arts revival right now,” said Alaska Native playwright Vera Starbard, whose autobiographical advocacy play Our Voices Will be Heard was performed in Juneau, Anchorage, Hoonah, and Fairbanks. “There was one in the ’70s, and we’re right in the middle of a pretty exciting one now.”
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Are All Artists Liberal? So Where Are The Conservatives?
When we in the arts champion “diversity, equity and inclusion,” do we mean everyone? Do we mean conservatives? Religiously, culturally or otherwise? Are conservative artists not identifying as artists because the arts are a predominantly liberal sector?
The Weinstein Company Gets Bankruptcy Protection. Here’s What That Means
Receiving bankruptcy protection means that secured creditors will get paid before any women suing the Weinstein Co. (Bob Weinstein is listed as an unsecured creditor, per Variety.) Civil lawsuits already filed by Harvey Weinstein’s accusers against the company will be halted, and they can’t bring new legal claims. But there could be other legal recourse for such accusers.
Meep Meep! Where The Road Runner, Fred Flintstone’s Car, And Other Classic Cartoons’ Sounds Came From
“In this episode of Watch Smarter, Slate‘s video series about hidden tropes in pop culture and beyond, we trace the surprising history of cartoon sounds we all know but have never quite understood. Our story begins with live orchestras in the 1920s and ends, more or less, inside a coke bottle.”
London’s West End Theatres Threatened By Noise Complaints With New Construction
Industry leaders and MPs are now calling for more robust measures to protect theatres from the threat of residents in new nearby developments complaining about noise. They fear this could lead to restrictions on the venues that would severely damage their ability to operate.
Ojai Music Festival Appoints New Artistic Director
“Chad Smith, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s chief operating officer, … will take over in Ojai for Thomas W. Morris, who is retiring in 2019 after 16 years in the position. Smith will continue to serve in his post at the L.A. Phil while beginning work with Ojai’s 2020 music director, Matthias Pintscher.”
Study: Even Having Your Smartphone Nearby Affects Your Cognitive Attention
The results were striking: individuals who completed these tasks while their phones were in another room performed the best, followed by those who left their phones in their pockets. In last place were those whose phones were on their desks. We saw similar results when participants’ phones were turned off: people performed worst when their phones were nearby, and best when they were away in a separate room. Thus, merely having their smartphones out on the desk led to a small but statistically significant impairment of individuals’ cognitive capacity—on par with effects of lacking sleep.
Did America’s Founding Fathers Have English Accents?
Linguist John McWhorter gives a rundown of what we know about how Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and their fellow spoke. (podcast)
Warning: Books Are Disappearing From Our Libraries!
“As libraries create access to a digital future, the books that have traditionally inhabited them are being displaced at an alarming rate. This leaves many asking: Does acceptance of digital resources mean that the books must go? And what is at stake when artists, art historians, students, and the public can no longer engage in the act of browsing the stacks as part of the process of creating and researching art?”
This Production Of ‘Julius Caesar’ Needs Stage Managers Versed In Crowd Control – For The Audience
Nicholas Hytner’s staging for the Bridge Theatre in London (starring Ben Whishaw and David Morrissey) takes place on a series of platforms right in the middle of the audience, and the ticket-holders standing in the pit at the center of it all play the mob. Fergus Morgan talks to the stage managers about how they wrangle a new crowd for every performance.