Amelia Parenteau: “Of the seven contemporary theatremakers I spoke to for this piece, not one was happy with the term ‘documentary theatre’ to describe their work. … And yet each of these artists is undeniably engaged in creating some kind of documentary theatre, meaning that they draw from factual source material to craft their work and tell engaging stories in direct conversation with our present reality. Above and beyond holding a mirror up to society, as all art is charged to do, these theatremakers are finding ties to specific communities and stories, proving the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction.”
Blog
Four Leading ‘Documentary Theatre’ Artists Talk About How It’s Done And How It’s Changed
Steve Cosson of The Civilians (This Beautiful City and The Great Immensity), The Laramie Project head writer Leigh Fondakowski, KJ Sanchez of American Records (ReEntry and X’s and O’s (A Football Love Story)), and veteran Ping Chong join Amelia Parenteau for a roundtable.
Anna Deaveare Smith On Race In American Theatre (And In America)
In this speech, delivered at last year’s Theatre Communications Groups national conference, the pioneer of verbatim theatre recounts the time she moderated an onstage debate between August Wilson and Robert Brustein (which organizers had wanted to turn into a verbal boxing match), performs excerpts from her Notes From the Field: Doing Time in Education (about the “school-to-prison pipeline”), and channels Margaret Mead and James Baldwin.
Art Forger Who Made £30,000 From His Fakes Ordered To Repay £1
Richard Pearson … was jailed in January for selling 14 faked drawings and pictures … he claimed were by the renowned ‘pitman painter’ Norman Cornish … to a gallery in Northumberland. He admitted fraud and forgery charges and was sentenced to three years and seven months.”
Big Band Contractor Sends Out Fat-Shaming Memo, Gets Pushback – And Promptly Shuts Down
On Tuesday, two singers released a memo from Sheraton Cadwell Group, a Toronto firm that contracts and manages big bands, that read in part, “As per our highly selective casting requirements … only singers who are physically fit and slim (or at the very least, those who know how to dress strategically/suitably in order to not bring attention to their temporary physical/dietary indulgences) would be showcased with our boutique orchestras.” On Wednesday, word of the memo hit the media. By Thursday, Sheraton Cadwell was out of business.
Yes, It IS Possible To Build New Ballet Audiences In 2017
Boston Ballet, Ballet Austin, and Colorado Ballet have all done it, and Ashley Rivers gives a look at the strategies they’ve used.
Some Artists Are Abandoning Dealers And Selling Directly To Collectors
“A number of emerging artists are … bypassing their dealers in a quest for a greater share of the earnings, a need for quick pocket-change, or the desire to test their e-commerce earning potential. These artists often position their sales as a critique of how the art market functions; taken together, they suggest a growing dissatisfaction with the traditional gallery sales model.”
The Industries Whose Money Drives The Art Market In The 2010s
“Artsy analyzed two sample cohorts of the world’s top collectors to see how the industry make-up behind the most elite collectors has changed over the last two decades. The big takeaways? Finance is in, really in. ‘Other’ – a designation we used for lawyers, doctors, architects, and individuals who didn’t fit into the most highly represented categories – is out.”
Bea Wain, 100, Last Of The Big-Band Era ‘Girl Singers’
“[She] started singing on the radio at age 6, became a hit-making pop vocalist” – “Deep Purple,” “Heart and Soul,” “Kiss the Boys Goodbye” – “in the late 1930s and performed into her ninth decade.”
In Provincetown, Listening For What Marks Some Pop Music As ‘Gay’
“‘Edge of Glory’ is gay music? But plenty of straight people love that song.’ When a bewildered straight friend said that to musicologist Chris White about the Lady Gaga hit, he was struck. “The musical gayness that is so obvious to me is invisible to him. I wonder whether there are reliable characteristics of music that can make a song obviously appeal to my particular sexual expression, while still ‘passing’ for mainstream music. What makes music sound gay to me? So, I took an audio recorder to Provincetown to record how places would signal this particular kind of gayness through particular kinds of music.”