“Ask me while stuck in traffic on my way to the Mark Taper Forum or the Geffen Playhouse what my favorite dramatic genre is and I’ll likely say, ’90 minutes, no intermission.’ Don’t judge me. The stretching out of plays by intermissions might make sense for producers worried about the sales revenue of overpriced food and drink. But the practice is a holdout from an era when people had discrete work hours, less harried commutes and minds that were free of Facebook, Twitter and email nudges.”
Blog
Turning The Famous Psychology Experiments Of History Into A Theatre Piece
Eric Grode talks to members of the company Improbable about how they put together Opening Skinner’s Box, an adaptation of the controversial book by Lauren Slater about studies such as Stanley Milgram’s infamous experiment with obedience (where subjects were told to administer electric shocks) and Elizabeth Loftus’s work on how memories can be shaped and altered.
Report: Vast Majority Of Pre-Columbian Art In San Francisco’s Mexican Museum Is Not Museum Quality
“According to the report, only 83 of 2,000 artifacts from the pre-Hispanic, or pre-Columbian, era could be certified as museum-quality by an independent team of museum curators who came from Mexico City to conduct the test. The other 1,917 are considered “decorative,” and will probably be given to schools or smaller museums before the museum moves from its temporary Fort Mason site to a permanent home in a luxury condo tower being constructed near SFMOMA.”
The Finn Who Shaped American Midcentury Modernism
Yes, it was a Saarinen, but probably not the one you’re thinking of – and his influence was less through his own design than through the educational institution he founded.
11 Insights About How Creativity Works
“We like to think of inspiration ‘striking’ us at unlikely moments — and it does. (We’ve all had that shower moment, right?) The problem is, we attribute that moment to some mystical magic coming out of the air. However, research has shown that it’s not magic at all, but rather our brains making connections behind the scenes.”
The Architecture Of Stages: A History That’s More Like A Spiral Than An Arrow
Joshua Dachs: “What at first looks like evolution – from campfires to hillsides to amphitheatres to courtyards to playhouses and onward into the future – is really the recapitulation of another kind of trajectory, from improvisation to formalization. As each new theatrical practice is improvised by a new culture or by restless, visionary (or hungry) artists using the materials at hand, its successes are repeated; standardized practices emerge, traditions and expectations are established.”
Have Journalists Forgotten How To Write For Regular People?
“Despite the increasingly complex and crucial stories dotting the national landscape—health insurance policy, North Korea, immigration, Syria—many daily newspapers and wire services are failing to include even a sentence of background early in their stories to give readers the tools to slide further into a complicated issue… I’m not talking about “dumbing down” the news as much as making it more user-friendly, and journalists who fail to do the latter are squandering their brief but real chances to invest new readers.”
How The World’s Greatest Performance-Capture Actor Creates His Roles
Reporter Roslyn Sulcas talks to Andy Serkis, whose performances as (among others) Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Caesar in the current Planet of the Apes series are so widely admired that fans have been agitating for him to be nominated for an Oscar.
Sata: The Shocking Gender Imbalance In London’s West End Theatre
“Research by The Stage reveals nearly nine out of 10 musicals had a book written entirely by men, with women credited for the script of just 12% of productions. The figures represent any time a woman was credited for either the book, music or lyrics of a show, and have been described as “shocking” by industry figures.”
We Know That Smell Can Trigger Emotions And Bring Back Old Memories, But How Does It Work?
Katherine Whitcroft examines the history of what’s now called the “Proustian effect.”