“Instagram was one of the first apps to fully exploit our relationship with our phones, compelling us to experience life through a camera for the reward of digital validation.” – New Statesman
Blog
The Harper’s Letter Has Stirred Up Debate. Why Now?
“You can criticize what people say, you can argue about platforms. But it seems like some of the excesses of the moment are leading people to be silenced in a new way.” – The New York Times
New Yorker Cartoonist Henry Martin Dead At 94
“[He] brought a wry, genial sense of humor to nearly 700 cartoons published in The New Yorker over 35 years. They were set in conference rooms and homes, on desert islands and roadsides, at Heaven’s gate and in maternity wards.” – The New York Times
Trump’s New Sculpture Park for “American Heroes”? Fuhgedaboudit! The Bronx Already Has that Covered
As a culturally curious teenager, I had made the 20-minute hike from my Bronx apartment to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, a once popular, now little-known pantheon for bronze busts of great men and women, some by well-known sculptors (including four busts by Daniel Chester French, two by Augustus Saint-Gaudens). – Lee Rosenbaum
Melbourne Won’t Ease COVID Restrictions, Arts Companies Cancel Plans
“We were going to do two sittings each night and the shows sold out straight away. We knew there was an appetite among audiences to come back. But when restrictions weren’t relaxed, we had to cancel. This is our business now – planning with enough flexibility and contingency so that you can shift or delay if you have to. We’re having to delve deep into our reserves of resilience as well as our creativity.” – The Guardian
This Could Be The Apotheosis Of Quarantine Dance
It’s Swan Lake Bath Ballet, “a contemporary take on the classic featuring 27 A-list ballet dancers performing from their own bathtubs. The BBC commissioned the project from choreographer Corey Baker. And while you might be imagining a lighthearted, soapy romp …, the result has striking beauty and complexity, as well as some gentle splashstick humor.” – Dance Spirit
Theatre As Radio Drama In The Age Of COVID
“This is theater of the mind, you know?” Wild says. “We do so much vocal work in the program, so much text work, so much breaking down a scene — What is this character doing? What do they want? What are they after? How do we portray that? — and it all transfers to radio.” – Washington Post
Theater, Zoom, And Coronavirus: Four Times Critics Discuss The State Of The Art In 2020
“Though we are still miles and months away from a resuscitation, who would have guessed that, in the meantime, the savior of the stage might turn out to be its perpetual enemy, the screen? … To sort out this new world, Scott Heller, the New York Times theater editor, convened a virtual conversation with Ben Brantley and Jesse Green, the chief theater critics, and Maya Phillips, the Times‘s arts critic fellow.” – The New York Times
‘Digital Theater Isn’t Theater. It’s a Way to Mourn Its Absence.’
Laura Collins-Hughes: “All that frenzy of streamable online activity — the virtual readings and talk shows, the archival videos and topical new plays — is part of keeping the candle lit. … But theater’s primary public face wears a show-must-go-on smile, so there’s a weird and self-defeating disconnect, as if being supportive means pretending that these works are just as exciting as live stuff would be.” – The New York Times
Big Blowback Against Letter Supporting Free Speech Signed By Prominent Artists
The letter—whose endorsers included everyone from Noam Chomsky to Gloria Steinem to Margaret Atwood to Salman Rushdie to Wynton Marsalis—applauded “powerful protests for racial and social justice [and] police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society.” But it also decried “a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.” – The New York Times