Affirming warnings it gave last week, the world’s largest movie theater chain reported that it lost $2.2 billion in the first quarter of 2020, a period that saw the beginning of the coronavirus shutdown. Though last week’s report warned of “doubt” that AMC could remain a “going concern,” the company’s CEO said Tuesday that, “in the end, AMC will both succeed and prosper.” – Variety
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Pandemic Could Wipe Out More Than Half Of UK Performance Venues
“Half of all music venues and 70% of theatres across the UK face permanent closure as a result of the coronavirus crisis, industry leaders have told a committee of MPs.” Testified one exec, “Our latest survey told us 70% of theatres or production companies will run out of cash, go out of business, by the end of this year.” – The Guardian
Italians Revel In Tourist-Free Museums
With only a trickle of EU tourists arriving, Italians have a historic opportunity: the chance to see their own masterpieces free from throngs of tourists and by booking just days in advance, rather than weeks or months. – CBC
A Spreadsheet That’s “Freaking Out” The Theatre World
Producer Marie Cisco created a public Google spreadsheet and titled it “Theaters Not Speaking Out.” It was open for anyone to edit, and it had a simple directive: “Add names to this document who have not made a statement against injustices toward black people.” At 5:50 p.m. PDT on that Saturday, May 30, she shared the document on her personal Facebook page as well as with the Theater Folks of Color Facebook group to which she belongs. – Los Angeles Times
Viewer Numbers Show Black American Movie, TV Shows Do Well Internationally
Netflix has begun sharing viewership results with its creators, resulting in what DuVernay called “astounding numbers” that are in dismaying contrast to how her major studio films, “A Wrinkle in Time” and “Selma,” fared with limited international releases. – Baltimore Sun
Physics Or Free Will?
Consider that “everything we see around us – rocks and planets, frogs and trees, your body and brain – is made up of nothing but protons, electrons and neutrons put together in very complex ways. In the case of your body, they make many kinds of cells; in turn, these cells make tissues, such as muscle and skin; these tissues make systems, such as the heart, lungs and brain; and these systems make the body as a whole. It might seem that everything that’s happening at the higher, ‘emergent’ levels should be uniquely determined by the physics operating beneath them. This would mean that the thoughts you’re having at this very moment were predetermined at the start of the Universe, based on the values of the particle physics variables at that time.” – Aeon
When Will It Be Safe For Us To Sing Together Again?
To many scientists and doctors, the risk of singing is clear. “It’s not safe for people to simply return to the choir room and pick things up,” Lucinda Halstead, the president-elect of the Performing Arts Medical Association, said in a telephone interview. William Ristenpart, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Davis, who has studied how disease-carrying particles spread during speech, said in a Zoom interview that he “would strongly agree with the assessment that singing, especially indoors in enclosed spaces, is a terrible idea right now.” – The New York Times
Longest-Working Comics Artist In History, Mad Magazine’s Al Jaffee, Is Retiring At 99
“To mark his farewell, Mad‘s ‘Usual Gang of Idiots’ will salute Jaffee with a tribute issue next week. It will be the magazine’s final regular issue to offer new material, including Jaffee’s final Fold-In, 65 years after he made his Mad debut” and 78 years after he began his career. – The Washington Post
There Is No “Try”
Long ago Barry Hessenius charged us to move from thinking of the pursuit of equity as a “issue” to making it an obsession. So, if “doing” is where we go now, what does the doing look like? – Doug Borwick
MOCA Cleveland Cancels A Show About Black Victims Of Police, Then Apologizes
The museum withdrew the show when it got uncomfortable with the content. Shaun Leonardo, the artist, says he wasn’t consulted. Now the museum has apologized for the cancellation. – The New York Times