I’ve heard administrators insist that online instruction is just a “change in delivery system,” not a diminution of content. But this bureaucratic bromide wilfully ignores the wisdom of Marshall McLuhan, whose work I often teach. The medium is always the message. You can reduce a seminar to a distortion-addled screen, sure, but that will never substitute for being there. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)
Blog
Teachers, Want To Get Your Students Interested In Learning Grammar? Start With A Rant
Not your own rant, mind you. A pair of teachers recommends using one of those vehement complaints that turn up every so often in advice columns or blogs. “[The instructors] “note that heated, emotional writing like this is more interesting to students than dry lists of rules to follow. More importantly, rants offer a clear demonstration of how powerful people make judgments — often harsh ones — based on grammar.” – JSTOR Daily
We Have To Talk: Learning (And Teaching) Online Is A Lesser Experience
The real question may not be “How can you possibly teach art online?” but “How can you possibly understand art online?” My simple answer to that complex question is: “At best, imperfectly. At worst, inadequately.” – Los Angeles Times
Repertory Theatre, Live From An Actual Florida Closet
Rachel Burttram Powers, co-founder and co-star (with husband Brendan) of Tiny_Theatre: “I started cleaning out a back closet because I thought, ‘What would happen if you made a theatre at home?’ We knew everyone was self-isolating. We both have a passion for new plays, and we have a lot of playwright friends who are very well established, and I just thought, ‘Let me just send an email to see if people would be game to play with us.'” Since March 21, they’ve appeared three days a week on Facebook Live, performing work by more than 20 playwrights. – American Theatre
West End Producer: Without Help, Our Theatres Will Be Obliterated
“Without an urgent government rescue package, 70% of our performing arts companies will be out of business before the end of this year,” she wrote. “More than 1,000 theatres around the country will be insolvent and might shut down for good.” The producer said the loss would be “irrecoverable” and said that without intervention the country would watch as over the next six months “our arts and cultural organisations will have to spend their reserves until there is nothing left”. – The Guardian
Bernice Silver, Beloved Agitprop Puppeteer, Dead Of COVID At 106
“A hummingbird of a woman at 4-foot-8, [she] was a puppeteer whose performances were mock-chaotic, subtly cerebral and always slyly subversive. She made sure to slip in a history lesson, or a plug for conservation or social justice. She called them happenings, for the political theater she was schooled in. Her fellow puppeteers called her the Queen of Potpourri.” – The New York Times
Alex Ross: Connecting With Music Through Tinny Video
“As a critic, I am desperate to maintain contact with what musicians are doing, thinking, and feeling. The sound is often tinny, the stage patter awkward, the home décor distracting. One could instead sample archived professional-quality videos that opera houses, orchestras, and other organizations have placed online. For me, though, the live or freshly recorded happenings matter more. They document, with the oblique power that the arts possess, an extraordinary human phase in history. Their mere existence is bracing, and at times they achieve startling power.” – The New Yorker
What Will Post-COVID Novels Be Like? For Possible Answers, Look To Post-9/11 Fiction
Chris Bohjalian: “If 9/11 is a literary precedent, it could be years before we will see our first rush of novels about the coronavirus pandemic.” (The first such major titles, Ian McEwan’s Saturday and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, appeared in 2005.) “Some will no doubt take place in the innermost ring of Dante’s Inferno that has been New York City’s emergency rooms, and some will be about the chaos of home schooling twin 8-year-olds while your toddler crashes your corporate Zoom meeting. Some will be about claustrophobia and the idea that hell really is other people. Or jigsaw puzzles.” – The Washington Post
Canadian Government’s Efforts To Help Artists Shows Problems In Defining Artists’ Income
In mitigating the impact of the COVID19 crisis, the federal government swiftly responded with economy-wide measures as part of its immediate relief. It is in this roll out of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) that officials discovered the many gaps in addressing the labour force in the arts—the artist. More than the employment of the labour, it was what constituted their income that became the challenge and eluded the fit for an artist. – Georgia Strait
Watching ABT’s Virtual Ballet Class
Marina Harss: “A masked dancer in a studio, which is empty but for a pianist, peers into her computer’s camera, calling out a cheerful ‘Hi, everyone! So good to see you!’ In another frame, a toddler ambles by, prompting a dancer to joke,’Hey, guys, I had a baby!’ (The toddler actually belongs to the dancer’s sister, with whom she is staying.) More and more squares appear, revealing living rooms, kitchens where family members prepare sandwiches, a nursery, and something that looks like an airplane hangar. Almost all of the dancers are solo, with just a few lucky couples thrown in. The truly fortunate are outside, somewhere beautiful.” – The New Yorker