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Nancy Lewis, Who Brought Monty Python To America, Dead At 76

After having worked as a publicist for some of rock’s all-time greats, she discovered two of the English comedy troupe’s LPs and began encouraging her contacts at FM radio stations to play the records. Then, once Monty Pyton developed an American fan base, she convinced a reluctant PBS to air their television series — and later encouraged them to bring a lawsuit against ABC that set a key precedent in copyright law. – The New York Times

Bollywood’s Female Stars Speak Out In Support Of Protesters As Male Stars Keep Mum

“Unlike Hollywood, where actors and filmmakers have [frequently] spoken out against governments, A-listers in Bollywood — the world’s second-best paying film industry — have largely remained apolitical public personas. … Now, as protests spread across India over a controversial new citizenship law and attacks on students, Bollywood women are breaking with that pattern even as the biggest male actors … stay quiet.” – OZY

Why Do The ‘Star Wars’ Films Keep Bombing In The World’s Second-Biggest Movie Market?

“One after another, Star Wars movies have flopped in China, defying efforts to bring one of the most successful franchises in history into a market that has printed money for the heroes, monsters and robots of other films. … Avengers: Endgame made more in its 2019 opening weekend in China than all the Star Wars premieres combined.” Why? You could think of it as an accident of history. – The New York Times

Why Wasn’t ‘Goodnight Moon’ One Of The Ten Most Circulated Books At The New York Public Library? One Reason

“Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown, would have made the Top 10 list and might have topped it, the library notes, but for the fact that ‘influential New York Public Library children’s librarian Anne Carroll Moore disliked the story so much when it was published in 1947 that the Library didn’t carry it … until 1972.’ Who was Anne Carroll Moore, and what was her problem with the great Goodnight Moon?” Dan Kois looks into the matter. – Slate

Pina Bausch Invented Her ‘Tanztheater’ With This Piece In 1977. Now Her Company Is Reviving It For The First Time In 25 Years

When the choreographer and her company debuted Bluebeard. While Listening to a Tape Recording of Béla Bartók’s “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle”, audiences who’d never seen anything like it did not respond well, but the mixture of dance, spoken theater, stop-and-start music, and male-on-female violence became emblematic of Bausch’s style. But Bluebeard had been out of the repertory since 1994, and with Bausch having died a decade ago, no one was sure it could be revived. Brian Seibert reports on how the work was reconstructed. – The New York Times

Baltimore Symphony Can Switch Out Of Survival Mode Thanks To New Cash Gifts

“The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra announced Tuesday that it has been promised pivotal gifts totaling $7.25 million that officials say will allow the beleaguered organization to pay its outstanding bills, balance its budget this season for the first time in a decade — and start implementing a plan to stabilize its finances.” – The Baltimore Sun

Houston Is Nearly 50% Hispanic. Why Doesn’t The City Have A Major Hispanic Cultural Center?

“Some community leaders … wonder why a city with such a fierce appetite for new parks, public spaces, museums and theaters has not invested in a major facility that acknowledges their significance. Why doesn’t Houston have a Latino cultural center on the scale of, say, the Asia Society Texas Center?” – Houston Chronicle

Why Shouldn’t We Get To Choose How We Die? (And In What Style)

Many people no longer hold the kind of religious views according to which our time of death is not allowed to be of our choosing. There are an increasing number of countries where physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia is permitted in a medical context. But why think that the right to choose our ending is given legitimacy only, if at all, on health grounds? Why don’t we have the right to end our lives not just when we want to but to also do so in style? – Aeon