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The ‘Mattress Monster’: Yvonne Rainer Recreates One Of Her Oddest Avant-Garde Dances From The 1960s

“It could be a dream or a nightmare. You’re 84. What would it be like to have an artistic conversation with your 30-year-old self? [Rainer] is finding that out as she reconstructs, in collaboration with Emily Coates, Parts of Some Sextets, which she created in 1965 for 10 performers and 12 mattresses. A complex braiding of movement, text and, yes, mattresses, it builds an invigorating labyrinth of choreographic activity.” – The New York Times

Jayne Wrightsman’s “No Loans” Edict for Gifts & Bequests to the Metropolitan Museum

Today’s announcement by the Metropolitan Museum about the “exceptional bequest” by trustee emerita Jayne Wrightsman (who died in April at 99) omits mention of a crucial way in which this windfall of some 375 objects, along with “substantial [but unspecified] additional funding,” is indeed “exceptional”. – Lee Rosenbaum

Amos Oz And The Challenges Of A Language Brought Back From The Dead

“To Oz, writing in Hebrew was like sculpting in solid rock and crusted sand at the same time. With one foot in the Hebrew of the Bible and the other in the mélange of linguistic influences that made up the vernacular in a young country of immigrants, the language could make a speaker prone to making missteps of word choice: ‘you don’t want to bring in Isaiah and Psalms and Mount Sinai’ to describe an argument over pocket change.” – The New Yorker

New York’s Iconic Drama Bookstore Finds A New Home After Rents Forced It Out

“It was both a destination for tourists and it was also our hub, and so we wanted to keep it close to the theater district. And, too, we’re in the business of creating community, and that’s another thing the Drama Book Shop does, and that’s incalculable — I can’t tell you how many creative teams on theater companies say ‘Let’s go meet at the book shop and talk there’.” – The New York Times

New Documentary Play Takes On Human Trafficking

“At a table reading of Live Bodies for Sale, a new docudrama about human trafficking in Northeast Ohio, playwright Christopher Johnston addresses the assembled cast and crew. ‘Everybody in this play is real,’ he says. ‘The characters, their monologues, are all taken from what these people have said to me in the time I’ve spent with them. We want to tell their stories.'” – American Theatre

Cookie Monster’s Lifelong Love Affair With Art

“I’ve suspected there is something life-affirming in Cookie Monster’s unabashed love and joy for cultural stimuli — so pure and brash that if he could eat it all, he would. Cookie Monster was once a bad example, designed to teach children about self-control — one mustn’t always eat cookies — but so much of Sesame Street’s ethos is about love and kindness for others, for the nuances of the human race, for oneself.” – Hyperallergic

How Do Movies Get Edited For Airlines To Show In-Flight? ‘Recklessly’

“As one editor who has been doing this type of work for 30 years and worked for nearly every major studio in Hollywood tells InsideHook, ‘The studios, outside of the creative groups, are full of people who have zero interest in or understanding of the creative process. They are pushing widgets. … Compromises are made in the name of cost. ‘The scene has nudity AND a key story element? Cut it!”” – InsideHook