Popular music aesthetics did much more than invert or blur the line between high and low culture. Instead, it provided the grounds for a thorough fracturing of those two positions into a new, intricate system of orders and relations. – LitHub
Blog
Trigger Warning: For Theater In 2019 America, Guns Aren’t Only An Issue For The Prop Shop
One night at Hamilton in San Francisco earlier this year, right at the moment of the Hamilton-Burr duel, an audience member had a heart attack; the commotion made some people believe there was a real shooter in the house, and the audience stampeded. A real shooting during a play could happen, as it has at cinemas and rock concerts; live-shooter training for theater personnel is now a thing. And since art reflects life, we’re seeing more guns onstage as well. Lisa Lacroce Patterson writes about how theaters are dealing with guns, onstage and off. – American Theatre
Response to The Chasm of Disbelief
The following is an incredibly thoughtful response written by Carter Gilles to my post The Chasm of Disbelief. I am particularly grateful to him for pointing out the important role that doing the arts, participating in the arts, can play in overcoming disbelief. – Doug Borwick
Propwatch: the invisible magnets in ‘Little Baby Jesus’
Most props, most props, you could hold them in your hand. A suitcase. A tooth. A (shudders) doll. They’re part of the pleasure of theatre, the imagination made palpable. But sometimes, sometimes they stay imaginary. – David Jays
The twenty-five record albums that changed my life (17)
This was one the now-forgotten Warner/Reprise “Loss Leader” albums, a series of low-priced sampler albums by Warner/Reprise artists that was one of the most ingenious and effective promotional ideas ever to be devised by a major record label. – Terry Teachout
Has The Publishing Business Become Too Reliant On Huge Hits?
Though the hits-driven nature of publishing has not changed in recent years, the nature of those hits has. Due to a number of coalescing factors—including a shrinking physical retail market and an increase in competing entertainment driven by the proliferation of streaming TV platforms—book publishing has watched as a handful of megaselling titles have begun to command an ever-larger share of its sales. – Publishers Weekly
After Three Years In Prison, Turkish Author Ahmet Altan Is Freed
“The 69-year-old [author of I Will Never See the World Again] was arrested in 2016 with his brother, the economist and journalist Mehmet Altan, on allegations of spreading ‘subliminal messages announcing a military coup’ on television. Alongside journalist Nazlı Ilıcak, the Altan brothers were charged with attempting to overthrow constitutional order, interfering with the work of the national assembly and the government.” – The Guardian
Now A Yayoi Kusama Macy’s Parade Balloon (And It Doesn’t Stop There)
Some attribute the Kusama craze to the Instagram generation, with young people lining up to take selfies in the artist’s “Infinity” rooms of mirrors, colors and lights. Others say her compelling personal story as an Asian woman who first traveled alone to the United States and has openly battled her demons (she lives in a Tokyo psychiatric institution) is resonating amid today’s heightened sensitivity to issues around identity politics, immigration and mental health. – The New York Times
South American Literature’s Master Of Malaise — And Role Model To García Márquez, Fuentes And Vargas Llosa
“Over a career spanning 50 years, [Juan Carlos] Onetti depicted Uruguay in short stories and novels as a place marked by pettiness, idiocy and squalor — a Gogolian province in the tropics [sic] — and populated by characters who are by and large unhinged. However unflattering, his portrait of his country was one in which Uruguayans recognized something of themselves.” – The New York Times Book Review
The Exquisite Improvisatory Dance Between Silent Movies And Live Musicians
The combination of extemporaneous performance and preëxisting art form enacts a trust across time and space. In the heyday of silent pictures, filmmakers expected that their movies would be scored by a live musician, and thus silent films have always been a sort of incomplete form, waiting patiently for the act of creation to happen anew each time the film is shown. – The New Yorker