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Catholic Group Tries To Shut Down Brussels Opera Production With Nude Joan Of Arc

The Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Belgium’s national opera house, is presenting a staging of Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake) by provocative director Romeo Castellucci in which the Maid of Orléans is shown, in extremis, unclothed. A group called the Pro Europa Christiana Federation has petitioned both La Monnaie’s director and Belgium’s minister of culture to close the show, arguing that the production, in which “Saint Joan of Arc is again the target of a pornographic representation, … [is] obscene and hurt[s] Christians.” (The Monnaie’s director is unmoved.) – Yahoo! (AP)

Mid-Century Classic House Lost In Getty Fire

Southern California architectural historian Alan Hess called it a “real loss to the architectural heritage of Los Angeles.” “It was an early Ellwood design, but demonstrated all his distinctive and influential ways of interpreting modernism,” he said. “Though it remains in photographs, the loss of the actual building to experience makes us poorer.” – LA Curbed

How To Write About Those Outside Your Own Experience?

“Given all the excellent writing about the challenges of rendering otherness, someone who asks this question in 2019 probably has not done the reading. But the question is a Trojan horse, posing as reasonable artistic discourse when, in fact, many writers are not really asking for advice — they are asking if it is okay to find a way to continue as they have. They don’t want an answer; they want permission.” – New York Magazine

The Met Museum Attracts A Million People To Its Events Each Year. That’s Changing The Museum

Sandra Jackson-Dumont: “I’m trying to move the idea away from people being visitors to the museum to being users. You to go to a library to use it, right? You’re not a visitor to the library. I’ve been talking about how can we make this place the extension of what people do in their daily lives.” – ShondaLand

That Terrible Last Season Of Game Of Thrones? Turns Out Creators Really Didn’t Know They Were Doing

” They apparently kept being surprised at their experience, and not just through its now-infamous, unseen pilot, which the duo has long admitted was a complete disaster. It just seems like even as the show evolved into the success it became, the duo—who scripted the vast majority of the series, taking on even more work when the show began outpacing the source material from George R.R. Martin—were still, apparently, largely unsure about anything they were doing.” – Gizmodo

To The Rest Of The World, Flamenco Says ‘Spain’. To The Spanish, Not So Much.

“Indeed, the world’s love of flamenco has long created problems within Spain, where the performance was once considered a vulgar and pornographic spectacle. Over the years, many Spaniards considered flamenco a scourge of their nation, deploring it as an entertainment that lulled the masses into stupefaction and hampered Spain’s progress toward modernity. Flamenco’s shifting fortunes show how Spain’s complex national identity continues to evolve to this day.” – Zócalo Public Square

Propwatch: the only types of prop in the world in ‘The Antipodes’

Dave says there are seven types of stories in the world (starting with ‘rags to riches’). Josh says there are ten types of stories in the world (starting with ‘a threshold crossing’). One of the Dannies says there are 36 types of stories in the world (starting with ‘supplication’). But what is quite clear, by the end of The Antipodes by Annie Baker at the National Theatre, is that there are just seven types of props in the world. – David Jays