Lyn Gardner says that “the fringe is like a machine churning out ever more raw talent, which is attractive to venues who buy it up cheaply. But the issue is they then offer very little ongoing support to develop that talent in a way that allows companies to grow and develop.” (Instead, they just get more raw, cheap talent the next year.) – The Stage (UK)
Blog
A Ballerina Adventures In Postmodern Worlds
It’s not quite fair to call City Ballet principal Sara Means a force of nature because she’s so hard-working and disciplined, but it’s tempting. – Deborah Jowitt
What Happened To The Last Member Of The Harlem Renaissance?
Dorothy West was called Zora Neale Hurston’s “Kid Sister,” and her books were not immediate successes, partly, some say, because she wrote about the Black middle class. “She wrote ‘posh black’ at a time when ‘broke black’ was in vogue, and this sits at the heart of her flickering obscurity, a myopia in mainstream culture that struggled to perceive blackness as anything more than one-dimensional.” – The Guardian (UK)
Memories From Ystad And Elsewhere
Remembering Bob Wilber, and celebrating Gunhild Carling. – Doug Ramsey
Twenty-Five Years After Founding Native Voices At The Autry, Randy Reinholz Gets Some Major Recognition
Reinholz, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, also had a hit as a playwright with Off the Rails (an adaptation of Measure for Measure) at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2017. He “is now the first Native person to receive the Ellen Stewart Career Achievement in Professional Theater Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.” – Indian Country Today
Katreese Barnes, Musical Force Behind The Scenes Of Careers And ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Has Died At 56
Barnes served as a studio musician and producer for some of the most popular acts of the 1990s, including Roberta Flack, Sting, and Chaka Khan – and she propelled SNL to early viral fame on YouTube with her music for the song (whose title The New York Times will not print) “Dick in a Box.” – The New York Times
In Germany, A Girl Loses A Gender Bias Lawsuit Against A Boys’ Choir
The 9-year-old girl’s parents sued the State and Cathedral Choir of Berlin after her application was rejected, but the court ruled that “the acoustic pattern of a choir is part of its artistic freedom” and that a boys’ choir had a distinct sound. – Deutsche Welle
The World Is Getting A New John Coltrane Album
The music, to be released in September, was the Coltrane Quartet’s soundtrack to the French Canadian film Le chat dans le sac (The Cat in the Bag), which is available online now. “Coltrane hadn’t seen a cut of the film when he recorded the soundtrack, which — probably due in equal part to Groulx’s taste and the onus of licensing — consists of new versions of prior material.” – NPR
Update: Read Art Spiegelman’s Withdrawn Marvel Essay In A British Newspaper
The cartoonist’s essay about the rise of superheroes is online, and he makes his opinion clear: “International fascism again looms large (how quickly we humans forget – study these golden age comics hard, boys and girls!) and the dislocations that have followed the global economic meltdown of 2008 helped bring us to a point where the planet itself seems likely to melt down. Armageddon seems somehow plausible and we’re all turned into helpless children scared of forces grander than we can imagine, looking for respite and answers in superheroes flying across screens in our chapel of dreams.” – The Guardian (UK)
It’s Fine – It’s Great, Actually – To Take Photos In Museums
Don’t get distracted by your feelings about obnoxiousness. Well … a little, maybe. “It’s easy to see why phones can be annoying. They represent a sort of loud carelessness, the idea that someone isn’t really paying attention, isn’t really experiencing the thing that’s in front of them.” But: “The important thing about art is just that you experience it, not how, and for many people, taking photos on your phone is a natural extension of that experience.” – The Guardian (UK)