The Royal Shakespeare Company will put the devices on a group of theatre patrons in July and simulcast viewers in August; the idea is to measure not only whether one medium is more or less emotionally involving, but also whether violence in mainstream movies has desensitized screen viewers to the brutality in the play. And which play’s brutality will be the test case? The one that’s really notorious for gore.
Category: AUDIENCE
Putting Opera On A Flatbed Truck And Taking It To The ‘Hood
A correspondent checks out a production of Don Giovanni by the OperaCamion, a project which sends out young artists from the Rome Opera to perform in impoverished neighborhoods on the city’s outskirts where many residents have never seen an opera.
Our Changing Notions Of Community Mirror The Rise Of Individuality And Decline Of Institutions
“It used to be that people were born as part of a community, and had to find their place as individuals. Now people are born as individuals, and have to find their community.” That change is on display in many facets of American culture, political and otherwise.
Does Engaging In The Arts Even Matter?
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Americans generated much of their own art by themselves and at home, through playing parlor piano, reciting Shakespeare around the dinner table, and other exercises in Emersonian self-reliance. All that changed with the introduction of radio, sound recordings, movie theaters, and other forms of industrially produced mass entertainment. The audience’s role increasingly was reduced to coming to a large venue, sitting in a darkened room, then applauding on cue.
There’s A Revolution Happening In The Arts Right Now (And It’s Changing Everything)
“This new radical democratization threatens critics, just as it does well-paid artistic directors, executive directors, curators and all kinds of other gatekeeper types in the cultural universe, which explains why some say we/they react defensively to any grass-roots rebellion.”
Is The Structure Of Today’s Arts Institutions The Problem With Today’s Arts?
“What is the real vision that we’re looking for in the performing arts? Maybe it needs to go beyond simply what goes on the stage. Maybe someone needs to bring vision to the fallacy, almost universally accepted, that the only way to sustain the arts we love is to shore up a system of oversized institutions that no longer seem to work well in today’s culture. Might there be a better way to reconceive orchestras and opera houses, and to allocate the considerable resources that go into the performing arts every year, while fostering creativity — rather than convincing everyone that art needs to be packaged in layers of institutional bubble wrap so it doesn’t get broken?”
Streaming Isn’t Always So Great For The Foreign Film Fan, But Things May Be Changing
Basically, “if you’re someone who cherishes international and art house cinema, it’s a good time to have Roku.” (And AppleTV. And maybe a Chromecast? Then there’s the Indian movie channel on Amazon … )
Creating Choreography In Public, And Dancing For – Or With – An Audience
A public art project – Prismatic Park – makes Madison Square Park an interactive dance experience. One of the choreographers: “I tell the dancers, ‘You’re going to be confronted by people, a squirrel is going to run by, you’re going to stop to say hello to your boyfriend — all of that is what we’re doing.'”
Millennials Are The Greatest Generation, At Least In Library-Going Terms
Yep. They’re more likely than Gen-X and Boomers – and way more likely than the Silent Generation – to visit the library. Maybe this is why? “Due in large part to libraries’ egalitarian nature, their events, teach-ins, and classes are free and open, making them natural hubs for underemployed millennials seeking skills to break out of their parents’ homes.” Also, of course, the books are free.
Mainstream Movie Culture Has Bowed Down To Fervent Fans – And Is All The Worse For It
Used to be, you could go to a movie without having to rifle back through books, check out Wikipedia entries, and maybe do a rewatch of the whole canon so far. Not so now. “Sequels and remakes have been around for more than a century, but the past decade has seen their takeover of the multiplex (in most of America, the only kind of theater around) — and a corresponding rise in the exclusionary nature of mainstream film culture.”