“If readers are no longer paying for criticism by buying newspapers or paywall subscriptions, the Bitter Lemons and Edinburgh initiatives were an attempt to find someone else to pay for the review, namely the recipient of the opinion.” So the alternative, writes Mark Shenton, is (for now) to mostly have critics who can afford to work for free, with all that implies.
Category: AUDIENCE
A Call For ‘Less Biased’ Theatre Criticism Resounds In The Theatrical Community
There’s a lot more to say about the way Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel, and many other playwrights, get treated by an East Coast theatre establishment. “We know that the tension between minority playwrights and critics is not a new problem. It’s a very old problem, one made newly urgent by biased reviews of productions by women and playmakers of color this season.”
‘Theater Audiences Are A Key Partner In The Work Of A Democracy,’ Says Director Diane Paulus
“The act of showing up is a civic ritual with great power. The ancient Greeks knew this. In their theaters, which seated over 10,000 people, audiences wrestled collectively with stories of utmost importance to the state. … However, I think that audiences’ most important political power stems from a slightly different concept. …”
What If You Took The Things Non-Classical Fans Think They Hate About Classical Concerts Away? This Festival Is Trying It
Cheltenham Music Festival artistic director Meurig Bowen writes about Classical Mixtape, an event he’s designed “to face head-on all those perceived barriers” – six of them, in particular – “that people come up against with classical concerts.”
Vimeo Gives Up On The Subscription Video Idea
“The video streamer, which is owned by Barry Diller’s IAC, announced last November that it planned to spend “tens of millions” to build out a competitor of Netflix, Hulu and the newly launched YouTube Red. … The company already has a subscription business in which it sells professional tools to its more than 750,000 creators” – and it will refocus on that business instead, according to the announcement.
Dallas Museum Of Art’s Mexican Modernism Show Is Having Huge Success In Latino Audience Engagement
“There was skepticism when Dallas Museum of Art director Agustín Arteaga proposed bringing a major exhibit of Mexican masterpieces here from Paris and allowing families who were not regular museum visitors to see it for free.” But the show has been a big hit, and more than half of its visitors, many of them Latino, are newcomers to the DMA. Says docent José Villanueva, “I haven’t seen this many brown people in the museum before.”
Herman Hesse’s Novel Demian Is Unbelievably Popular In Korea
The 1919 novel about a young German man rebelling and trying to find himself – and then going to war – resonates strongly. “In Korea it has attained such cultural importance that critic Lee Dong-jin, host of the Red Book Room podcast, can make this pronouncement: ‘There are two kinds of people: those who read Demian, and those who don’t.’ Given the enduring presence of the book on their country’s school curricula, most Koreans fall into the former category.”
Why Is Yo-Yo Ma Devoting So Much Time To Outreach In Chicago?
“I love the city. There’s a lot of depth, a lot of pride in the way the city operates, and the institutions here are fabulous. … I am particularly interested in this third of the country because I think that third has a deep soul, and the soul of the country in many ways stems from what happens here.”
Pay-To-Be-Reviewed Website For Edinburgh Fringe Backs Off Plan, Says It Was ‘A Fishing Trip’
“The edfringereviews.com site proposed to charge companies £50 for a review during the fringe under the slogan ‘It is not about the reviewer it is about your show’. The site, which does not have any reviews on display, now says that the concept is ‘more complicated than we thought’, and that it will introduce the scheme in 2018. A spokesman for the site has told The Stage that the proposal this year was a ‘fishing trip’ to see if there was any interest in what he was offering.”
Arts Criticism Is Not A One-Way Street (Anymore)
Kris Vire: “What we have in this moment, I believe, is a theater community that feels newly empowered in the wake of last year’s explosive Profiles Theatre saga to root out bad behavior within its ranks, and a new generation of artists in the social-media age who believe criticism should be a back-and-forth conversation with many voices participating.” (Not that Hedy Weiss is planning to participate, of course.)