Questions for now: “What will the art be like? Will it offer effective resistance to the Trump administration? Solace to the audience? Will theatrical craftsmanship suffer in the face of what Martin Luther King Jr. called the fierce urgency of now? Is this a time that will allow for nuance and complexity? Will any protest plays emerge of lasting value?”
Category: AUDIENCE
Indie Movie Theatres Are Somehow Having A Cultural Revival
Frankly, it’s a bit surprising, but here’s the deal: “From themed weddings to live-streamed operas and interactive movie nights, indie theatres are reinventing themselves as the new entertainment hubs on the high street – eating into the market share of the multiplex giants and in-home rivals such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.”
How Is That Dutch Virtual Reality Ballet Doing?
Things are going well for the ballet, which “opened” in September 2016: “So far, Night Fall has been a success, and not just with art critics. It has garnered attention from tech blogs and dance publications alike, bringing a diverse crowd together.”
Can A Play Influence The Wider Debate Around Abortion Rights?
Lisa Loomer’s play “Roe,” commissioned for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, opened at D.C.’s Arena Stage just days before the inauguration of Donald Trump. It’s a story of the history of Norma McCorvey (the “Roe” of the court case) and her lawyer Sarah Weddington – and shifting stances on abortion in the U.S. since Roe was decided. The question now is, “Can art actually shape history as well as mine it?”
Truth As A Commodity Is Problematic
“A technology that might have extended the field of dialogue, that might have brought distant cultures and persons into closer understanding, has contributed unexpectedly to their accelerated fragmentation. Years ago, Benedict Anderson wrote of the newspaper as an important technology of nationalist solidarity. The high politics of the nation, the sports news of the day, the freakish local weather all found places in its columns. A reader’s social imagination was, without any conscious intention, broadened to encompass them all. The very overload of information in our modern environment has helped to produce the opposite effect.”
The Great Unbundling Marches On (The Internet Is Comin’ For Ya, TV)
We know all too well how the Internet has upended the business models of The music business and especially the print media. Yet television has come out relatively unscathed so far, argues Ben Thompson, because the Internet hadn’t yet taken over all five of the functions TV serves in people’s lives. But it’s about to.
Cocktails, Snacks, And 17th-Century Songs: Musica Poetica Hits The Bars
“We hope to create a more informal atmosphere more akin to a jazz club,” says the London group’s founder, Oliver-John Ruthven. “Imagine an evening at Ronnie Scott’s, but instead of jazz, it is early music which you would be listening to. The fascinating thing is that much of the music we play was actually intended for just this sort of environment.”
Chicago Is Neglecting Its Biggest Cultural Export: The Blues, Says Business Magazine
“Though Chicago dwarfs New Orleans, Memphis and St. Louis in population and economic might, a weekend in any of those places drives home the missed opportunities back home. All three [of those] cities have museums dedicated to telling the music’s story; tours and branded districts where people can walk in the footsteps of legends; airports, parks and streets named in their honor, life-size statues for tourist selfies; and, of course, an abundance of live music clubs that all three cities actively help promote throughout the year.” Except for the clubs, Chicago has none of that.
Dancing To The Oldies – A Choreographed Run Through The Met Museum
Dance has become a popular acquisition of museums in recent years. Immersive, participatory, and often silly, “The Museum Workout” could be seen as a cheeky response to the trend. But the work also tackles serious questions that dance artists have long been asking about the relationship between artists and audiences and about what constitutes dance.
Testing The Detroit Institute Of Arts’ New Augmented Reality App
“At a media preview on January 9,” writes Sarah Rose Sharp, “the Detroit Institute of Arts introduced Lumin, a new interpretive guide developed in partnership with Google and an augmented reality (AR) platform creator called GuidiGO. Subsequently, a tempest of conflicting emotions was triggered in the soul of this arts writer.”