Category: issues

Susan Medak, longtime managing director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, speaking at the TCG National Conference: “At the risk of being run out of this room on a rail, I would argue that great art alone is not going to make the American theatre healthy again. We need great artistic leaders and, more than ever, we need administrative leaders who will help us navigate these uncertain times. … After all, where would Zelda have been without Tom Fichandler, or Joe Papp without Bernie Gersten?”

“If you’re studying interpretive dance, God bless you, but there’s not a lot of jobs right now in America looking for people with that as a skill set,” he said Tuesday. Kentucky has cut state funding for higher education by more than $200 million since 2008.

“After years of toe-to-toe battling with a small band of critics and a fellow billionaire, Barry Diller said Wednesday that he was pulling the plug on his family’s commitment to build and operate a $250 million performance center on an undulating pier 186 feet off the Hudson River shoreline. It was a fizzling end to a grand scheme that aimed to create a bold new landmark along the Manhattan waterfront on par with the nearby High Line, which has become one of the top tourist draws in the city.”

Slate history maven Rebecca Onion: “Over the 19th and 20th centuries, American time capsules went from containers for civic virtue, to carefully curated museums of popular culture, to catch-alls, capturing the overwhelming amount of stuff that drifts through a consumer society. Looking at the evolution of time capsule contents, it becomes clear that our ideas about which items future historians could use in order to figure out how we lived have changed drastically. But through it all, we’ve retained a touching faith in our own interestingness.”

The grant is a first for AmeriCorps. “This is the first time there’s been a program that allows artists to dedicate a year of service to their country,” said AmeriCorps spokeswoman Samantha Jo Warfield, citing the innovative model as one criterion for the award.

Michael Cooper and Robin Pogrebin report on the measures the organizations took – both when building their buildings and preparing for the storm in the preceding days – to keep their people and objects safe.

“The systematic eradication of arts education in schools, sky-high drama school audition fees, chronic low pay and a lack of diversity behind the scenes are all contributing to a diversity crisis on our stages and screens.”

“The Last Night of the Proms is supposed to be a celebration of Britishness. But this year there is a crisis of national identity, as people in the arts confront the cruel act of self-harm that Brexit represents. Last year’s Leave vote in the EU referendum divided the country and threatened the unity of the UK. It also revealed a cultural fault-line, between the young and the educated who saw the advantages of membership of the EU, and older and less privileged people who felt excluded and used the referendum as a form of protest.”

Amazon’s selection criteria, as described in the company’s request for proposal, sets out a compelling list of the attributes cities must have if they aspire to be a serious part of the America’s growing digital economy.

Research by Norwich University of the Arts (NUA) suggests the exclusion of the arts from the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) schools’ performance measure is leading to lower pupil attainment, less funding and teacher recruitment challenges.