Category: issues

“The barber offers Beckett haircuts; a local coffee shop sells Krapp (banana and nutella) and Endgame (I didn’t investigate) sandwiches named after his plays. Events take place in theaters, churches, halls, at the Portora School, on the small islands that surround the town and in other improbable places, often kept a secret until a bus deposits audiences at the spot. All of this creates a festive and buoyant atmosphere that works strangely well with Beckett’s famously dark, difficult and often mordantly humorous oeuvre.”

“There is a reason that we keep buying into hoaxes such as the ‘Shroud of Turin’ or the ‘Wife of Jesus’ fragment.” (Note: This article begins with an actual three-archaeologists-walk-into-a-bar joke – it’s a recently excavated prehistoric bar, of course.)

“Stage fright has been aptly described as ‘self-poisoning by adrenaline'” – the fight-or-flight response. “But what Cro-Magnon man needed upon finding a bear in his cave is not what a modern person needs in order to play King Lear. Without the release of abrupt action, the hyperactivation becomes, basically, a panic attack.”

“The platform allows government institutions,museums and other philanthropic projects to reach a global audience of donors who can give a small amount to support big, historic projects that otherwise might not get the money needed to go forward.”

“The cumulative impact of all these developments could strike a crushing blow to Oakland’s cultural arts community, confirming its worst fears about gentrification and displacement and creating a leadership void at the already short-staffed Cultural Arts Department.”

“Face it, audiences today are easily offended by satire—and the younger members of the audience (coveted by the entertainment industry) have the thinnest skins of all. What a surprising turnaround. Just a few years ago, parents wanted to censor comedians, but young people had open minds. Nowadays the parents are tolerant but their children demand trigger warnings!”

“The University of Akron’s EJ Thomas Hall, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary, shut down Monday as staff was laid off as part of the university’s budget cutting measures.”

“The Public Scholar program, a major new initiative from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is designed to promote the publication of scholarly nonfiction books for a general audience, and the first round of grants has just been announced: a total of $1.7 million to 36 writers across a broad collection of disciplines. The grants range from $25,200 to $50,400. (Full list at bottom.)”

“If you’re a teenage girl that wants to have sex, there’s still this thing of feeling like a freak because everything you’ve ever read or seen tells you – you shouldn’t want it.”

“Going back for this M.F.A. felt like a matter of life and death for me, the only means by which I could hope to survive to be the writer I wanted to be and to live long enough to enjoy my granddaughters. The truth is that I hadn’t expected to get into the program at Columbia; when I did, I hadn’t expected to get financial assistance; when I did, I didn’t think anyone would take me seriously.”