Maria Alyokhina – one of the three artist-activists who was arrested and jailed for singing “Mother of God, cast Putin out!” in a Moscow cathedral in 2012 – was leaving for her scheduled appearance at the Edinburgh Fringe when Russian border guards at the airport told her she was barred from leaving the country. So she drove to Lithuania and flew from there.
Category: people
The Time I Had A Heart Attack Onstage On Opening Night
Actor Stacy Keach writes about preparing for and performing the role of Ernest Hemingway in Jim McGrath’s one-man play Pamplona at Chicago’s Goodman Theater, where he’s resuming the run that abruptly ended last summer after 11 previews because of one very unfortunate event.
Gala Dalí, Chief Marketing Officer Of Salvador Dalí, Inc.
“The idea is that while Dalí was the face of the enterprise, Gala propelled it. Dalí certainly recognised her contribution, signing some of his paintings ‘Gala Salvador Dalí’ … Can Gala, having produced no art that we know of, really be considered an artist? Perhaps not. But this exhibition does show how much Salvador Dalí – and his art – depended on her forceful personality, for better or worse.”
What Has Fueled Kathleen Turner’s Long Career? Rage
No, she says, it’s not just her voice or her talent. In a Q&A, Turner talks about her midlife switch from screen to stage, teaching acting and doing cabaret, Michael Douglas and Nicholas Cage, and decades of living with rheumatoid arthritis.
Antonio Dias, 74, Artist Who Battled Brazil’s Military Dictators
“In the mid-1960s Mr. Dias emerged as the leading figure of Nova Figuração, or ‘New Figuration,’ a movement in Brazilian painting that used bold, graphic imagery to contest Brazil’s junta, which took power in 1964. … [In 1968,] he moved to Milan, where he abandoned his graphic and immediate paintings for an art of cool conceptualism, though his political engagement never wavered.”
H.F. ‘Gerry’ Lenfest, ‘One Of The Greatest Philanthropists Philadelphia Has Ever Seen,’ Dead At 88
After launching and building up the television company Suburban Cable and then selling it to Comcast, Lenfest spent the second part of his life giving away more than $1.3 billion dollars to arts and education. “He was chairman of the board of old-line institutions like the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Curtis Institute of Music, … and he willed new ones into existence.” Among those are the Museum of the American Revolution and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, to which he donated The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com (all of which he had acquired outright in 2014).
When Dick Cavett Ruled Thinking America’s TV
For three decades, Mr. Cavett was the thinking person’s Johnny Carson, embodiment of an East Coast sophisticate. He wore smart turtlenecks and double-breasted blazers, had more cultural references than a Google server and laced martini-dry witticisms into lengthy, probing talks with 20th-century luminaries including Bette Davis, James Baldwin, Mick Jagger and Jean-Luc Godard. A Renaissance salon in a rabbit-ears era, “The Dick Cavett Show” was woke some 50 years before the term came into vogue.
Charlotte Rae Of ‘The Facts Of Life’ And ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ Has Died At 92
Rae began her career elsewhere: She “was a fixture on Broadway and television for six decades. But along with other stars from the golden age of Broadway like Betty Garrett and Bea Arthur, she found her greatest success in sitcoms, beginning in the early years of television.”
Betty Miles, Who Wrote Children’s Lit With A Social Conscience, Dead At 90
“[Her] books for children and young adults addressed real-life issues like sexism, racism and censorship after she had emerged from the 1950s to become a feminist.”
Charles Hamlen, Beloved Classical Music Manager Who Founded AIDS Charity Classical Action, Dead At 75
“[His] rise to the zenith of the classical music world — as a co-founder of IMG Artists, which represented many of the biggest stars in the field — was improbable, as he was the first to admit. He was a high school French teacher and playing piano on the side when he moved to New York in 1977 to try to make it as an artists’ manager.”