Category: people

Over a seven-decade career in theater, television and film, often in partnership with husband Ossie Davis, she greatly expanded the range of roles black actresses could play in the U.S.; gave landmark performances in Shakespeare and soap opera, Hansberry and Fugard and Spike Lee; picketed theaters that refused to cast her African-American colleagues; and played a high profile in the wider civil rights struggle.

“There are rumours on the internet calling Sky City a bluff,” he tells a colleague in a heated meeting, as they plot a lavish launch party to win the support of politicians and suppliers. “People don’t trust us anymore. Therefore we need to convince them with a ceremony.”

“Few children came of age in the past three decades without meeting Spot or encountering his franchise.” The books in the series, which started in 1980, have sold more than 60 million copies.

In her new show at the Serpentine Gallery, 512 Hours, the current goddess of performance art interacts with viewers, very quietly, in three empty white rooms. And people are queuing up by the hundreds to take part.

“I’m sure that you were not personally judging me and other concerned parents when you thanked your parents for not putting you on Ritalin.But damn it, you’re not making it any easier to live with our hard decisions. There’s anxiety and then there’s Audra-induced anxiety, which is more dramatic and accomplished than the regular sort.”

The beloved maestro, who said just last year, “I will continue until I drop. If I die on stage, so much the better,” had announced only last week that he was ill with cancer and was retiring.

“Shep Houghton, who turns 100 today, could shape his era if he wanted. … During a career that stretched from Josef von Sternberg silents to Streisand musicals, Houghton was propositioned by a Munchkin, blew off Lucille Ball, and taught Greta Garbo to waltz.”

“[Her] style, which incorporated elements of minimalism, pop, jazz, blues, classical composition, electronic music and improvisation and often combined traditional orchestral instruments with ambient sounds like bird song, sirens and amplified heartbeats – defied handy categorization. While not every critic warmed to that style, many praised her as a skilled melodist who could write music of surprising, satisfying consonance in a dissonant age.”

He’s a playwright who’s known as a movie actor, a pop culture figure who knows little about pop culture and describes himself as “a very pretentious person”, a son of privilege who’s “aware pretty much all of the hours that I’m awake that we’re living in a very, very unjust world.”

“Concertmasters are typically poached from other orchestras or promoted from within the ranks, but Mr. Nadien, then 40, was a freelance commercial musician. Although Bernstein described him as ‘an extraordinary violinist,’ he had almost no experience playing with a major symphony orchestra.”