Says a former theatre student of Baldwin Wallace University’s Victoria Bussert, “Theatres have shut down everywhere, and this woman is just like, ‘Fuck that! We’re doing a play, we’re doing theatre. Give me hoops—I will jump through them, but I will make it work.'” – American Theatre
Tag: 11.16.20
Update: What Americans For The Arts Is Doing During COVID
The urgency of this vision has never been more apparent than in 2020—amid a global pandemic, heightened focus on social justice and racial equity, a huge economic downturn, and a contentious presidential election. These issues have impacted every community across the country and devastated artists, nonprofit and for-profit creative businesses, educational systems, healthcare, and trust in government. And because of long-term systemic inequities, these challenges have more severely affected people and communities of color. – Americans for the Arts
Booker Prize 2020 Goes To Douglas Stuart’s ‘Shuggie Bain’
The Scottish-American writer’s debut novel follows the title character, an impoverished boy in 1980s Glasgow, “as he attempts to care for his alcoholic mother, Agnes, whose descent into alcoholism coincides with her youngest son’s growing awareness of his sexuality. The novel is dedicated to Stuart’s mother, who died of alcoholism when he was 16.” – The Guardian
How To Sing Opera In Mandarin Chinese
Katherine Chu and Juliet Petrus, both alumnae of San Francisco Opera’s Merola/Adler young artists’ program, have written “the first book to introduce Mandarin as a language for singing, with a detailed explanation for the creation of sounds and a system for learning them. … Singing in Mandarin combines a brief study of linguistics, notes about the history of China and Taiwan, the development and significance of Pinyin …, a wealth of information about Mandarin pronunciation, and scores with multilingual text of Chinese [art] songs.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
Andrew White, Versatile Musician And Jazz Scholar, Dead At 78
“Mr. White, who played the oboe, saxophone, bass and other instruments, performed and recorded for more than five decades” in classical and rock as well as jazz. … “He self-produced more than 40 albums of his music, encompassing contemporary jazz, classical oboe, funk, and rhythm and blues. He self-published [an] autobiography … as well as treatises on music, educational manuals and his original compositions and transcriptions.” – The Washington Post
Why Our Brains Are Built To Forget
“We remember and we forget. Lots of people know that marijuana makes us forget, and researchers in the sixties and seventies wanted to understand how. They discovered that the human brain has special receptors that perfectly fit psychoactive chemicals like THC, the active agent in cannabis. But why, they wondered, would we have neuroreceptors for a foreign substance? We don’t. Those receptors are for substances produced in our own brains.” – Paris Review
How The Personal Productivity Revolution Backfired
The knowledge sector’s insistence that productivity is a personal issue seems to have created a so-called “tragedy of the commons” scenario, in which individuals making reasonable decisions for themselves insure a negative group outcome. – The New Yorker
Donald Byrd On Making A Career As A Choreographer
“I think that caused me to be really clear for myself about why I was doing what I was doing. I could not take into consideration how people would respond. That included funders and audiences. Part of the risk, then, is that maybe nobody will show up. But when I tried to make things that I thought would please people, I thought those pieces were disasters.” – Dance Magazine
An Oral History Of Alex Trebek
“We talked to nearly 30 [Jeopardy!] contestants [from] over the past four decades — ranging from a player in the first episode to one whose winning moment went viral just earlier this month — about how Trebek became America’s most beloved game-show host.” – The Washington Post
Has Substack Created A New A New Medium For News?
In three years, Substack’s newsletters—covering almost every conceivable topic, from Australian Aboriginal rights to bread recipes to local Tennessee politics—have drawn more than two hundred fifty thousand paid subscribers. The top newsletter authors can earn six figures, an unheard-of amount for freelance journalists. – Columbia Journalism Review