“How much longer will it be before our arts companies are no longer run by artists? Unless we are all vigilant on this score, I believe it will be not too long at all and I further believe this would be the end of theatre as a true art form, in this country.”
Tag: 11.21.17
Do Artists Have Political Responsibilities?
Should a writer be socially engaged? Is it a part of our duty? I always return to the poet and teacher Marie Ponsot: “The duty of the writer is to the welfare of the work.” Not to some political party or cause or ideal—which through making our art more useful might somehow rob it of its integrity, its wonderful, vital uselessness—but simply to the work itself.
Is The Museum Of The Bible Propaganda For The Truth Of Protestant Scripture? Only If You Don’t Look Closely
Sure, Hobby Lobby president Steve Green, the museum’s major funder, is an evangelical activist. Yet, writes Will Saletan, if you pay attention to the wall texts and exhibits, you’ll find that they allow for both ambiguity and ambivalence, not to mention the Bible’s borrowings from other religions.
Fake News In America (This Isn’t The First Time It’s Been This Bad)
Slate resident Interrogator Isaac Chotiner talks to Kevin Young, author of Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, about “what inspired his book idea (it wasn’t Trump), whether con men ever believe their own nonsense, and why people are willing to believe some hoaxes more than others.”
Machines Are Learning In New Ways. But What If We Can’t Understand Them?
“In many arenas, A.I. methods have advanced with startling speed; deep neural networks can now detect certain kinds of cancer as accurately as a human. But human doctors still have to make the decisions — and they won’t trust an A.I. unless it can explain itself. This isn’t merely a theoretical concern.”
Should Theatre Reflect Audience Or Create It?
“Populism aims to represent the people. That can function on two levels: reflecting it on the one hand and creating it on the other. With the former, we assume that the people exist before a representation of them is made. With the latter, we want to make it exist. This second concept is performative; we understand that it is close to the performance. The link with theatre and the other performing arts depends perhaps on how we should understand what an audience is.”
A Warning About The Imprisonment Of The French Language
Facing the “aberration” of gender-inclusive styles, the French language is henceforth in “mortal peril.” (Yes, it says that.) Adaptations such as écrivaine for female writer, or la ministre for a female minister, will end in a “disunified language, disparate in its expression, creating a confusion that verges on illegibility.” The new spellings and syntactical signs will burden teachers and complicate reading. The dream of a coherent francophonie – the international community of French speakers – will be annihilated by the additional spellings and complexity “to the benefit of other languages that will profit from this confusion to prevail around the world.”
Is It True That Barbara Hannigan Won’t Sing The Queen Of The Night Because It’s Too Easy?
Nope. She won’t sing the role because she doesn’t want to get typecast in it – “It would drive me nuts.” But it is true, as she tells David Patrick Stearns, that she hums Pierre Boulez to herself.
Spike Lee Talks About Turning ‘She’s Gotta Have It’ Into A TV Series – And Hiring Women Scriptwriters
“This was a story that didn’t need to be told entirely through a male gaze. I’ve been accused of telling things through a male gaze, and I didn’t want to give people any more ammunition. Plus, why wouldn’t I want Lynn Nottage to write scripts? She’s won two Pulitzer Prizes, for Ruined and Sweat. Why wouldn’t I want Eisa Davis, Radha Blank, even my sister Joie wrote a script?”
‘Singin’ In The Rain’ On Stage, Looking Like An Old Black-And-White Movie Musical
Robert Carsen’s production of the old Gene Kelly classic for Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet (and which he hopes to bring to Broadway) isn’t entirely in black-and-white: “We use sepia toning sometimes. If it’s in a garden, it’s tinted green. If it’s indoors, it’s tinted pink. In the fantasy section, when it’s not in Los Angeles anymore or making a movie but dreaming of being on Broadway, in the Broadway melody, that all goes into gold and warm tungsten stage lights.”