The Vote, originally staged at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2015, will return in an updated form this Thursday. The 90-minute play depicts the final 90 minutes of voting at a polling place in a swing district. – The Observer (UK)
Tag: 12.08.19
How MBA Programs And Big Corporations Are Using The Arts To Train Executives
The business school at Oxford has students try to conduct a choir. Carnegie Mellon uses a book club and art installations. The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts offers courses to business types. And what lessons get learned in all this? – The Economist
Actor René Auberjonois, Known For ‘M*A*S*H’, ‘Benson’, ‘Deep Space Nine’, And Robert Altman Films, Dead At 79
“Mr. Auberjonois worked constantly as a character actor through several periods and forms, from the dynamic theater of the 1960s to the cinema renaissance of the 1970s to the prime period of network television in the 1980s and ’90s — and each generation knew him for something different.” – The Washington Post
Why Are Ireland’s Archeological Sites Disappearing?
About 15,000 new archaeological sites have been discovered over the past two decades. But where are they? The truth is that most have been physically removed. Are we to believe, therefore, that they were not worth keeping? That thousands of sites deserved nothing more than a dusty report on a shelf? – Irish Times
After 150 Years, Vienna State Opera Presents Its First Opera By A Woman
“One hundred and fifty years is a long time. But I’ve always said it’s never too late. So it’s good that they finally have thought about it. And at least if you’re the first, there has to be a second and a third and so on. So it’s always good to have a starting point.” – BBC
Prince Was A Meticulous Documenter And A Perfectionist. Is It Fair To Reveal His Incomplete Work?
Would Prince have agreed to the release of this material in this form? Does the potential public good, and the contribution to the historical record, outweigh whatever uncertainties Prince might have had about the revealing of his rough drafts? – The New York Times
Parasite Racks Up Another Best Picture Win, This One At The Los Angeles Film Critics Awards
Justin Chang is prepared for the inevitable backlash over some of the choices the LAFCA made. Prepared, but not pleased: “I’ve always been struck by the recurring phenomenon of LAFCA and other critics’ groups getting attacked online for the elitist snobbery of their allegedly out-of-the-box choices. To accuse us of snobbery, I think, gets the situation exactly wrong; championing work that falls outside the usual awards-season conversation, informed by the fact that we spend 52 weeks a year watching and writing about new movies from all over the world, strikes me as a pretty good definition of egalitarianism in action.” – Los Angeles Times
The Blogosphere Is Shrinking Again
And not just any blog is closing, but Feministing, one of the only remaining feminist blogs from the heyday of the 2000s. One of the site’s former editors says, “It was unclear how we could have such a ferocious audience and not be onto something. … Many of us involved in the feminist blogosphere are now in mainstream media, and that’s exciting. That said, we need independent media because they’re an important check.” – The New York Times
Great Britain Has Fantastic Public Spaces, And A Kitschy Retail Christmas Market Doesn’t Fill Them Will
Architecture critic Rowan Moore is not thrilled with the thoughtless, crass commercialism filling Trafalgar Square. “It is not the presence of the market, precisely, that’s the problem, so much as the cluelessness with which it and other temporary elements are jammed in among the stonework. These include a crib housed in something like a bus shelter and a makeshift health-and-safety skirt of crush barriers and green tarpaulin around the 25-metre Christmas tree, donated every year by Norway in thanks for British help during the Second World War. If the Norwegians are kind enough to give us a tree … we should at least put a tiny bit of thought into whatever goes around its base.” – The Guardian (UK)
A Grudging Defense Of That Rather Expensive Banana Idea
Let’s go deep: “You are not a hopeless philistine if you find this all a bit foolish. Foolishness, and the deflating sensation that a culture that once encouraged sublime beauty now only permits dopey jokes, is Mr. Cattelan’s stock in trade. But perhaps you will find more to appreciate in Mr. Cattelan’s work if you take note of two points: one formal, one social.” – The New York Times