Actors Call For UK Production Companies To Get Tax Breaks If They Employ More Women, Minorities And Disabled

Actors Call For UK Production Companies To Get Tax Breaks If They Employ More Women, Minorities And Disabled
“The actors Lenny Henry, Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor were among the signatories to a letter to The Guardian that said similar moves had been successful before and should be tried again. … Also putting their names to the letter were the Paralympic athlete and television presenter Ade Adepitan, the playwright Lucy Prebble and Jodie Whittaker, the first female actor to play Doctor Who,” as well as playwright and Young Vic artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah.

Is Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra A Hopelessly Quixotic Enterprise?

“The group’s deceptively simple premise — that getting musicians from groups [Israel and the Arab world] that have been opposed for decades to play together would foster understanding — seems even more ambitious in this polarized age.” (Indeed, the orchestra’s current tour of the U.S. nearly collapsed when the Trump administration withheld visas for some of its members.) As the conductor told reporter Michael Cooper, “When I’m with [the musicians], it doesn’t feel quixotic at all. When I talk to you, I know it is quixotic.”

When We Say That ‘Art Is A Right, Not A Privilege’, What Exactly Do We Mean?

The statement can mean one of two things: “access to art is a moral right” or “access to art ought to be a legal right; that free access to museums and other institutions housing cultural artifacts should be legally guaranteed to citizens.” NYU art professor Nickolas Calabrese argues that, while the first would seem to be true on its face, the second is far more problematic than most people who favor it seem to realize.

Report: Poor Are Losing Out In Music Education In The UK

Children in low income households were half as likely to take music lessons. The report suggests only 19% of children from families earning less than £28,000 learned a musical instrument, compared with 40% of those in high-earning households. This is despite similar levels of interest from both groups of children. The report also suggests higher-earning parents were twice as likely to want their children to learn an instrument.

Openly Gay Male Ballet Dancers Are Creating A New Paradigm Of Masculinity

“If you didn’t know much about classical ballet, you might think it’s an obvious home for queer artists and narratives, but it’s more complicated than that.” The canon is small and its stories are very conventionally heterosexual; even today, openly gay male dancers can have trouble getting cast as leads. “[Now] a new generation of dancers who are collapsing the boundaries between queerness and maleness in ballet by challenging its, and the culture’s, preconceived ideas of masculinity.”

New York Theatermakers Experiment With Ways To Help Colleagues With Young Children

“The question of how well — or poorly — the theater world accommodates child care has been talked about for years, and is closely bound up with the discussion of why women are so underrepresented as writers, directors, and designers at the industry’s highest, and highest-paying, levels. … The theater world is experimenting with a variety of small-scale solutions to make the juggling easier.”

Britain’s Rachel Dolezal? Or Not? Director With White Parents Given Grant For Minority Theatre Artists

Anthony Ekundayo Lennon has always acknowledged that his parents and grandparents are white, but says that his skin coloring (which his brothers share) has led to his being treated, and discriminated against, as black or mixed-race for his entire life, including his work in theatre. Lennon applied, as a “mixed-heritage individual,” for and won an Arts Council England grant to work a a black-led London theatre company. The company, Talawa, willingly sponsors Lennon, but other black actors and directors are publicly objecting.

As A Contemporary Art Collector Sells Off Her Collection To Support Social Justice, What’s Next?

Agnes Gund doesn’t want to be profiled and doesn’t want to be too lavishly praised for being rich and using her money to support a wide swath of the worlds of social justice, not to mention artistic culture. “Her cash reserve has shrunk after a lifetime of giving to AIDS research, abortion rights groups and arts organizations, among many others. The valuable paintings in her home by artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Ellsworth Kelly have mostly been promised to museums.”