Arts news

• How To Fix The Gender Gap In Musical Theatre

  08-10-2017 23:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  First of all, name the problem. "When talking about gender parity in writing for the theatre, most of the conversation focuses on plays. Musicals get lumped in, and we assume the same solutions will impact both media once implemented. I don’t believe that’s true. Musical theatre is a related but different medium from playwriting. The path to production is different. The financing is different. The means of exposure are different. We need to be talking about musicals separately."
  
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• Re-examining Dr. Seuss' Legacy, Including Unsavory Racism

  08-10-2017 22:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Children's literature scholar Philip Nel has published many books about Theodore Seuss Geisel, including August's Was the Cat in the Hat Black? "He did great anti-racist work ... and he did work that was racist," Nel says. "It was the same person, the same body of work, done at the same time."
  
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• Was Harvey Weinstein's (Alleged) Harassment An Open Secret In Hollywood?

  08-10-2017 22:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Women, at least those willing to speak on record, say it was. But it's not as if Weinstein is alone. "The scandal has shone a harsh light on a culture of sexual misconduct that some say prevails in a male-dominated film and television industry that has barely changed in the last 40 years."
  
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• A Native American Artist Finds Freedom In Chaos

  08-10-2017 21:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Jeffrey Gibson says that earlier, "Every studio visit I had turned into me doing Native American Art 101. ... People came in with zero to no knowledge. It was simplistic. So I wasn’t developing myself." But things changed to "a complex cocktail of beauty and ugliness" after he and his husband moved away from Brooklyn, bought an old schoolhouse, and had a child.
  
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• Late Night Isn't Exactly The Most Diverse Landscape, But Here Comes Robin Thede

  08-10-2017 21:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The history of African American women on late night is limited but prestigious - previous hosts have been Whoopi Goldberg, Mo'Nique, and Wanda Sykes. So Thede's new The Rundown is "both a risky proposition and a potential breakthrough for BET, which has a sporadic history of late-night talk-show programming, and for Ms. Thede, who was most recently the head writer and an occasional performer on Comedy Central’s The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore."
  
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• The Otherworldly Falsetto Of Moses Sumney Comes From His Deep Childhood Shyness

  08-10-2017 20:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The musician says he spent a lot of time singing under his breath at school. "At 10, his pastor parents moved from California, where he was born, to Accra in Ghana, where his fellow students would mock his American accent. It kickstarted what he calls 'an almost obnoxious obsession with loneliness, singledom, isolation,' which has permeated his music ever since."
  
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• Fantasy That Focuses On Africa, Not Europe, Is Booming Right Now

  08-10-2017 20:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Writers including N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor - whose 2010 postapocalyptic Who Fears Death is being turned into a series on HBO - and, earlier, Octavia Butler and Ben Okri, have long been turning to traditions well outside of medieval Europe for their speculative fiction books, but now "there’s an enormous appetite for fantasy stories that feature diverse characters and settings and tackle contemporary social issues."
  
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• The Guardian view on Tate Modern’s swings: more to art than Instagram | Editorial

  08-10-2017 19:56
  The latest Turbine Hall installation offers visitors a turn on the swings. But its selfie-friendly popular appeal shouldn’t blind us to quieter, more thoughtful experiencesWith its latest Turbine Hall installation, unveiled last week, Tate Modern has fulfilled its destiny by becoming, literally, a playground. The Danish artists’ collective Superflex has filled the cavernous space with a carpet meant to remind viewers of British banknotes, a wrecking-ball-like pendulum that oscillates
  
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• The Identity Politics Of Modigliani

  08-10-2017 19:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  A new exhibit is centered on the artist's decision to center his Sephardic Jewish identity-a choice, because "Modigliani, a half-Italian, half-French Jew growing up in a nation equated with Roman Catholicism (Vatican City wouldn’t become its own state until nine years after Modigliani’s death), was a cultural mixed bag from the get-go."
  
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• What Happens To Languages, And Countries, When English Becomes A 'Universal' Language?

  08-10-2017 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Is there any such thing as world literature now? Can anyone who writes a book in English, which thoroughly dominates in the business and political worlds, really think of it as only a national book? (And other questions.)
  
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• If You're Not Sick To Death Of Politics, Hey, The Observer Calls These The Best Political Novels And Plays

  08-10-2017 18:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  You want to read about fighting against despotic leaders who have almost total spy control over their populations, right? Right? Or maybe you just want to read Richard III again. You'll find all of that here.
  
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• Queens Museum Director Speaks Out Because 'Neutrality Is Fiction'

  08-10-2017 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Lauren Raicovich runs the museum in, the most diverse borough of New York, where 165 different languages are spoken. She "seems to be charting her own community-focused path, with an emphasis on making the museum a safe haven for the borough’s large immigrant population. 'I take my leadership very seriously — not just in a physical and managerial sense,' Ms. Raicovich said in a recent interview at her museum office. 'Care and equity has to be part of what I bring to my position.'"
  
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• Virtual ... Theatre? Is This Really Going To Happen?

  08-10-2017 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The tech companies certainly want it. Check this out: "A new immersive lab has opened in Brighton which will enable theatre companies to experiment with virtual reality technology."
  
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• After A Huge Pushback From Fans, Marvel Ends Its Relationship With Defense Contractor

  08-10-2017 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Marvel had already canceled its New York Comic Con "activation" event with bombmaker/dronemaker/etc. Northrup Grumman, and now the partnership is over entirely. "Fans immediately called out Marvel for seemingly promoting the military-industrial complex to children, and cited the fact that Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) eventually gave up manufacturing war materials, pointing out that a partnership with a military contractor was antithetical to Stark’s character development."
  
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• Bestselling Books At The Largest Secondhand Bookshop In Scotland?

  08-10-2017 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Railway books, obviously.
  
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• Listen Up, Millennials: Before G-Chat, Snapchat, And WhatsApp, There Was The Perfect AIM

  08-10-2017 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Yup, AIM started it all. "You kids don't understand. You will never understand. You walk around in habitats of text, pop-up cathedrals of social language whose cornerstone is the rectangle in your pocket. The words and the alert sounds swirl around you and you know how to read them and hear them because our culture — that we made — taught you how. We were the first generation to spend two hours typing at our closest friends instead of finishing our homework, parsing and analyzing and
  
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• Everything at Once review – a trip beyond death and into a cosmic womb

  08-10-2017 15:57
  Store Studios, London
  This group show by 24 artists, including Marina Abramović, Anish Kapoor, Ai Weiwei and Laure Prouvost, doesn’t try to make sense but it does take you placesA white line snakes through the spaces of Store Studios, housed in a 1971 brutalist office block on the Strand. Painted using one of those wheeled contraptions that mark out football pitches and sports fields, the line trundles from under a closed lift door, makes its way splashily up a swanky staircase &ndash
  
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• Why Do We Allow Boys Who Dance Ballet To Be Relentlessly Bullied?

  08-10-2017 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  It's a real problem: "Teenage boys reported having been teased 'forever' and 'ALLLLLLLLLL the time,' and more than half said the most significant challenge they confront as boys in ballet is the harassment that serves to police their masculinity — 'the homophobic attitude of some' and 'the assumption that ballet is only for girls and gay men.' More than 85 percent said more boys would study dance if boys and men weren’t teased and harassed so much for dancing."
  
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• The 'Murakamists' Are Not Pleased By This Year's Nobel Prize (Again)

  08-10-2017 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Disappointed, the gathered Murakamists watched the award announcement, clapped politely, and decided to consume the champagne they had at the ready anyway. "It was slightly more embarrassing for staff at Tokyo's flagship Kinokuniya bookshop, who had lovingly laid out more than 30 titles of Murakami's books in a special display. After they let out a loud surprised 'Ohhh,' staff quickly dismantled their Murakami corner and replaced it with their handful of copies of Ishiguro's books while rushing
  
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• This Artist Stayed Edgy In A Country Trying To Decide For Freedom Or More Political Repression

  08-10-2017 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Anna Maria Maiolino says, "Women have always been prohibited from speaking in the first person. ... A woman is never the universal." The artist's developmental years paralleled the Brazilian military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964 to 1985. And yes, she responded: "In a photo installation from 1974 on view at both MOCA and the Hammer, she depicts herself wielding a pair of scissors, about to cut off her nose and her tongue."
  
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• Without Theatre, There Would Never Have Been An NEA

  08-10-2017 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  No, the "free market" does not deliver theatre to every corner of the U.S. It took the NEA to do that - and it took theatre people to agitate for an NEA in the first place. "Theatre artists and administrators from all over the U.S. knew firsthand that the absence of non-commercial funding was preventing theatre from reaching audiences who had no access to professional theatres. Theatre practitioners, critics, and leaders were determined to change that—and to put theatre into the national c
  
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• No Matter How Much Washington Heights Gentrifies, This Dominican Dance Party Keeps On Going

  08-10-2017 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Even though 43 percent of New York's Dominican population (which is, by the way more than the number of people who live in Seattle) live in the Bronx now, this club will not die: "Around the dance floor, conversations were kept brief. 'No drugs, no trouble,' said Enrique Acevedo, a labor organizer, shouting over the music, as he listed the club’s attributes. Had he had a little to drink? 'A little? A lot! But I’m not driving! ... A bailar! A bailar!' he said, herding a group onto the
  
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• Antonio Lopez: the fashion illustrator who revolutionised the industry

  08-10-2017 11:00
  The subject of a new documentary, Sex, Fashion and Disco, Lopez was best friends with Karl Lagerfeld, advocated diversity long before woke-ness was in fashion – and had dance moves that can only be described as legendaryThere can’t be many fashion illustrators who can count Jessica Lange, Grace Jones and Karl Lagerfeld as their BFFs, and Jerry Hall as their one-time bae. But Antonio Lopez was special – as the new film, Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion and Disco testifies.An ill
  
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• Superflex: One Two Three Swing!; Martin Puryear review – lows and highs

  08-10-2017 09:00
  Tate Modern; Parasol Unit, London
  The Danish collective’s Turbine Hall installation is astonishing in its banality. For true wonders, seek out the work of African American sculptor Martin PuryearFirst the bad news. This is by far the worst Turbine Hall commission in the history of Tate Modern, and the steepest decline from Miroslaw Balka’s overwhelming black box, Ai Weiwei’s ocean of seeds or Olafur Eliasson’s great radiant sun. After Carsten Höller’s silver sl
  
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