Arts news

• The Opera Star Who Says Twitter Has Been A Real Lifesaver

  14-07-2019 22:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Sure, Twitter has issues. And then it has this: “At 58, [Karita] Mattila, who is currently onstage here at the Aix Festival in Weill and Brecht’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny,” is having something of a late-career renaissance: a newly expanding repertoire and newfound celebrity on Twitter, where she is beloved by some of opera’s most ardent fans. And she loves them right back.” – The New York Times
  
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• Will Finding Shakespeare’s London Home Tell Us More About His Plays?

  14-07-2019 22:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  That’s the idea of the search, truly. Historian Geoff Marsh “concluded from cross-referencing various tax and leasehold documents of the time … that the playwright – then in his early 30s – almost certainly lodged in St Helen’s Place, Bishopsgate, just south of Liverpool Street station. It was one of the City’s more affluent parishes, and he would have been living among well-travelled physicians, merchants, lawyers, musicians and writers.” &ndash
  
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• Sci-Fi Is Trying To Prepare Us For An Uncertain Future (And Present)

  14-07-2019 21:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  A contingent of science fiction writers – that is, novelists, to be clear – are being hired by companies to predict the future. Yes, really. “Mega consulting firm Price Waterhouse Cooper published a guide on how to use sci-fi to ‘explore innovation.’ The New Yorker has touted ‘better business through sci-fi.’ As writer Brian Merchant put it, ‘Welcome to the Sci-Fi industrial complex.'” – Wired
  
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• As Playwright Luis Alfaro Adapts Immigration Stories, He Says Greek Dramas Are The Primal, Perfect Canvas

  14-07-2019 21:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Alfaro met a 13-year-old promising playwright in 1999, but she was in a program for felons: She had killed her mother, who had put a hit out on her father. Then he started re-reading Electra, by Sophocles, and it hit him – he could retell Greek tragedies, but set in Chicanx and Latinx communities in Los Angeles. “‘The Greeks are so primal,’ Mr. Alfaro said. ‘They get to the essence: why we hurt each other, this inability to forgive.'” – The New York Tim
  
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• The New Bookstore In Chicago That’s Also Showcasing Original Art

  14-07-2019 20:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  In her new bookstore in Chicago – the only one owned by a Black woman – owner and curator DL Mullen has more than books. “What might be most visually striking about the space is the art itself, like the mural which dominates the shop’s north wall. Street artist Ahmad Lee painted it in one 11-hour stretch, vividly depicting two of Mullen’s favorite artists: Frida Kahlo and Jean-Michel Basquiat.” There’s more art up
  
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• The Uber Driver Whose Opera Singing Videos Went Viral

  14-07-2019 20:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Actually, he’s an opera singer by training and design and only an Uber driver – in Durban, South Africa – by economic necessity. Still, though, the viral videos taken by a passenger were a welcome surprise. “The exposure has rocketed Mngoma to semi-stardom. He has since been interviewed by radio and TV stations across the country and auditioned for the Cape Town Opera. He has even been invited to participate in iPop, an international talent contest in
  
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• Opera Is Tasked With Saving This Small Town In ‘Empty Spain’

  14-07-2019 19:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Between Madrid and Barcelona, there’s now little but empty space where towns used to be – except for the 700-person town of Medinaceli, where “in August, [the town] becomes a stage for high art, due to one man’s eccentric vision of bringing elite opera to the slumbering central town in Soria, the least populated of Spain’s 50 provinces.” – BBC
  
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• Writing About Theatre In St. Louis

  14-07-2019 19:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  The critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “The way I look at it, there are people who just wanna see a show, and there are theatre people. There’s some overlap between those two groups, but not a lot. Some people want to see a big, bombastic play, an Aladdin, and they’re not looking to see No Exit.” – American Theatre
  
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• Bob Ross Was A Famous (Infamous?) Painter, So Where Are All Of His Paintings? [VIDEO]

  14-07-2019 18:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  The mystery lasted a long time, and criss-crossed the internet – partly because everyone wanted to buy a Bob Ross original. Good luck with that. (Also, come for the mystery, but stay for the tongue-in-cheek score to this short video.) – The New York Times
  
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• Artist Opportunity / Asking For It Exhibition / North West / UK wide

  14-07-2019 18:27
  We are the ‘Asking for it’ exhibition. Our aim is to create a place for people to share and feel and come together over adversity. Through expression of art - in a variety of mediums such...
  
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• Producers Of ‘Big Little Lies’ Promised A Woman Director Complete Creative Control – And Then Yanked It Back

  14-07-2019 18:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Showrunner David E. Kelley had a plan, but he didn’t share it with British filmmaker Andrea Arnold before shooting began … or finished. “There was a dramatic shift in late 2018 as the show was yanked away from Arnold, and creative control was handed over to executive producer and Season 1 director Jean-Marc Vallée. The goal was to unify the visual style of Season 1 and 2. In other words, after all the episodes had been shot, take Arnold’s work and make it look an
  
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• The Author Of ‘How To Train Your Dragon’ Says Books Are Better For The Brain Than Movies

  14-07-2019 17:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Cressida Cowell, laureate for children’s literature and a writer whose fame has greatly benefitted from film and TV, says, “Books are a kind of transformative magic that offer magical things that films aren’t as good at creating in children: empathy, creativity and intelligence.” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• The Mystery Mural At L.A.’s Coliseum – And The Teen Who Solve It

  14-07-2019 17:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  The kid who solved the mystery was simply obsessed – and lucky, thanks to a tweet, to find the right timeline. “‘The entire time I was trying to figure out who painted it, I thought it was from 1932,’ said Gordon, now 19 and a student at Amherst College in Massachusetts. ‘All my research was in that time period.'” Understandable … but wrong, as research showed. – Los Angeles Times
  
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• Why YouTube’s Feedback Loop Is So Toxic

  14-07-2019 16:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  It COULD get fixed, but it probably won’t. Why? Engagement. “As the AI improves, it will be able to more precisely predict who is interested in this content; thus, it’s also less likely to recommend such content to those who aren’t. At that stage, problems with the algorithm become exponentially harder to notice, as content is unlikely to be flagged or reported.” – Wired
  
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• The Life Cycle Of A Beach Read

  14-07-2019 16:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Ouch, why did you have to zing all of us who have ever been on vacation, NYT? – The New York Times
  
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• Evaluating Iris Murdoch At 100

  14-07-2019 15:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Her work, much of which is being reissued, is still incredibly relevant. “A crucial idea in Murdoch’s fiction is the reality of others, a material fact that we are confronted with daily but, in our innermost selves, seem hardly able to grasp. We glimpse them in continually evolving contexts inflected with our own agendas, which may also remain mysterious to us.” – The Guardian (UK)
  
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• Scarlett Johansson Says She Should Be Allowed To Play Anything, Including ‘A Tree,’ Because That’s Her Job

  14-07-2019 15:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Oh boy. This is going to end well. “‘As an actor I should be allowed to play any person, or any tree, or any animal because that is my job and the requirements of my job,’ Johansson explained. ‘I feel like it’s a trend in my business and it needs to happen for various social reasons, yet there are times it does get uncomfortable when it affects the art because I feel art should be free of restrictions.'” – Vulture
  
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• When Will Theatre Awards Catch Up With Nonbinary Actors?

  14-07-2019 14:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Howard Sherman says the time has come to figure this out: “So long as there are categories for best actor and actress (or best male and female actor), those who identify outside of the binary will be left out, misidentified and othered. This will come home to roost the first time someone with non-binary identity is nominated for an award, and then we will see awards-giving organisations doing hurried acrobatics to come up with a solution. The better option is to understand where the think
  
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• So, What Exactly Is L.A.’s Urban Plan For The New LACMA District?

  14-07-2019 14:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Um … indeed. “The big question is whether Los Angeles can pull it together to approach its public urban spaces in ways that are more cohesive and more mindful of human scale — and perhaps (just perhaps!) correct some of the errors of the past.” – Los Angeles Times
  
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• How A Large, Decentralized Social Network Is Dealing With A N*zi Problem

  14-07-2019 13:30 via feedproxy.google.com
  Mastodon was meant to be a kinder, gentler, no-fascist Twitter. Then a right-wing social network moved to Mastodon. “It’s a hard problem, playing off the deepest limitations of decentralized projects like Mastodon. Mastodon arose from the idealistic open-source software movement, designed to let anybody run their own social media site. But it was never intended to support something like Gab.” – The Verge
  
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• Someone (A Lot Of People, To Be Honest) Has To Mow The Lawn At The Largest Sculpture Park In The U.S.

  14-07-2019 13:00 via feedproxy.google.com
  Storm King is big. Really, really big: “The art here is nestled amid 500 acres of verdant hills, exposed to the ever-shifting and unrelenting climate of New York’s Hudson Valley.” – The New York Times
  
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• Venice Agendas Open Call: Publication / / South East / England

  14-07-2019 12:26
  Venice Agendas 2019 The Market: What is the Value of Art 
  Venice Agendas celebrates twenty years of critically engaged projects, leading the field in discussions and events at the Venice...
  
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• Venice Agendas Open Call: Regional Satellite Projects / / London / England

  14-07-2019 12:24
  Venice Agendas 2019 The Market: What is the Value of Art 
  Venice Agendas celebrates twenty years of critically engaged projects, leading the field in discussions and events at the Venice...
  
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• Olafur Eliasson: In Real Life; Takis – review

  14-07-2019 11:00
  Tate Modern, London
  From foggy tunnels to galleries of rain, Olafur Eliasson’s hypnotic installations highlight the state of the planet, while sculptor Takis’s humanoids and insects are just magneticIt would be hard to think of a more beguiling show than the Olafur Eliasson survey at Tate Modern. It opens with a waterfall of spectacular proportions and continues with a journey through the elements, including – literally – earth, sea and fire. Anyone who remembers lying da
  
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