Twelve actors travel across 28 US cities on a seven month journey to bring classical theater to America. The Acting Company, a classical touring ensemble founded by John Houseman and Margot Harley, started with members of the first graduating class of the drama division of the Julliard School. Kevin Kline recalls Houseman’s motivation being, “We couldn’t just let them go out there and do garbage.” In the Company’s 37th season, twelve actors spend seven months on a cramped bus, lose a leading man, play 71 roles, and learn to work in spaces that won’t hold their set. Throughout, they reconnect with their passion for performing, receive a great review in the New York Times, and teach high school and college students a new way to look at Shakespeare. As we follow the actors on tour and watch insightful conversations with Kevin Kline, Rainn Wilson and Harriet Harris, we learn that with the exception of Xbox and Wi-Fi on the bus, not much has changed – and that is just as it should be.Congrats to Sara on this spectacular achievement!
Only half as many online teens work on their own blog as did in 2006, and Millennial generation adults ages 18-33 have also seen a modest decline-a development that may be related to the quickly-growing popularity of social network sites. At the same time, however, blogging's popularity increased among most older generations, and as a result the rate of blogging for all online adults rose slightly overall from 11% in late 2008 to 14% in 2010.Everyone's always ragging on me for acting like an old man, I just didn't think that would reach, you know, this.
Two years ago Ed Schmidt, a New York playwright, got word that his father was near death in upstate New York. He bundled his family into the car and drove north, explaining to his young children on the way the sad fact that Grandpa might not recognize them when they got there. As it happened, they arrived minutes too late; Willie Schmidt, a former history teacher and camp director, had died, probably as they were parking the car.The death of Schmidt's father is, of course, an event most deserving of empathy. His decision that theater has ultimately as a significant art form, however, is one that is only his business and no one else's. And then there's this:
That night, seeking solace, the younger Mr. Schmidt read the final act of his favorite American play, Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” That’s the one in which Emily Webb, a woman who has died far too young, revisits her family kitchen on the morning of her 10th birthday and discovers the agonizing truth about how little value people place on the quotidian moments of their lives.
Mr. Schmidt, a sturdy, pleasant-looking man of 48, explains all this near the start of his new play, a solo piece that he is performing for 12 theatergoers at a time in the living room of his ground-floor apartment in the Carroll Gardens section of Brooklyn. “Our Town” failed him, however, he says. He felt no better, and that’s when he made the leap: If great theater is no use to him in a moment of crisis, then it’s not worth spending his life trying to create it.
After a recent performance one exiting theatergoer, evidently distressed and irritated, worried aloud that Mr. Schmidt was woefully depressed.For years I have reduced my theory of how theater, personal experience, and especially identity politics fit together to one phrase: theater isn't therapy. While I usually have to do some bending of a particular work to apply this critique, I have yet to encounter a work that so completely embodies the example. Until now.
“He shouldn’t be telling this to us,” she said. “He should be telling it to a therapist.”
Spanish politicians have criticised a video by the Young Socialists in Catalonia in which a woman simulates an orgasm while casting her vote.Although Socialist equality minister Bibiana Aido wins the day:
Both Socialist and opposition politicians have attacked the campaign video.
The equality minister called it "misleading" advertising.
In the video the young woman gets increasingly excited as she votes for the Socialist Party in this month's regional elections in Catalonia.
It concludes with the phrase, "Voting is a pleasure", after she puts her voting slip in the ballot box.
The leader of the conservative opposition Popular Party of Catalonia, Alicia Sanchez-Camacho, said the video was an "attack on the dignity of women".
"If it was true, electoral participation would go up greatly, but I think we are dealing with a misleading advert."[BBC News]
Politico Pro’s expected staff of forty journalists will provide “high-impact, high-velocity reporting on the politics of energy, technology and health care reform” for political and policy professionals.It kinda sounds like they'll be doing what they're already doing, but with bigger words -- or perhaps it would be more accurate to say they'll use acronyms without defining them, since the readership will be assumed to be "in the know."
The most vociferous critics of Microsoft and the overall proprietary software industry describe the anti-piracy crusade as a sophisticated dog-and-pony show. They say the software makers tolerate a certain level of piracy because they would rather have people use their products — even if counterfeit — than pick up lower-cost alternatives. At the same time, the critics say, the software companies conduct periodic raids to remind customers and partners that playing by the rules makes sense.We get caught up in the thing that is prohibited -- whether it's illicit narcotics (as opposed to controlled substances) and prohibited forms of media copying -- and instead it would behoove us to look at the boundaries between what is forbidden and what is allowed. That boundary tells us more about ourselves as a society than how many joints we smoke or songs we download for free.
“It has always been in Microsoft’s interests for software to be available at two different prices — expensive for the people that can afford it and inexpensive for those that can’t,” Mr. Eben] Moglen[, a Columbia Law professor,] says. “At the end of the day, if you’re a monopolist, you have to tolerate a large number of copies you don’t get paid for just to keep everyone hooked.”
Throughout three programs this week, Mr. Beck has portrayed Mr. Soros, a billionaire investor and philanthropist, as a “puppet master” who is “notorious for collapsing economies and regimes all around the world” and whose “next target” is the United States. Citing Mr. Soros’s statements about the decline of the dollar, Mr. Beck said, “Not only does he want to bring America to her knees, financially, he wants to reap obscene profits off us as well.”Doesn't this all sound familiar? Deriding a sub-section of society as being the puppet master financiers constituting a fifth column that wants to destroy the country from within. Really? Not setting off alarm bells at all?
Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, took issue with Mr. Beck’s depiction of Mr. Soros as a “Jewish boy helping sending the Jews to the death camps,” calling it “offensive” and “horrific.”
Television drama should say more about the world we live in today and not rely on costumes, irony and pastiche, according to the award-winning screenwriter Jimmy McGovern. The television veteran behind the uncompromising hit shows Cracker and The Street is calling for dramas that reflect reality and have a strong point to make.Hey hey hey -- I like Dr. Who.
"Why write drama that doesn't matter?" he asked this weekend. Commenting on the high viewing figures for costume dramas such as ITV's Downton Abbey and the popularity of arch adventure shows such as Dr Who, McGovern said he believed the best writing took itself seriously, as well as taking its audience seriously.
"Why have a BBC complaints unit in the first place? They tell me, 'Jimmy, it is in case you offend anybody,' and I say, 'I am a writer. That is my job.' Just imagine if it said on my headstone that I had never offended anybody – I would turn in my grave."That? That is just awesome.
[John] Pike[, director of the U.S.-based security analyst group globalsecurity.org] said he didn't understand why the military had not recognized the contrail of an aircraft. "The Air Force must ... understand how contrails are formed," he said. "Why they can't get some major out to belabor the obvious, I don't know."I'll tell you why: because they know exactly what it is, and they're not telling.
Here’s the message for Scott Brown that I gleaned from last week’s election: Scott, run for president.Oh. My. God.
Mr Ellsberg turned himself in, willing to be held accountable for what he has done. He faced charges—eventually dismissed—under America’s Espionage Act. In contrast, WikiLeaks distributes its servers to take advantage of whistle-blower laws in Sweden, Belgium, Iceland and America. Mr Assange enjoys the protection of several liberal democracies, but is not really accountable to any of them.In essence, Assange is doing to the Pentagon's data what Mark Zuckerberg is doing to yours: grabbing it, doing what he likes with it, and then claiming it's no big deal because it's a new digital age.
What is more, Mr Assange seems unwilling to reflect on the risks of what he is doing. Amnesty International has complained that documents in WikiLeaks’ release on Afghanistan were not sufficiently edited, and thus likely to endanger Afghans who had worked for the coalition. Even such supporters as Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic member of parliament, has expressed disappointment over how the documents were released. Mr Assange disagrees, saying that nobody needed protection as a result of the release—citing, of all sources, NATO in Kabul. In contrast, Mr Ellsberg is more self-critical and concedes, for instance, that the publication of the Pentagon Papers actually had no effect on the war in Vietnam.
News media experts say that an attack-the-press strategy can make sense as a pure political play. While polling has shown that majorities of Republicans and conservatives have long harbored suspicions about the news media, there has been a surge in negative feelings among Democrats and liberals.No, no, no guys -- it's afar simpler explanation: it's not institutions, it's you. They explained this to you at the Rally to Restore Sanity the day before you published this:
The biennial Pew Research Center poll on public attitudes about the news media found last year that much of the growth in negative perceptions about the media has been driven by Democrats. For the first time last year, a majority of Democrats, 59 percent, said that reporting from news organizations is often inaccurate. That figure was just 43 percent in 2007.
Michael Dimock, an associate director at Pew, said this reflected a tendency by Democrats to shift part of the blame for their recent misfortunes on the press. But he said he also believed it was about something broader: a mistrust of large institutions.
“Whether it’s the press, whether it’s government, there has been this lowering of credibility in a lot of institutions in America,” Mr. Dimock said. “You name it. It’s hard to find a group or institution that isn’t being viewed more skeptically these days.”
Statements by more than a dozen lawmakers were ghostwritten, in whole or in part, by Washington lobbyists working for Genentech, one of the world’s largest biotechnology companies.No partisan slant on this post, really; just a reminder to vote next week. It's one thing if big money buys our elections in spite of our best efforts; but if they're scripting the floor show for a democracy and no one's even bothering to watch, then we get what we deserve.
E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.
In the race for New York governor, women are suddenly popping up everywhere — everywhere, that is, except inside the campaigns’ inner circles.This isn't just an issue of catering to one of many constituencies. It's important because in an election that will see a notable rollback of women's representation in Congress for the first time in a decade -- at a time when vital issues like all women's reproductive rights and gay women's civil rights will come under pressure -- women are increasingly being spoken at by men or, worse, by barely competent ciphers.
Even as Mr. Paladino, the Republican, and Mr. Cuomo, the Democrat, embrace women’s causes, they rely on strikingly few women as key advisers.
Neither of them selected a woman as his running mate or campaign manager, and the top ranks of their political operations are conspicuously dominated by men. The scarcity stands out in a state where the modern women’s rights movement was born and where female voters play a crucial, and at times decisive, role in elections.
There are more contractors over all than actual members of the military serving in the worsening war in Afghanistan.Be it ten years from now, sooner, or later, we can only anticipate more sickening accounts as a result.
Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce kicked off a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations.The entire article is worth a read -- unless the oligopoly they got over in Moscow seems appealing to you.
Dow Chemical delivered $1.7 million to the chamber last year as the group took a leading role in aggressively fighting proposed rules that would impose tighter security requirements on chemical facilities.
And Goldman Sachs, Chevron Texaco, and Aegon, a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands, donated more than $8 million in recent years to a chamber foundation that has been critical of growing federal regulation and spending. These large donations — none of which were publicly disclosed by the chamber, a tax-exempt group that keeps its donors secret, as it is allowed by law — offer a glimpse of the chamber’s money-raising efforts, which it has ramped up recently in an orchestrated campaign to become one of the most well-financed critics of the Obama administration and an influential player in this fall’s Congressional elections.
They suggest that the recent allegations from President Obama and others that foreign money has ended up in the chamber’s coffers miss a larger point: The chamber has had little trouble finding American companies eager to enlist it, anonymously, to fight their political battles and pay handsomely for its help.
Christine O’Donnell, the Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware, on Tuesday appeared to question whether the First Amendment to the Constitution imposes a separation between church and state.In the same election season where a Tea Party Candidate has a journalist detained by his private security firm, and a candidate for national office deems her speeches private events to avoid public scrutiny, the question is why hasn't the latest iteration of American fascism been called out for what it is yet?
In a debate at the Widener University Law School, Ms. O’Donnell interrupted her Democratic opponent, Chris Coons, as he argued that the Constitution does not allow public schools to teach religious doctrine.
“Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” Ms. O’Donnell asked him, according to audio posted on the Web site of WDEL 1150 AM radio, which co-sponsored the debate.
The audience at the law school can be heard to break out in laughter. But Ms. O’Donnell refuses to be dissuaded and pushes forward.
“Let me just clarify,” she says. “You are telling me that the separation of church and state is in the First Amendment?”
When Mr. Coons offers a shorthand of the relevant section, saying, “government shall make no establishment of religion,” Ms. O’Donnell replies, “That’s in the First Amendment?”
The four multimillion-dollar musicals are all leaping to Broadway without a net because of their creators’ confidence in the material and, to varying degrees, skepticism that a tryout elsewhere is useful anymore. The Internet has made it impossible to fly under the radar at theaters in La Jolla or Seattle; bad buzz anywhere can reach New York theatergoers instantly, as was true last weekend when some bloggers picked apart the first preview of “Women on the Verge” only hours after it ended."Tastemakers" is a term that applies to two groups now: prominent critics / creative types, and a vengeful crowd with twitter accounts.
Tate Modern is to stop visitors walking over the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's vast field of 100m porcelain sunflower seeds because of health and safety fears over ceramic dust.Really, that last line is the money shot, and draws an underline beneath the dilemma that purveyors of "high culture" face in this mass media age.
As revealed by the Guardian, the Turbine Hall installation has been closed since yesterday morning because of worries that dust inhalation might be a health risk. That means the thousands of visitors who traipsed through the installation between Monday and Wednesday were the lucky ones. The work will now be viewed from the building's bridge.
"The Unilever Series, Sunflower Seeds, by Ai Weiwei is made up of over 100m individually handmade porcelain replicas of seeds," the Tate said today.
"Although porcelain is very robust, the enthusiastic interaction of visitors has resulted in a greater than expected level of dust in the Turbine Hall. Tate has been advised that this dust could be damaging to health following repeated inhalation over a long period of time. In consequence, Tate, in consultation with the artist, has decided not to allow visitors to walk across the sculpture."
The work is intended to be interactive and to have people walking through it, although some visitors, mainly children, had more fun in the seeds than curators might have liked.
Vincent van Gogh, starving as he slaves over his masterpieces. Johnny Rotten, sneering at the wreckage of 1970s Britain. George Orwell, finding his voice amid the poverty and despair of the Great Depression.Not an auspicious beginning to a serious conversation, but the article does right itself later:
You'd think today's artists would be happier about the prospect of imminent destitution.
The left-wing singer-songwriter Billy Bragg is certainly no supporter of the funding cuts, and he acknowledges that the music industry was already facing deep-seated problems even before the arrival of the credit crunch.This is a slightly different argument, but more perceptive. It is true that artists need some kind of crisis (even a minor crisis like a deadline -- looking at you, COI podcast) to focus their minds.
But, weaned on punk rock, and his craft forged during the battles of the 1980s, he does believe that musicians tend to find their voice during periods of crisis.
"As times get hard, it's still the most obvious way to reach out and speak to people," he says.
Oracle Theatre Inc Presents.......See you there?
Join us for a night of new works, as Oracle Theatre Inc presents scenes by NYC playwrights: Susan Ferrara, Corey Ann Haydu, and Isaac Rathbone.
October 16, Saturday, at 7:00pm
Shetler Studios - Penthouse 1
244 West 54th Street (between 8th and Broadway)
12th Floor; then ask for the Penthouse
Cover at the door is $5. A small reception will follow the performance.
"Truth Be Told" is our longest running program, that promotes collaboration and the development of new projects by a variety of different artists. If you are interested in presenting at a future event, please let us know! Join us and continue to support the arts.
“I happen to think that Ann believes everything she says,” said Bill Maher, the host of “Real Time,” who is a friend. But at the same time, “it is a bunch of show business. You are working in the media. You are in makeup.” For a person like Ms. Coulter, Mr. Maher said, “once they are in the public eye, they don’t want to be irrelevant.”Something to keep in mind the next time you get all worked up by something that was said on-air by paid pundits...
The actress who provided the voice of cartoon heroine Dora the Explorer between 2008 and 2010 is taking legal action against the Nickelodeon network.Now, I don't know the details of this case, and Viacom says she got her fair due, but given the history of every media conglomerate ever -- I'm going to go with Sanchez probably got screwed.
Caitlin Sanchez, 14, claims she has not been paid fees due from reruns, DVDs, other products and promotional work.
[...]
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sanchez's action alleges she was given just 22 minutes to sign an "unconscionable" contract without the advice of an attorney.
The New Yorker Festival promotional material has a sketch of a young man and woman walking side by side, presumably headed to some venue in the city where they will listen to famous actors and writers talk about how they got to be so wonderful, and if they're lucky, one of those two will get to stand at a microphone to ask a question that shows the crowd that they, too, are quite wonderful. In the sketch, the guy has glasses and a coffee cup; the woman has high heels and a big bag. They are not walking to the Meadowlands.(Okay, minus the "young" part.)
Even as fusty traditionalists worry about the siege of the new—in Besseling’s End (of ) Days, Arundale’s disciple MR Krishnamurthy expresses precisely these fears—the modern, the contemporary, it’s the twin Trojan horses of Bollywood masala mash-up and TV dance competition gimmickry that are laying waste to the Indian dance-scape. With no connection to reality, the kind that inspired thinking choreographers like Chandralekha, the two are reducing dance in India to its lowest common denominator. When the aggressive jut of a pelvis wins accolades, the appreciation for subtleties dwindles proportionally, whether it’s a mudra replete with spiritual significance or a battement executed with technical virtuosity. The threat is not from change but from capitulation to mediocrity.RTWT here.
A play at one of London's most critically acclaimed theatres has been suspended after an actor was apparently shot in the eye with a fake gun during a performance.The Guardian has the whole story. But yikes.
David Birrell was appearing in Stephen Sondheim's Passion at the Donmar Warehouse when the accident happened on Saturday.
On Sunday, The Commercial Appeal in Memphis published the results of a two-year investigation that showed Mr. Withers, who died in 2007 at age 85, had collaborated closely with two F.B.I. agents in the 1960s to keep tabs on the civil rights movement. It was an astonishing revelation about a former police officer nicknamed the Original Civil Rights Photographer, whose previous claim to fame had been the trust he engendered among high-ranking civil rights leaders, including Dr. King.The lack of any reaction among those not old enough to have participated in the movement themselves is a damning indictment of our society's sense of history.
[...]
Although Mr. Withers’s motivation is not known, Mr. Garrow said informers were rarely motivated by the financial compensation, which “wasn’t enough money to live on.” But Marc Perrusquia, who wrote the article for The Commercial Appeal, noted that Mr. Withers had eight children and might have struggled to support them.
Despite his film and television success Mr. McCarthy never abandoned the stage. The 18 Broadway productions in which he appeared included Moss Hart’s “Winged Victory” (in which he was billed as Sgt. Kevin McCarthy), the political drama “Advise and Consent,” Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” and Kurt Vonnegut’s irreverent “Happy Birthday, Wanda June.”
[...]But in 1991 he told a critic for The San Diego Union-Tribune about his feeling that purposeful employment was a remedy for many ills. “I try to get as much work as I possibly can,” Mr. McCarthy, then 77, said. “I love to work. I love to be in things.”
France and Germany are embroiled in a diplomatic row after German Chancellor Angela Merkel flatly contradicted President Nicolas Sarkozy over Roma (Gypsy) camps.The issue here is not that in times of economic crisis, governments look for scapegoats while they finger their rosary beads and wait for jobs and complacency to magically return -- that happens all the time, and can be chalked up to simple human stupidity, and ignored. The problem is when those scapegoats are found (or created) within more permanent social subgroups, the discrimination against which will outlast any economic crisis.
The issue of Roma deportations from France dominated an EU summit.
Mr Sarkozy told a news conference that Chancellor Merkel had said to him that she intended to follow France's example in dismantling Roma camps.
Mrs Merkel's spokesman denied she had discussed the issue with Mr Sarkozy.
In the article in question, Peretz criticized a New York Times editorial for defending Muslim-Americans against prejudice during the debate over whether to build an Islamic community center blocks from ground zero.The refutation of his specific idiocy can be left to others who have already -- and creditably -- done so.
Citing violence in Muslim countries, Peretz wrote on his blog that “frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf, there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment, which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.”
This Monday night, the 20th, we're reading a collection of short new plays from an awesome group of up-and-coming playwrights at the The Cove in Williamsburg.
We're tweaking things a bit, too. Half the plays will be cast ahead of time, half will be cast live (name-drawn-from-hat style, fans of The Moth) and read completely cold.
Got all that?
Details:
An Evening of Shorts @ The Cove
featuring work from Bekah Brunstetter, Josh Koenigsberg,
Sibyl Kempson, Dan Moyer, Adam Bock, Gina Gionfriddo,
Richard LaGravenese, Rob Ripley and MORE!
Monday, September 20th
*Drinks @ 6:30
Readings @ 7:30
*actors arrive early, say hi and submit your names!
The Cove
108 N. 6th Street (b/w Berry & Wythe)
Brooklyn, NY 11211
*L to Bedford
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