“Most readers of fiction in North America are, by a wide margin, women. The books are being marketed to them. I am perfectly happy with this. I know where my bread is buttered.”
Category: AUDIENCE
It’s Time To Start Performing Operas With Cuts Again, Say David Gockley And Esa-Pekka Salonen (Among Others)
Performing operas with cuts was common practice until the mid-20th century, as performing Shakespeare, for instance, is today. So, the argument goes, returning to the practice now is hardly as heretical as it might seem. “I don’t think we can any longer fail to hear what our audience is saying about length,” says Gockley.
What A Missouri Music Store Can Teach Theatres About Community-Building
For theatre to become a “front porch” space that welcomes diverse perspectives, we as theatre professionals must trust our communities to engage with challenging material, and we must trust ourselves to hear and act upon opinions that challenge our ideas.
The Meaning Of Images In A World Where Disposable Images Are Everywhere
“We may only now be coming to terms with what happens to a work of art—indeed, to the notion of art altogether—when a fantastic number of images can be circulated, reproduced, amended, swapped, and joined together effortlessly as data sent out for processing.”
Can You Build Communities Around E-Books? Here’s Emily Books
“In 2011, Emily Books caught the wave of electronic publication and molded it to fit the needs of their ideal reader. They brought out-of-print titles, or books by passed-over female authors, back to life. At first, Gould said, they had just wanted to solve a problem fomented by commercial publishing’s need to turn a profit.”
How Screen Culture Is Killing Dance (But Maybe Not)
“This new normal wherein everyone carries a small screen with them everywhere starts to have a grim, dystopic cast to it. It’s largely responsible for the loss of casual contact with the unfamiliar and the weird, with that which we did not choose, and—more to the point of my pet project—it doesn’t help bring anyone into contact with dance who wasn’t already interested in it. But then, surprisingly, it does; the screen also emerges as a vehicle that can introduce casual viewers to concert dance.”
Remembering The Struggle To Desegregate America’s Public Libraries
“Long before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – which included libraries as institutions where desegregation was mandated but did not name them specifically – the national NAACP and chapters had launched small campaigns that did everything from championing the cause of a Black librarian assistant’s promotion in the New York Public Library system or, in this case, investigating Violet Wallach’s allegations about her [New Jersey] hometown library.”
Louisville Orchestra’s New Music Director Wants To Make The Symphony Matter To People The Way Sports Does
“[Teddy] Abrams has been the music director of the Louisville Orchestra for two years and by his own measure has had real success engaging the local community. He’s relentlessly tried new things, both in the way he goes out into the community and in programming … He’s approached his ‘mission,’ with the conviction that in Louisville he’s got to start from scratch, he’s got to find a way to make the lifestyle of a classical musician echo the excitement of being a sports star.”
This Week in Audience: Boston Ballet’s Dive Into Data
This week: Boston Ballet has done some serious data diving to produce a successful season at the box office… NPR is finding gold in podcasts… When news becomes unmoored from its sources, do we care?… A “young” (didn’t know it was a noun, eh?) declares what will get “youngs” to the arts… Will the machines eventually determine our tastes in art?
Lessons Learned Running My Little Free Library
“Not only was I not a librarian, I wasn’t even really dealing in reading material. That the objects in our Little Free Library happened to be books was beside the point. The salient fact was that the items were free. We may as well, I suspected, have been offering plastic spoons, Allen wrenches and facial tissue. I tested this hypothesis by mixing in non-book items including an instructional DVD on how to use an exercise ball, and a few packets of echinacea seeds.”