Natalia Kaliada, co-founder of Belarus Free Theatre: “Creative conformism is blooming in democratic countries, and so you have to ask whether the only way to secure funding today is to create safe art … I paid the price, and my family paid the price, for speaking our minds freely while living under a dictatorship. Now, living in a democracy, I start to develop a fear of speaking freely in our shows in case we will lose our funding.”
Category: AUDIENCE
To Attract Millennials, Oregon Ballet Theatre Partners With Hipsters’ Favorite Beer
“Oregon Ballet Theatre’s latest marketing campaign features a bare-chested, on-pointe ballet dancer sharing the stage with a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in full efface derriere. The sales pitch: ‘Come watch ballet. We’ll give you a beer.’ Too obvious?”
How Do Artists Make An Impact In Communities? (Some Ideas)
“If we are looking for artists to help make change in our communities, there needs to be an infrastructure that supports them: intermediaries to make connections and develop programs, training to assure artists feel secure and safe in what may be a new environment, and the sharing of knowledge and resources for artists to learn from one another and from other-sector experts.”
The Collaboration Fad Is Hurting Introverts
“Just last week the University of Chicago library announced that in response to ‘increased demand,’ librarians are working with architects to transform a presumably quiet reading room into a ‘vibrant laboratory of interactive learning.’ One writer on Top Hat, a popular online resource for educators, argued in a post last month that ‘cooperative learning strategies harness the greatest part of human evolutionary behavior: sociality.'”
A Broadway Actor Stands Up For A Kid Who Disrupted A Performance
“He said in the Facebook post that he believed shows that have special performances for autistic audiences should be commended for their efforts and that he hoped the woman would see his post.”
How Do Groups Doing Community-Based Work Know If They’ve Done Anything Right?
“Community-based arts projects face a unique challenge in maintaining their impact after the practitioners and organizers move on to other projects.”
Shakespeare Fest Commissions New ‘Translations’ Of The Bard – Into Contemporary English
“We can piece these meanings together, of course, by reading the play and consulting stacks of footnotes. But Shakespeare didn’t intend for us to do that. He wrote plays for performance. We’re supposed to be able to hear and understand what’s spoken on the stage, in real time.”
Where Did The Audience Go? Fall TV Premiere Week Ratings Collapse
According to Nielsen fast national data, every returning Tuesday night drama suffered double-digit ratings declines, while the three new series were a mixed bag.
Annotation Nation – More And More We Feel The Need To Explain (In The Margins)
“In recent years, more and more of us are reading annotated editions of our favorite books—The Annotated Wuthering Heights, The Annotated Lolita, The Annotated Anne of Green Gables—as well as posting on sites like Genius.com, which claims to host more than a million annotated texts, and sharing notes and highlights on Kindle. Never before has there been so much activity in the margins of culture.”
How Does Creativity Spread? Networks, Connections, Influence
The truth is life is not fair. For creative work to spread, you need more than talent. You have to get exposure to the right networks. And as unfair as that may seem, it’s the way the world has always worked.