There’s Eadweard Muybridge, who was a bookseller until a traumatic brain injury in a stagecoach accident led him to become the pathbreaking photographer he was. There’s the orthopedic surgeon who suddenly became a talented pianist after being struck by lightning, and the slacking college dropout who became a math and geometry genius after a bar fight. How could this happen? Neurologists have two ideas.
Tag: 01.09.18
“Punk” Was Counterculture. It Contained Seeds Of Its Own Distruction
Since punk began as a rebellion against boredom, the dead space of commercial music production and the empty hedonism born of the hippie era’s “great sexual revolution”, it was only a matter of time until it, too, would become corrupted. A yearning for its own prelapsarian state was built into punk’s ethos.
The Problem With Theatre Outreach In Troubled Communities
Nathan Lucky Wood, on watching a play about homelessness performed for homeless youth: “A young man raises his hand. He wants to ask a question. Why have they come here to perform a play which is so depressing? Being homeless is already hard. He was excited to see a play because he thought he could forget about that. But now he had been reminded of it, and he felt awful. He wanted to know, what had been the point? The facilitator didn’t have an answer. Nor, having worked across theatre and homeless services for years now, do I.”
Hearst Buys Rodale, Then Sells Rodale Books To Penguin Random House
“After completing its purchase of Rodale Inc. last week, the Hearst Corp., which announced the deal in October, quickly turned around and sold Rodale’s trade book publishing assets to Penguin Random House. Terms of the acquisition, which involves more than 2,000 backlist titles and 100 frontlist books, were not disclosed.”
Say Goodbye To PS122 (And Hello To A Bigger Ambition)
Jenny Schlenzka, Performance Space’s artistic and executive director, said the organization had decided “nothing would be too holy to be rethought.” The new name, she added, “is signaling an ambition to be relevant and accessible to all of New York.”
‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ Is ‘A Shallow Look At Race In Rural America
“Now, no movie is one thing. … And so Three Billboards is about grief and anger, parental and police responsibility, truth and reconciliation. But it is also about class and race in rural America – and the levels to which [filmmaker Martin] McDonagh doesn’t actually investigate or interrogate his own storytelling decisions in that regard are frustrating.”
How Dancing Changes Dancers’ Brains
“Neuroscientist Agnieszka Burzynska … and her team looked at 40 female college students: half highly trained in modern dance, and half non-dancers. They had the subjects do various tasks – from watching dance videos to remembering the location of dots on a screen – and used scanners to look at their brain structure and activity. Here’s what they found.”
‘Les Mis’ Composer Claude-Michel Schönberg On What Makes A ‘Proper Song’ For A Musical
“Q: You’ve said that many new musicals don’t have proper songs. What goes into the making of a proper song?
“A: To write proper songs for a musical, there are special theatrical things you must master. Your songs must always be telling the story, which is very tricky, and you must learn how to do it. And the transitions between spoken dialogue and music are very hard; you can always tell when these transitions are awkward.”
Director Of Houston’s Alley Theatre Abruptly Retires
Gregory Boyd, who served as artistic director for 29 years (and signed a five-year contract renewal in 2016), told staff that he had planned to retire after the end of last season but stayed on to help in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. “In this moment, while I am still ambulatory, I feel that it’s time for me to step aside …,” he said.
Broadway Audience Is Getting Younger, More Local
The annual survey by the Broadway League found that 25% of attendees were under age 25, with roughly 1.65 million of them under 18, the highest number ever measured. The portion of audiences from New York City has risen to 22%, with a further 18% from the suburbs.