“A movie is unchanged by an audience’s presence and will continue to run in an empty auditorium. But the theatre requires a human presence in the auditorium, because it is only fully alive when it meets its audience. It is only in that moment that it bursts fully into life. … Without our presence, our engagement and our creativity the theatre dies, however talented the actors and however hard they work on stage.”
Tag: 01.22.18
Berlin’s New Generation Of Maestros
While Daniel Barenboim, 75, remains the dean of the Berlin music scene, and another veteran, 77-year-old Christoph Eschenbach, arrives in 2019 to lead the Konzerthausorchester, many older maestros are passing the baton to a new crop of musical leaders. Here’s a look at several of the new arrivals injecting vitality into an already thriving landscape
Absence In Montecito: T. Coraghessan Boyle On The Aftermath Of The California Wildfires And Mudslides
“The eerie thing about these nights in Montecito has to do with absence. The absence, first of all, of my neighbors, almost all of whom are under a mandatory evacuation order. They are gone, their houses dark, their cars rolling down other streets altogether – or, in the worst cases, crushed as if for repurposing in the scrap yard.”
Nan Goldin Survived An OxyContin Addiction, And Now She’s Going After The Drug’s Makers
“Now she has been clean for a year. [the photographer] … decided that she was strong enough for a new battle. That began recently when, in her most personal project yet, she publicly confronted OxyContin’s manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, and that company’s longtime owners, who are also prominent art patrons: the descendants of Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, two of three physician brothers who built Purdue Pharma into a pharmaceutical behemoth.”
A Musical About Milosevic? The Serbian Dictator? Oh, Yes …
“A Belgrade-based writer, Jelena Bogavac, has now written a play to be performed by Kosovo Serbs in the Kosovo town of Gracanica that attempts to portray the full complexity of a man still blamed by many across the Balkans for the deaths and suffering of tens of thousands of people.”
We All Believe In Truth, Right? (Are You Sure?)
“We argue for our positions, and get annoyed if they are challenged. Why do we do this? The obvious answer is that we believe the views we express (ie, we think they are true), and we want to get others to believe them too, becausethey are true. We want the truth to prevail. That’s how it seems. But do we really believe everything we say? Are you always trying to establish the truth when you argue, or might there be other motives at work?”
Douglas Coupland: Are Books About To Be Superseded By VR?
“Maybe books are overrated. Maybe they are an interim technology on the way to VR and we can now get rid of our books.”
How USC’s Film School Handled It When A $5 Million Gift From Harvey Weinstein Became Radioactive
Last year, Weinstein announced that he would donate $5 million to USC’s School of Cinematic Arts to endow scholarships for female filmmaking students. When his years of sexual misconduct became public, the gift became a problem; one USC student said in a petition, “We don’t need this money. What we need is some damn principles.” Mike Scutari looks at how the school responded and the implications of its decision.
Should I Take My Daughter To See Opera, Where Terrible Things Happen To Women?
Actually, yes. “Asked if she wanted to copy Gilda’s supremely self-sacrificing approach to romance, your correspondent’s daughter replied: ‘No, the opera made it quite clear that people who act like Gilda end up shanked and in a bag.'”
Long Wharf Theatre’s Artistic Director Accused Of Sexual Assault And Harassment
Four women have gone on the record describing persistent unwanted sexual contact by Gordon Edelstein. “Six other former employees, women and men, described frequent sexually explicit remarks in the workplace.” Several current and former Long Wharf employees say that other officers and board members had been alerted to Edelstein’s behavior.