“This is the second time in recent years that the Overture [Center] resident company has announced shows only to cancel them. Despite a solid showing for Nutcracker in December, the organization has struggled with cash flow, lower than expected ticket sales for Dracula and flagging fundraising.”
Tag: 02.03.16
No, Amazon Is (Probably) Not Opening Hundreds Of Bookstores
“Mutter says it’s not far-fetched to think the great online retailer would turn to physical stores. E-book sales have plateaued. They’re popular for niche use, but printed books, he says, are experiencing a resurgence.”
How A Looted Artifact In Iraq Filled In A Piece Of The Ancient Gilgamesh Puzzle
“In 2011, Farouk Al-Rawi, an Iraqi Assyriologist now living in Britain, was shown a group of cuneiform tablets by an antiquities dealer in the Kurdish part of Iraq. He spotted among them a large, unusually shaped fragment and urged the Sulaymaniyah Museum to acquire the whole group.”
The ‘Dark Web’ Gets Its First Literary Magazine
“Depending on who you ask, the ‘Dark Web’ – the Internet’s mysterious undercurrent accessible only through specialized software – is either a libertarian utopia or a criminal hellscape run by cryptoanarchists trading stolen bitcoins. Now it’s more than either.” A Q&A with the founders of the new literary magazine The Torist.
UK’s National Theatre Commits To Gender Parity By 2021
“National Theatre director Rufus Norris has committed to ensuring gender equality in terms of the directors and living writers the venue employs by 2021. … He added: ‘There are a lot of women playwrights and women directors coming through, so it’s our responsibility to encourage that and reap the benefits.'”
Where Classical Music Meets Social Justice: The Sphinx Organization
“We’re looking at classical music and the broader arts as being woefully under-representative of the communities in which they reside. That’s one piece of the puzzle, but it’s only the art form. Then I see key minority communities that are strongly represented in the population but not represented in the field. There’s this reciprocal void that has to do with history, barriers, lack of opportunities, lack of access. To bridge that gap is where Sphinx comes in.”
How Music Festivals Shape Medium-Sized Cities
“Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles are three exceptional American cities, with robust economies and a surfeit of culture. I was interested in comparing a triad of slightly smaller metros and their festivals because they seemed very different in their histories, culture, and senses of place.” Richard Florida talks to sociologist Jonathan R. Wynn, author of Music/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and Newport.
Wooster Group Press Fail – Can You Really Ban Critics?
Jeremy Gerard of Deadline noted, “There’s no other kind of journalism where the journalist says, ‘Is it OK if I report this kind of story?’” That said, the allowance for theatrical productions to be developed and previewed in front of paying audiences has become generally standard practice and important to countless creative artists, the result of a détente between the natural instincts of the press and the creative process of artists.
Neuroscience And Free Will Seem To Be Rethinking Their Divorce
Three decades of studies seemed to “point in the same, troubling direction: We don’t really have free will. In fact, until recently, many neuroscientists would have said any decision you made was not truly free but actually determined by neural processes outside of your conscious control. Luckily, for those who find this state of affairs philosophically (or existentially) perplexing, things are starting to look up.”
Why An Outback Village Of Two Dozen People Needs A 350-Seat Arts Venue (For Opera, Of Course!)
“The official population of Morundah in NSW is 76 but Councillor David Fahey says only 24 people ‘actually live in the village’. … But the first time the local Morundah Bush Entertainment Committee put on an opera in 2006, it sold 1100 tickets in three hours. … Since then the tiny Riverina town has become a regional cultural hub serving not only the Urana Shire population of about 1200 but also drawing regular tourists from around Australia.”