Alain de Botton has been arguing that we should have temples without God(s) – and in fact an atheist congregation of some 300 souls has sprung up in north London; members “congregate to sing secular songs, celebrate life and the natural world, have readings from secular texts, like Alice in Wonderland, and have secular sermons, on topics like ‘life is all too brief and nothing comes after it’.”
Tag: 02.06.13
What Richard III Can Teach Us Today
“If there is a lesson from the 1485 fall of Richard’s House of York, it’s that there are worse things than judicious appeasement.”
Why Are Theatre Audiences (And Critics) So Nice To Mediocre Shows?
“If they were TV shows we’d probably turn them off and do something else, but because we’ve forked out £40 (or more) and are stuck in the middle of a row, we stick it out and clap politely at the end.”
Sergei Filin On The Bolshoi’s Poisonous Atmosphere
“From the second day I joined the Bolshoi in 2011 as ballet director I felt that something awkward was happening inside the Bolshoi, and in its closest orbit – all sorts of dirty intrigues, leaks of compromising materials into mass media and into the Internet, as if somebody in the highest echelons of Bolshoi’s management had an agenda to give us blows and destroy us.”
The Worst Thing About Birth Of A Nation? It’s Effective Filmmaking
Richard Brody: “It’s hard to understand why Griffith’s film merits anything but a place in the dustbin of history … [Yet it] wasn’t just a seminal commercial spectacle but also a decisively original work of art – in effect, the founding work of cinematic realism, albeit a work that was developed to pass lies off as reality.”
The Problem With Ai Weiwei: His Art
“The problem with simply saluting Ai as a political activist is that he insists on pleading his case in the art museums.”
Suggested: Humans Were Already Sophisticated Artists 40,000 Years Ago
“Its thesis is that 40,000 years ago, when humans migrated from Africa into a comparatively temperate Europe, and were then caught for thousands of years amid the freezing temperatures and furry beasts of the last great freeze, something miraculous happened. Art appeared: art so sophisticated, it proves that the cognitive faculties we value so highly today were fully evolved tens of thousands of years ago (the works here were made between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago).”
Warnings: UK Funding Cuts Are Hurting Support For Risk In Theatre
Theatres are becoming more “risk averse” when commissioning new writing due to cuts to art funding, leading theatre directors have warned.
Bolshoi’s Boss Publicly Blames Dancer For Poisonous Atmosphere At Ballet
The theater’s general manager, Anatoly Iksanov, “told Snob magazine the [acid] attack [on ballet chief Sergei Filin] was the ‘natural consequence’ of a chaotic situation created by dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze. He also accused Tsiskaridze of helping to bring down former ballet director Gennady Yanin in 2011.”
Students And Friends Bring Ailing Experimental Theater Legend Home To New York
Playwright and director Maria Irene Fornes, 82, has been suffering from dementia for roughly a decade and has been moved around several facilities in New York state. Theater folk banded together and arranged a way for her to receive care in the city, where they can visit her.