John O’Neal, Who Brought Theater To Southern Blacks Who Had None, Dead At 78

“Mr. O’Neal was still in his early 20s in 1963 when he, Doris Derby and Gilbert Moses founded the Free Southern Theater, which presented free productions throughout the South. The troupe often performed in small towns to largely black audiences with little access to the theater.” As he told an interviewer, “In the South it has been very hard for a Negro to look at and see anything but a distorted view of himself.” – The New York Times

A 20th Century Book That Foresaw Our Questions About AI

Nearly 70 years later, The Human Use of Human Beings has more to teach us humans than it did the first time around. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the book is that it introduces a large number of topics concerning human/machine interactions that are still of considerable relevance. Dark in tone, the book makes several predictions about disasters to come in the second half of the 20th century, many of which are almost identical to predictions made today about the second half of the 21st. – Slate

The Incredibly Tangled History Of The Verb ‘To Be’

“The most commonly used verb in the English language (and indeed many other languages) has a strange history. The fact that it has so many more forms than other verbs, which are quite unlike each other (be, being, been, is, was, were, am, are) gives us a clue as to its Frankensteinian origins.” (And plenty of languages don’t even use it.) “It’s what some linguists have called ‘a badly mixed up verb.'” – JSTOR Daily

Tyler Perry Writes His Farewell Letter To Madea

“I understood very early on that this mostly blue-collar African-American audience was feeling inspired. They were getting answers to a lot of what was going on in our community that no one was talking about. … I could lift them with humor and use that laughter as an anesthetic and talk about really deep, sensitive issues that were destroying so many of us. – The New York Times

Philadelphia’s Academy Of Music Is Shedding

Well, it’s really called “spalling” — chipping and splintering by the brick, concrete or other materials on the exterior of the handsome theater, the US’s oldest opera house, now owned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and the venue (these days) for touring musicals, the Pennsylvania Ballet, and Opera Philadelphia. Peter Dobrin explains why it’s happening and what’s being done. – The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Astounding Life Of André Previn

“[He] was not only among the most charismatic performers of his day, but also enjoyed one of the greatest classical-music lives since Berlioz and Liszt.” David Patrick Stearns surveys an amazing lifetime: Not only were there film scores and Broadway shows, Oscars and Grammys, classical compositions galore, music-director posts at major orchestras and prestigious guest conducting gigs — there were comedy shows, TV appearances, five marriages to glamorous women (including a movie star and a world-famous violinist), and what he called “the divorce that didn’t work.” – The Guardian