“Birmingham Opera Company has traditionally cast its chorus from local volunteers. Now it’s extending a welcome to people fleeing countries such as Sudan. In the past decade, the company has seen 90,000 people take part in its productions.” (video) – BBC
Tag: 03.13.19
Cuba Is Cracking Down On Street Artists. Here’s How They’re Keeping On
Authorities who accepted street art just a couple of years ago are now whitewashing murals, harassing artists, and having them turned out of their studios. Yet they keep on, painting on everything from fallen chunks of concrete to bicycle taxis to El Paquete, the Cuban “internet” that’s passed from house to house on external hard drives. – Pacific Standard
Jewish Theater Is A Real Thing In The US — Why Not In Britain? (There’s No Shortage Of Jews In Theatre There)
“Jewish theatre artists have been central but often unidentified.” (Harold Pinter, Janet Suzman, Antony Sher, David Lan, Tracy Ann Oberman, Nicholas Hytner, …) “Is this an immigrant people’s anxiety around unwelcome attention? ‘We’re a self-effacing community,’ says playwright Samantha Ellis, ‘we’re afraid to put our heads above the parapet.'” – The Guardian
Our Academics Are Trapped In Academia. Can You Help?
On every campus, I meet scholars eager to share what they know outside the walls of their institutions. They find themselves stalled by three factors: lack of knowledge on how media works as an industry, fear of being scorned by their colleagues, and the realization that, in the chase for tenure or promotion, such public work rarely counts toward academic credibility or formal metrics. – Pacific Standard
Spotify Accuses Apple Of Unfair Business Monopoly Practices
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says that if Spotify pays this cut it has to “artificially inflate” its prices “well above the price of Apple Music.” But if it doesn’t pay, Apple applies “a series of technical and experience-limiting restrictions” that make Spotify an inferior experience. Ek also notes that Apple “routinely blocks our experience-enhancing upgrades,” including locking Spotify and other competitors out of Apple services like Siri, HomePod, and Apple Watch. – The Verge
Cold Turkey Press: ‘Ikkyū Sojun — Nine Poems’
The Rinzai Zen master Ikkyū Sojun (1394-1481) was a poet, musician, artist, and rebel. He led a life of whoring and drinking. His poems — “often erotic, argumentative, contradictory, judgmental, self-doubting, and occasionally shaded with guilt” — are still as startling as the day they were written. – Jan Herman
Recent Listening: Chucho Valdés
Chucho Valdés, Jazz Batá 2 (Mack Avenue)
Valdés’s Jazz Batá was considered a departure into the avant-garde when he made it in 1972. Nearly half a century later, the follow-up finds him as adventurous as ever, heading a quartet that concentrates on mastery of the batá tradition of West Africa. – Doug Ramsey
Brain Scans Of Actors Find Different Neural Functioning When They’re In Character
“Writing in the journal Royal Society Open Science, [Canadian researchers] report how 15 method actors, mainly theatre students, were trained to take on a Shakespeare role – either Romeo or Juliet – in a theatre workshop, and were asked various questions, to which they responded in character. They were then invited into the laboratory, where their brains were scanned in a series of experiments.” – The Guardian
Backstage Workers Are Being ‘Pushed To The Breaking Point’, Say UK Unions
“BECTU and Equity and professional associations for stage managers and lighting and sound practitioners have argued that ‘excessively long working hours’ are leading to ‘burnout and serious mental health issues’.” How long are these hours? Up to “15 to 18 hours per day, six days per week.” – The Stage
Pakistan Has Banned Indian Movies. That May Hurt Pakistan More Than India.
The embargo was instated by Pakistan’s Association of Film Exhibitors following last month’s flare-up of armed conflict in and around Kashmir. It may seem a patriotic gesture, but there’s a real question whether Pakistan’s roughly 120 remaining cinemas can survive without Indian films to show. – BBC