“A particular problem with English people: they seem to think that everyone in Ireland is a writer, and very few of us are writers. And that somehow or other writing comes naturally to us, which it doesn’t. So people love saying to you, “‘h, you Irish—you’re such MAR-velous storytellers, all of you!'”
Tag: 04.02.14
Is This The Most Powerful Piece Of Film Criticism Ever Written?
The piece “shows that criticism is art, which means that it doesn’t need a purpose or a rationale other than truth, or beauty, or keeping faith, or doing whatever it is we think art is trying to do.”
British Theatres Can’t Afford To Book Touring Companies
“When I see smashing new theatres that have come up in the last few years that are now just providing one-nighters, it’s tragic. I don’t know what you do about that – it is a huge, huge problem.”
Why There Needs To Be a ‘Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations’
Retha Powers, editor of the newly-published first edition, says that people ask her, “Why have this book if we have a President who is black? Is it really necessary for us to do this?” She says that the reason is to add stories to our collective memory: “The lens through which we look at history, when it’s narrow, tells us a very, very narrow story, a narrow impression of what the truth is.”
Where Dance and Boxing Meet
In choreograher Mourad Merzouki’s Boxe Boxe, “as the protagonists come into the ring (complete with stripe-shirted umpire), boxing mitts turn into glove puppets, a dancer’s body curves in a feline swoop only to be caught in a firm headlock, and limbs jab, swipe and kick while a string quartet roams the stage.”
This Dance About Boxing Uses an Actual Ring and Bell
“The brainchild of Amsterdam-based, Italian-born choreographer Emio Greco and Dutch dramaturge Pieter C. Scholten, Rocco explores brotherhood, masculinity, and the mythology of boxing, while pushing its four male dancers to physical extremes.”
Canada’s Stratford Festival Posts A Banner Year – And A Big Surplus
“The Stratford Festival has generated a surplus of $1.4 million and an increase in attendance of 50,000 theatregoers in 2013, a year after posting a deficit of $3.4 million.”
Meanwhile, In China An Army Of Artists Cranks Out Reproductions Of Masterpieces
“The cost of the burgeoning reproduction industry mirrors other facets of China’s explosive growth. Painters toil for long hours to meet quotas. Some receive monthly stipends, some are lucky enough to be boarded by their galleries.”
The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries
“A new, lavish coffee-table book, Libraries, pays homage to 44 of these vaults of wisdom around the world. In these photos, spines of shelved books appear like ornate mosaics; labyrinthine stacks seem like architectural gestures.”
Is Better TV Killing Movies?
“We stay in for amusement and leave the house for dinner. Film will always be dominated and controlled by what consumers are buying.”