“At the heart of the Globe are, for me, two things. First the £5 ticket for the yard. Over the last twenty years that single fact has given over five million people an extraordinary experience for less than a sandwich costs. They have seen Mark [Rylance] in his pomp, Gemma Arterton’s Rosaline, Gugu Mbatha Raw’s Nell Gwynn, Roger Allam’s Falstaff, Eve Best’s Beatrice and Cleopatra, and countless others for only £5. It is a miracle.
Tag: 04.27.17
The Case For Designing Consciousness Into Artificial Intelligence
“Consciousness, we can tentatively conclude, is not a necessary byproduct of our cognition. The same is presumably true of AIs. In many science-fiction stories, machines develop an inner mental life automatically, simply by virtue of their sophistication, but it is likelier that consciousness will have to be expressly designed into them.”
Norman Lear Says He’s A Conservative – A ‘Bleeding-Heart Conservative’
“You will not mess with my First Amendment, my Bill of Rights, my Declaration of Independence, my Constitution. I underline the ‘my’ in terms of the way I feel about it. That’s the way this country was born, that’s what it’s dedicated to. It has not served up equal justices yet, … but under the law, we are promised equal justice under the law, equal opportunity. So I think that’s as conservative as you can get.”
The Art Of Stage Makeup, By The Makeup Designer For The Musical About Makeup Moguls
Angelina Avallone (War Paint) explains it all to (and tries out some of it on) the previously clueless Kurt Andersen. (audio)
How Literature Has Evolved With The Complexities Of How We Live
“Literature certainly reflects the preoccupations of its time, but there is evidence that it may also reshape the minds of readers in unexpected ways. Stories that vault readers outside of their own lives and into characters’ inner experiences may sharpen readers’ general abilities to imagine the minds of others. If that’s the case, the historical shift in literature from just-the-facts narration to the tracing of mental peregrinations may have had an unintended side effect: helping to train precisely the skills that people needed to function in societies that were becoming more socially complex and ambiguous.”
Dutch Artist Designs Outdoor Tower That Sucks In Smog
Daan Roosegaarde’s Smog Free Tower, which can reportedly clean up to 30,000 cubic meters of air per hour, has been tested in Rotterdam and will be installed in public parks in Beijing.
Why Are Classical Musicians Wasting Their Time Trying To Be Relevant? (A Screed)
“To listen to and to play or sing Western art music is now a counter-cultural act. It is an act of profound rebellion against our politically correct Cultural Marxist zeitgeist as well as being a source of pleasure, moral and spiritual improvement, and enhanced appreciation of the connection between the human and the divine. Let us not be afraid to relegate pop music to its proper place, to embrace our Western art music heritage and to resolve to make it a central part of our lives as educated men and women.”
Judi Dench Decries “Laziness” Of Young Actors
She suggested that younger actors were not curious. “It is not laziness, it is just non-curiosity. I think it is terribly important to know that whole history of theatre we have, why you’re in it, what people did before, the lives of actors.”
Time Out New York ‘Restructures,’ AKA Ends, The Job Of Its Longtime Theatre Critic
David Cote: “Nobody seems able to answer the question of how you can make theatre criticism more appealing, more clickworthy. One answer is to be a goddamn flamethrower every week, be a bomb thrower, to write scorched-earth reviews. Just be completely hedonistic and ego-driven in your criticism, become a master stylist, and treat everything in front of you onstage as fodder for your most delicious and vicious language. That’s one road. And people may enjoy your writing. The thing that’s sacrificed is any sense of a larger responsibility, and any aesthetic consistency.”
Why Hollywood Writers Are Striking In The Era Of Peak TV
“What we’re fighting for is for studios and networks not to be able to hold writers for six straight months [between seasons without pay]. You’re just in career limbo. The companies are making more money than ever before, and it just feels like the writers who are creating all this content are becoming less and less valuable.”