Mark Rylance’s Problem With Theatre Today

“The theatre, in my opinion, has been hijacked a bit by literary departments of academia. It’s a live, aural tradition, much like rock ‘n’ roll is an aural tradition. One day rock ‘n’ roll will be hijacked by music departments of academia, and it will be like ‘this is the authentic version of ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ that has to be sung every time’.”

Hundred Years Of Solitude To Get First (Legal) Edition In China

“A Chinese publisher is set to bring out the first ever authorised edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude in Chinese, after winning an auction for the rights with a fee reported to be in excess of $1m.” Pirated editions have been so common in China that an angry GGM vowed 20 years ago never to license the book there.

UK Library Budget Cuts Force Rethink Of What Libraries Are

The cuts “underscore a deeper confusion about what libraries are: what they do, who they serve, and – in an age where the notion of books itself seems mortally flawed – why we still need them. What’s the point of buildings filled with print? Isn’t all our wisdom electronic now? Shouldn’t libraries die at their appointed time, like workhouses and temperance halls?”

Opera Needs A Makeover!

“Modern opera still sounds 19th-century, although it may not look it. One of the reasons why opera appears so radically a designer’s and director’s theatre today is because somewhere, somehow, the edifice needs a complete overhaul. The core of opera – the voice – seems not to have changed in hundreds of years.”