Yes, it is a clay tablet from the early centuries CE and it does have a passage from Homer’s epic inscribed on it, but that’s about all that the English-language stories got right. (For a start, we have plenty of excerpts from the Odyssey that are older.) Emily Wilson, whose widely-praised translation of the work was the first ever done into English by a woman, clears up the confusion.
Tag: 07.14.18
Why Isn’t Art Criticism More, Well, Critical? That’s Not Really The Problem
Melissa Gronlund: “Critics, this thinking runs, need to hold artists’ feet to the fire. Now, I would love for a more ambitious art world to emerge, but I’m not sure more stringent criticism is the means towards it. If anything, the answer is art education: better educated people make better art and provide better critiques. And, sadly for myself, I don’t think criticism still wields that much power. … Everyone knows artists do better to curry favour among biennale organisers than among those of us who tromp along to the openings, notebooks in hand.”
Can Boston Re-Establish Itself As The Big Pre-Broadway Tryout Town?
“Composer Richard Rodgers, of Rodgers & Hammerstein fame, used to say he wouldn’t open a can of tomatoes without first bringing it to Boston. … It’s been a long time since the Hub had that kind of clout. But now a major new player, the UK-based Ambassador Theatre Group, and Emerson College are pouring millions of dollars into making the Emerson Colonial Theatre a venue for pre-Broadway tryouts.”
Secrets Of The Mummies: 2,500-Year-Old Embalming Workshop Discovered In Egypt
“A mummification workshop and adjoining burial shaft as well as five mummies, their bejewelled sarcophagi, figurines, and a gilded silver and onyx mummy mask were all unearthed at the [Saqqara] site, which archeologists say provides a wealth of new knowledge about the mummification process.”
Henry Morgenthau III, 101, Producer Who Helped Shape Public Television
“A scion of a prominent German-Jewish family, Mr. Morgenthau was a son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s treasury secretary, a grandson of the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire under President Woodrow Wilson, the older brother of former Manhattan district attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, and a cousin of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara W. Tuchman. … His years as a producer at WGBH in Boston, from 1955 to 1977, coincided with the birth of public television.”
Why Are We Condescending To Theatre Newbies? It’s Counterproductive
“The lesson here, if there is any: there is always the type of theatregoer that defines themselves by excluding others. You could write musicals, and they’ll still try to make you feel like you don’t belong. Don’t you dare let ‘em. You love theatre? You belong. Welcome.”
Why The Ancient Library Of Alexandria Still Lives High In Our Imaginations
The Library of Alexandria is so embedded in our cultural canon that it remains a broadly known and admired institution. Its shadow lingers over the world of scholarship, despite the fact that the library was completely destroyed nearly 2,000 years ago leaving no physical trace behind, including, scholars believe, not a single scroll.
How A Gender-Parity Campaign Led To An Irish Theatre Revolution
There’s no big stick here. The policy shifts have been enthusiastically and widely embraced and have been led by theatre companies themselves, in response to the #WakingTheFeminists movement and its research. WTF was responding to a distinctly male programme for the 2016 Waking the Nation initiative at the Abbey, and it woke a sleeping beast of its own, protesting against the lack of representation of women in theatre, the outcome of which has been real.
Canadian Indigenous Leaders Criticize Another Robert Lepage Production
In an open letter first published by Quebec newspaper Le Devoir Saturday morning, a group of Indigenous actors, writers, activists and artists from across the province said they are fed up “of hearing other people tell our stories.” Lepage’s new production, Kanata, aims to tell “the story of Canada through the prism of relations between whites and Indigenous people.” It is being staged in Paris in December.
Superheros Are Thriving At The Movies. But In The Comic Books… Not So Much
Today’s comics sell one-tenth the numbers Marvel expected in the 1960s and 1970s glory days when comic books were cheaper than candy bars and just as easy to find at the nation’s newsstands, corner markets and drugstores. Now, a new comic book costs $4-$6 and the only shelves they reach are at the 2,500 comic book specialty shops doing business in the U.S. and Canada — and even that number is in decline as stores