Mashing Up Shakespeare And Brecht In An Airplane Hangar

For Britain’s ongoing World Shakespeare Festival, National Theatre Wales has set itself up in a former RAF base for a production called Coriolan/us – “an ‘infusion’ of Shakespeare’s study of political and military might with Bertolt Brecht’s Coriolan, his unfinished, heavily leftwing attempt to update the play; translated excerpts will be layered with Shakespeare’s script.”

France’s Unemployment Scheme For Artists Unsustainable, Says Audit

“Known as the intermittents du spectacle system, it has sparked the French arts world’s biggest strikes and most flamboyant street demonstrations whenever a government has sought to scale it down. … Currently 100,000 creative workers benefit from the special unemployment system, but it is running at a huge deficit of around €1bn.”

How Did Women’s Gymnastics Become So Graceless And Un-Dance-Like?

“By comparison to the ’80s and ’90s, the last decade’s worth of exercises are high on difficulty and tumbling but low on elegance and refinement. Instead of putting together complete routines, coaches, choreographers, and gymnasts treat the moments between tumbling passes as opportunities to rest, filling them with static poses, ill-timed to the music.”

The ‘Hava Nagila’ Backlash

Yes, for years it was the Jewish-American party tune, heard at numberless weddings and bar mitzvahs. But those years were the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, and now the song is profoundly uncool. Says one mother-of-the-groom, “‘Hava Nagila’ at a wedding is like pouring sour milk on cereal.” An ethnomusicologist calls it “a really crummy little tune” that became “the equivalent of a knish.”