“[It’s] easy to wonder: Now that Mormon is a part of the country’s cultural conversation, how do followers feel about a Broadway hit satirizing aspects of their faith? The church apparently approves of the show enough to buy three full page ads in the Playbill program each theatergoer gets.”
Tag: 09.07.12
Dick Cavett Remembers Stan Laurel
Cavett recounts his visit, as a star-struck young man in 1960, to the retired screen legend at his three-room apartment overlooking the Pacific in Santa Monica.
‘Sleeping Beauty’ Re-Created In A Kiev Gallery
“A Ukrainian-Canadian artist is presenting an interactive art project called ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ in which five attractive young women take turns sleeping under dim lights in Kiev’s top gallery, each under a pledge to marry the visitor who wakes her with a kiss.”
The Father Of The IgNobels Speaks!
“Marc Abrahams is an evangelist for science with a sense of humor. Founder of The Annals of Improbable Research and the accompanying Ig Nobel prizes, his new book is called This is Improbable: Cheese string theory, magnetic chickens, and other WTF research. He has spent the last 23 years looking for research that makes people laugh – and then makes them think.”
Black Dancers And Ballet: Racism Isn’t The Problem
Luke Jennings: “There is not a single director of a UK ballet company who wouldn’t jump at a talented black or mixed-race dancer. … For UK ballet directors and choreographers, the issue is one of line and style. The physique and technique have to fit, not the skin tone.”
British Venture Launches Online Archive Of Rare Theatre Footage
“At launch, the archive contains more than 40 hours of material brought together from private archives and includes interviews with Stanislavki’s translator, the late Jean Benedetti, and a fully-translated Russian documentary on the work of Michael Chekhov.”
Disabusing The Idea Of Curating
“I’m beginning to squirm when I hear a lot of people talk about curating because it seems to suggest that organizing your sock drawer — or choosing what hats, shoes or lipsticks to arrange in a store window — calls out the same creative imagination as cataloging and collecting the 1,000-plus works of Johann Sebastian Bach, or preparing and protecting the contents of King Tutankhamen’s tomb to display for the ages.”
Barriers To The Intimacy Of Art
“If we move too close to a painting, we can be sure of hearing the warning admonition of the museum guard, an automated alarm, or the complaints of other visitors whose view we are blocking. Such wariness cannot help but limit our ability to fully engage with the art.”
Lessons From Seattle’s 1962 World’s Fair
“The lesson of Seattle’s budget World’s Fair is a subtle one. If a city doesn’t have an economy and amenities to draw people, neither the glitziest fair pavilions nor the most glamorous stadiums will make a difference.”
An Architect’s Career Founders On The Sharp Shoals Of War
During WWII, “you didn’t need to live in the West to be touched by the hand of fear, as Yasuo Matsui found out. Even though he had lived here for four decades, designed one of New York’s tallest buildings and ran a major construction company, the Japanese-born architect was rousted out of bed on the night of the Pearl Harbor attack, held at Ellis Island for two months and spent the war under house arrest.”