This Week: The remarkable new National Mall museum that doesn’t look like the rest… An arts council’s risky change in standards… What scientists have learned about the accomplishments of gifted children… Will algorithms take over the book business?… Seven things scientists have learned about creativity.
Tag: 09.18.16
Who Will Win – And Who Should Win – The Emmys Tonight
“This year’s Emmys broke new ground up and down the ballot,” but that doesn’t mean the winners will be any different.
Don’t Underestimate A Famous Cast’s Understudies
“On any one night in the West End, there will be numerous understudies on stage, because actors in long-running productions quite rightly have holidays as part of their contracts, and nobody can help it if they get ill. For the understudies themselves, who are often likely to have smaller roles in the production the rest of the time – it’s a chance to step up from out of the chorus to play a main role and test themselves.”
You Want Good Women Characters? Try Books, Not Hollywood
“These new literary protagonists are bright spots in a Hollywood landscape where representation of women has been pretty bleak. Female leads, when they make it on-screen at all (less than 30 percent of the time), run a high risk of being over-sexualized, one-dimensional, and/or formulaic.”
A Singer Emerges From Below The Earth
“She was giddy on an evening in late August when she was about to shoot her first video, for ‘Try a Little Tenderness.’ In a few weeks, her record would be released (on Assouline Records). ‘Weee, buddy!’ she said, laughing in Mr. Assouline’s apartment, where she was getting ready. ‘Us country people — we get up and dance.'”
An Artist Shows What The Thames Means To London, And Beyond
“The more she explored the river, the more she uncovered. In the countryside near Oxford, she encountered a trio of female pagan revellers who dance by the river amid swirling trails of incense smoke. At Tilbury, she befriended a group of ship-spotters, who log the vessels that pass through the docks.”
This Season’s New Sitcoms Explore ‘Manxiety’
“This fall, broadcast television will turn its attention to the battle of the straight white man to assert his masculinity in an increasingly alien world. And you won’t need to wait until the first presidential debate to see it. The male protagonists of several new sitcoms are not as belligerent as the male protagonist of the election. (A possible exception: the one who wields a broadsword.) But they are besieged. At home and in the office, they find themselves struggling to prove that they matter in a world they no longer exclusively run.”
Black Female Playwrights In Tune With The Times (Pun Intended)
Charles Isherwood: “It’s not unusual for theater, like many of the arts, to address a pressing social or political issue. But what strikes me as unusual this fall is that most of such work comes from notable black female playwrights:” Sarah Jones, Anna Deavere Smith, Lynn Nottage, and Suzan-Lori Parks.