Tag: 09.21.20

San Francisco Symphony, Opera Musicians Sign New, Reduced Contracts

“We voted to accept devastating changes to our existing contract,” stated a press release issued by the musicians. “Had we rejected these cuts — including 50% of our weekly salary for the fall season and deep but graduated cuts for the ensuing two years — we would immediately have been without any income or the guarantee of health coverage.” – San Francisco Examiner

Online Theatre Has Become Very Creative. But Can A Model To Support It Evolve?

The best of them have come in the shape of theatrical activism, especially amid the Black Lives Matter movement, made cheaply and with a speed that a live theatrical production could never match. These have included a YouTube series about racism experienced by British East Asians as a result of Covid-19, the Bush theatre’s The Protest after the killing of George Floyd, and Roy Williams’s 846, all of which combined the arts, politics and activism. There has also been the Almeida’s Shifting Tides series, which focused on climate activism in audio plays made by their young actors. – The Guardian

How To Understand Beliefs In Fake News? How About The Physics Of Phase Transitions

Those holding odd beliefs are not typically less intelligent. An answer may be found in the way modern communication media have restructured society, leading to the process of opinion-formation no longer chiefly taking place at the individual, but at the collective level, largely unmoored from concerns of factuality and appropriateness. This is best understood by studying the physics of phase transitions. – 3 Quarks Daily

Why Do Mixed-Genre Dance Companies Always Do Their Daily Classes In Ballet?

“That disconnect grows wider every year as contemporary choreographers look beyond ballet — if not beyond white Western forms entirely — in search of new inspiration and foundational techniques. Yet dancers at almost all of the world’s leading mixed-rep ensembles take ballet classes before rehearsals and shows. Most companies rarely depart from ballet more than twice a week and some never offer alternative classes.” This has, in fact, been a subject of debate since Diaghilev’s day. – Dance Magazine

Congolese Activist Steals Artifacts From Museums To Protest Colonialism

Mwazulu Diyabanza, the spokesman for a Pan-African movement that seeks reparations for colonialism, slavery and cultural expropriation, is set to stand trial in Paris on Sept. 30. Along with the four associates from the Quai Branly action, he will face a charge of attempted theft, in a case that is also likely to put France on the stand for its colonial track record and for holding so much of sub-Saharan Africa’s cultural heritage — 90,000 or so objects — in its museums. – The New York Times

Playing The Lead In America’s First Musical Staged Since COVID (Nah, No Pressure)

Nicholas Edwards, who took the role of Jesus in the Berkshire Theater Group’s socially distanced staging of Godspell this past summer: “Every day you feel like the whole world is watching you. … Usually the stage is a safe place where we feel most at home and normal, but it became a place where I was anxious all the time.” – The New York Times