Peter Conrad: “Shakespeare’s history plays about feudal England and republican Rome have become a nightmare from which the present is trying to awake. Tory plotters against the enfeebled Theresa May could be auditioning for the role of Richard III, who deftly kills his way to the crown. Meanwhile Donald Trump, according to his lawyer John Dowd, behaves like ‘an aggrieved Shakespearean king’ – a petulant Richard II or a deranged Lear, astonished by the disrespect of his subjects. Trump also matches two of Shakespeare’s Romans – a would-be Julius Caesar with despotic longings, he is as titanically tetchy as Coriolanus, given to volleys of abuse that betray his mental instability.”
Tag: 09.29.18
How Joe Frank Pioneered Narrative Radio
Frank showed producers like Ira Glass the possibility of radio as a narrative artform, but Glass adapted that lesson for the rest of the country. Nearly five million people listen to This American Life each week; at its peak, Frank’s shows reached a fraction of that number. But This American Life traffics in the audio equivalent of glossy longform magazine journalism, not Frank’s uncategorizable radio autofiction.
Robert Venturi Was Supposed To Design The Philadelphia Orchestra’s New Home. Why Didn’t It Get Built?
Venturi was engaged in the Philadelphia Orchestra concert hall for about a decade while the proposal tried to attract funding. Eventually, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates was, in effect, dropped. When then-Mayor Ed Rendell, developer Willard Rouse, and philanthropist Sidney Kimmel took control and the project was rebranded an arts center, another firm, led by Rafael Viñoly, was chosen. How is it possible that Philadelphia let Venturi and Scott Brown slip through its fingers without ever having extracted from them a large, public downtown building?
What One Speaker Learned While Doing A TED Talk
“Having done the talk I have learned that this is the alchemy of art. Ted Talks are art masquerading as information. I was struggling to express something, not yet a fully formed articulation in my head, but I stuttered it out anyway. Then scientists and other fine humans heard it and spoke it back to me from their experience in a way that has helped me understand my life better.”
Netflix Totally Misfired A Movie About Black Hair, But TV (Yes, Even Network) Delivers
It’s truly weird that Netflix can’t get it right in Nappily Ever After when shows like This Is Us and Grown-ish get it so right. Then there are the how-tos on YouTube for Issa Rae’s hair from Insecure, and the joys of Atlanta: “As they discussed child-care plans, Van took down her voluminous curls, which had been twisted into Bantu knots. It’s wasn’t the focus of the scene — and that’s precisely what made it so powerful.”
Otis Rush, Blues Singer And Lead Guitarist, Has Died At 83
Rush was “a richly emotive singer and a guitarist of great skill and imagination, … in the vanguard of a small circle of late-1950s innovators, including Buddy Guy and Magic Sam, whose music, steeped in R&B, heralded a new era for Chicago blues.”
The Deep Anxiety Of Being Claire Foy
The Emmy-winning actor, who plays Queen Elizabeth on the Netflix series The Crown, says her anxiety “started as a form of self-protection. ‘It was a tool to survive, definitely. To try to hold on to everything. To try to feel safe.'”
Where Are All The British Working-Class Writers?
In Scotland, of course. “Scotland has an incredible wealth of working-class writers, thanks to a strong community and tradition of support from established authors.” But really, there are English, Welsh, and Northern Irish working-class writers as well, but the working-class writers and their publishers need to see interest from the public.
Women In Hollywood Who Work Behind The Scenes Also Want – And Deserve – Equal Pay
A Pay Equity Summit was billed as “the first step” in getting women pay equity with men. One of the craft guilds “published a study this year arguing that female-dominated crafts are often paid less than male-dominated jobs of similar responsibility level. The study equated women-dominated jobs like script supervisors to male-dominated jobs like assistant directors.”
Architect Robert Venturi Changed Building Styles, But Kept Architecture Even More Of A White Man’s Club
His idea of “both-and” opened up possibilities for designing buildings that didn’t hide the work, but “even as Venturi ushered in a freer, less doctrinaire architectural culture, he helped pave the way for a white, male and clubby profession to close ranks against the outside world, and grow clubbier still.”