“While no date has been set, [the Detroit Repertory Theatre’s] longtime artistic director and co-founder, Bruce Millan — who helped launch the company in 1957 — has announced he’s begun planning for his retirement. When that happens, Leah Smith, the Rep’s marketing and development director, will step into his considerable shoes. The Detroit News spoke with Millan and Smith at the theater last week.”
Tag: 11.15.18
When Oxford’s Library Literally Branded Dirty Books With A Scarlet Letter
Well, okay, the letter wasn’t really scarlet; it was black, but nevertheless … Beginning in 1882, when the Bodleian Library overhauled its cataloguing system, the Greek letter phi (Φ) was branded onto the spines of books deemed to be “Obscene literature in general” or “Drawings and photographs of nudes and similar subjects.” These books — which ran from an illustrated edition of Ovid’s love poetry to Joyce’s Ulysses to Madonna’s Sex to a Monty Python volume — were kept under lock and key, available only with a specific referral from a professor. The Φ system was in use until, wait for it, 2010.
How An Archaeologist Identified A 6,000-Year-Old Musical Instrument
“Marilyn Martorano first laid eyes on the long, baguette-shaped rocks almost four decades ago, as a volunteer at what is now Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in southern Colorado. The clearly hand-shaped stones, which had been discovered in the area, were housed in the on-site museum when Martorano first saw them. They were a strange set of artifacts for which no one had yet determined a use.” Thirty years later, a video someone sent her made her realize that the rocks made up a percussion instrument now called a lithophone.
Jean Tinguely’s Extravagantly Odd Music Machine Is Back In Action
“A year after it was silenced [from decades of wear and tear], Jean Tinguely’s beloved clanging, banging, creaking, groaning music machine Méta-Harmonie II is ready to go back into action at the Museum Tinguely in Basel following a laborious year-long restoration of many of its parts.”
Puns Are Not The Lowest Form Of Humor – Rather The Contrary, In Fact
“Despite its bad reputation, punning is, in fact, among the highest displays of wit. Indeed, puns point to the essence of all true wit — the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time. And the pun’s primacy is demonstrated by its strategic use in the oldest sacred stories, texts, and myths.” Indeed, the fact that we think Adam and Eve ate an apple is due to a pun.
For A Producer, Knowing When And How To Close A Play Is As Important As Opening It
“One of the industry’s faults is that producers can find themselves in financial trouble and in a bid not to lose face may not want to tell anyone else about it. Invariably, this sees the situation escalate to crisis point, and by that time with the problems apparent, they’re often irrevocable.”
In A New, Oscar-Tipped Netflix Movie, The Writer And Director Got To Express The Absurdities Of Her Own Experience
And that director, Tamara Jenkins, “is getting increasingly frustrated by its billing. ‘It’s not just a women’s infertility comedy. It’s about survival. It’s about humanity. It’s about growing. It’s about mortality. It’s about gentrification.'”
A French Street Artist Anonymously Invades Los Angeles
How anonymous is the artist known as “Invader”? Interviewing him is “a bit like a toddler playing Peekaboo who covers his face thinking no one in the room can see him. Invader is clearly tall and slim, nearing 50, with thin lips and narrow cheeks that are peppered with graying stubble. He has clean, manicured nails. Tufts of dark and silvery hair creep out from under his cap. He smells of a freshly-finished cigarette.”
Why Is Harry Potter Still Going, And Will JK Rowling Ever Stop?
Seriously, is that ring on her finger just to remind us that she’s flipping us off and taking all of our money with every new book, movie, play, script, what have you? “At this point, the whole thing feels like a Cruciatus curse (often used on Muggles): it’s all very painful, and I wish it would stop.”
Study: It’s Distressingly Easy To Believe Your Own Lies
After they finished lying to her, researcher Danielle Polage asked the students to again rate their certainty that each of these events had or had not happened. Fascinatingly (and a little creepily), subjects showed a statistically significant change in their beliefs, indicating that they became less sure that untrue events hadn’t happened to them after saying that they had. Conversely, when subjects were later asked to deny events that had happened to them, they became less sure that those events did take place.