Playwrights’ Rights And White Tears: On Race-Specific Casting

“Last week, Clarion University in Pennsylvania was forced to cancel its planned production of Lloyd Suh’s Jesus in India. The reason: casting. Three of the characters were written as Indians, and the predominantly white school had cast two white actors and one mixed-race actor in the roles. Earlier the same week, Katori Hall objected passionately in The Root to a Kent State University production in Ohio of her two-hander The Mountaintop, in which the role of Martin Luther King Jr. was played by a white actor.” Diep Tran looks at why the issue isn’t as simple as let-the-best-actor-get-the-role.

Today’s Kids Live On Screens. So How Are The Arts Going To Reach Them?

“There are still just 24 hours in a day, so if the tweens and teens are in front of a screen for 9 of those hours, and in school for say 6 of those hours, and sleep for seven of those hours (and they need at least that much sleep), and eat, exercise (maybe) or whatever else for the remaining two hours, then IF we want to get to them (and we can’t get to all of them in the schools, and not likely in their sleep), then we have to figure out how to get onto those screens they are in front of every day – television, YouTube, Instagram, video games, Vine, movies, social networks etc. etc. etc. because there is no other choice.”

Science Explores The Essential Human Evolution That Separates Us From Our Closest Ancestors

“The researchers analyzed MRI scans of 218 humans and 206 chimpanzees, with an eye on brain size and organization—the latter of which they assessed by noting for each brain the location of 16 landmark anatomical structures that humans and chimps share. Because the researchers knew the respective biological relationships of both the chimps and the humans in the study, they were able to estimate the heritability—in other words, how much of a role genetics had to play—for both traits.”

The 2015 Word Of The Year Isn’t Even A Word

Casper Grathwohl, president of Oxford Dictionaries: “Traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st Century communication. It’s not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps – it’s flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully.”