“Heart of Darkness is, to use today’s parlance, problematic. … Whether [the novel] is ‘offensive and totally deplorable’, as [Chinua] Achebe insisted, or a searing critique of colonialism trapped in its time, putting it on stage pulls it into the present. Literature might be excused, though not absolved, by context. Theatre isn’t.” Matt Trueman looks at the approaches two directors are taking with their adaptations. (And some of the commenters administer thoughtful interrogations of the projects’, and the article’s, premise.) — The Guardian
Tag: 12.18.18
David Shepherd, Granddaddy Of Chicago Improv, Dead At 94
In 1955, Shepherd co-founded Compass Players with Paul Sills, and, as one comedy historian put it, “Without David, no Compass. Without Compass, no Second City.” Which means no North American improv or sketch comedy as we know it. — Chicago Tribune
NPR Develops Open-Source Tool For Getting Podcast User Data, And Feelings Are, Well, Mixed
Until now, the only tools for telling how long users actually listened to the podcasts they downloaded were the proprietary ones of Apple and Spotify. So NPR developed an open-source tool to get data beyond download figures. But with the privacy scandals that have broken over the past year, some podcasters are leery. — Columbia Journalism Review
Please: Transgender Theatre That Isn’t Strange
“To many playwrights, the very existence of trans people is enough to make up an entire plot, because it’s just that strange. It often doesn’t end up mattering where we come from, who we love, what we think—to be trans is so new and bizarre that everything in the play must be dedicated to parsing that, with almost no attention given to the other important factors that make up our lives.” – Howlround
Tania Bruguera, Just Out Of Prison, Files Defamation Lawsuit Against Cuban Government
“Tired of suffering defamations in state media publications such as Granma newspaper … as well as official websites from the Ministry of Culture,” said the artist-activist in a statement, “I have decided to legally act against parties who have damaged myself and my family, psychologically, socially, and professionally.” — Artnet
The Most-Popular Poem Of 2018
More than 250,000 people in 2018 clicked on the poem, which features such lines as “It is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes.” – Washington Post (AP)
English National Opera Makes Its Saturday Shows Free For Under-18s
“Removing cost as a barrier to entry for under-18s is a seismic leap forward for ENO and for opera as a whole, and we hope to entice as many under-18s as possible, from the musically obsessed to the just plain curious.” – The Stage
The Phenomenally Successful School That Exposed A Major Flaw In Higher Ed
Even taking the alleged fakery into account, how did T. M. Landry school seem to fool so many of America’s most prestigious universities for years? The work of admissions officers is notoriously secretive, but what little is known about the Landry affair threatens foundational assumptions about American higher education. – The Atlantic
Krampus The Christmas Demon Joins The 21st Century
The half-goat-half-devil has been St. Nicholas’s sidekick and enforcer for hundreds of years, warning little Austrian children that they’d better not be naughty. Traditionally he’d only appear once a year and his mask and costume would be more-or-less homemade, but today’s masks have things like glowing LED eyes, and there are Krampus shows with heavy-metal accompaniment that “feels like a rock concert mixed with a rodeo.” — Public Radio International
Meet ‘The World’s First Sleep Storyteller-In-Residence’
Phoebe Smith writes what are basically bedtime stories for grownups, 20-to-40-minute narratives that are recorded by actors such as Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley and listened to on an app called Calm, created to help people fall asleep. — The Guardian