“Our ears take in the score, the artists’ breathing patterns, fellow audience members’ reactions, and the physical percussion made by the dancers’ footfalls and partnering. All of this information is available to audience members with limited to no vision, and when it comes to providing them with the rest, there are multiple approaches being refined by experts in the field generally referred to as ‘audience accessibility.'” – Dance Magazine
Tag: sj
New York City To Build Performing Arts Center Dedicated To Immigrants
“Last week, the city announced that it has committed $15 million to fund the design and construction of the Immigrant Research and Performing Arts Center in Inwood, the northernmost neighborhood in Manhattan. [Two municipal agencies] released an initial call for interest in the project, beginning the search for a non-profit to step in and manage the development and operation of the facility.” – artnet
Audiences Prefer Actors With Disabilities To Play Characters With Disabilities: Study
“Findings from the Ruderman Family Foundation’s just released effort, Disability Inclusion in Movies and Television, show that … 55% would like to see characters with disabilities portrayed authentically. … [The study also found that] viewers rank ‘diversity’ in the top five most valuable characteristics for content when disability is included in the definition.” – Los Angeles Times
Why Ruben Santiago-Hudson Is Taking August Wilson’s ‘Jitney’ On A Coast-To-Coast Tour
“Many audiences haven’t seen August Wilson’s plays done well, so my mission is to go out and do the plays well the way the author intended. The celebration of African American life and the way we navigate this landscape.” – American Theatre
Harlem Nonprofit Providing Art Education In Public Schools Expands To Two More Cities
“As the 2019 school year gets underway, ProjectArt, an initiative founded by Ardash Alphons in Harlem in 2011, is expanding to New Orleans and San Francisco, bringing arts access to two cities with large communities of homeless young people and giving the organisation a presence in a total of eight cities across the US (By 2021, ProjectArt plans to be in ten cities.)” – The Art Newspaper
A Gender Gap In Ballet Leadership Seems Too Weird – But It’s Real
Girls outnumber boys up to 20 to 1 in ballet classes, and so it seems like ballet would be one place – maybe the only place – where women would have the majority of leadership roles. Nope. “A whopping 72% of ballet companies have a male artistic director. Those women who do get the title of artistic director earn only 68 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts.” And for choreography, the numbers are far worse. – Forbes
Study Shows That Gendered Discrimination, And A Lack Of Parental Support, Create Massive Barriers For Women Theatre Designers
Sometimes you just need a study to back up what seemingly everyone (at least the women) already knows: “The fields of design, production, and technical theatre are the most male-dominated,” and the reasons? Er: Ninety percent of respondents “reported having experienced a negative work environment, gender-based harassment, and/or pay disparity,” especially in lighting and sound design. – American Theatre
After 40 Years, ‘For Colored Girls’ Returns, As A Celebration And As A Weapon, To The Theatre Where It Was Born
Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf “has been part of the canon since it became a Broadway hit in 1976. Still, [the play] doesn’t get a lot of professional productions; it’s been much more a staple of college theater. … But at a moment when race and gender are so prominent in the tumultuous civic dialogue — and when black playwrights, particularly women, are pushing both the content and form of contemporary American drama in new directions — the time seems right to revisit Shange’s text.” – The New York Times
‘Unmanly Grief’ — Performing A Trans Hamlet
“Jenet Le Lacheur — a transfeminine Brit who earned recognition, before coming out, in the West End production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child — has … [recently starred] as Hamlet in Daniel Winder’s dystopian production of the Shakespeare play … The fact that Winder’s Hamlet was nonbinary and transfeminine was largely subtextual — a subtle but important thread running through the production.” – HowlRound
How Can The Arts Be More Diverse When The Structure Isn’t Set Up For It?
This leads us to the most critical question: if most arts leaders are white, and diversity is the business of leaders, what is required of our leaders to effect change? – ArtsHub