Said a statement from the actors’ union, “The fact that [a performer] is trans may be completely invisible in the role or production, but it powerfully represents diversity in the industry. This ‘invisible’ diversity is just as important as more physically recognisable forms of diversity.” – The Guardian
Tag: sj
Why Theatre Isn’t My “Other” Job
Only two per cent of actors actually make a living from acting alone and 90 per cent of actors are out of work at any given time so that means, more often than not, actors have to make money elsewhere. – Metro News
Oxford University Student Union Votes To Abolish Clapping In Favor Of “Jazz Hands”
“British Sign Language clapping is used by the National Union of Students since loud noises, including whooping and traditional applause, are argued to present an access issue for some disabled students who have anxiety disorders, sensory sensitivity, and/or those who use hearing impairment aids.” – Oxford Student Union
How To Cultivate And Train A More Diverse Next Generation Of Critics?
“Reviews can sometimes be the only documentation of these experiences, so what happens when the majority of people reviewing do not represent the community or the stories being told? How does the point of view and perspective of those reviewers influence the success of a production or theatre company?” – HowlRound
World’s Only Museum Of LGBTQ Art Removes ‘Gay And Lesbian’ From Its Name
As it begins a $7 million capital campaign to fund a new Learning Center for Arts and Intersectionality that will host workshops and after-school programs, upgrades its archives and library (which are seeing increased use by researchers), and launches an endowment, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, located in lower Manhattan, has renamed itself the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. – ARTnews
How To Neutralize The Ugly Chinese Stereotypes In ‘Nutcracker”s ‘Tea’ Dance
Phil Chan And Georgina Pazcoguin have become the go-to advisors on this subject since then-NY City Ballet chief Peter Martins asked them to address it in the company’s Balanchine Nutcracker. “We’ve discovered three areas in the divertissement,” they write, “where creative questioning can help productions become more respectful to Chinese culture, while remaining faithful to the artistic visions of the past.” – Dance Magazine
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘Between The World And Me’ Is Now A Play, And It’s About To Tour The U.S
One of the first things that Kamilah Forbes did when she became executive producer at the Apollo Theater in Harlem was contact Coates, an old friend from college, and ask to adapt his award-winning memoir. “Book reading can be so solitary; we read our books by ourselves, and unless you’re part of a book club, do you really engage within the topics or in the actual writing or primarily the topic that the book discusses?” Forbes said. “The question was about how can we use theatre as this collective form of communication to have the broader conversation with the book.” – American Theatre
‘Angels’ In East Texas: How Tony Kushner’s Play Tore Apart, And Then Changed, A Small Southern Town
In 1999, a small college in Kilgore, TX — in an area where, at the time, gay men were routinely beaten and sometimes murdered — staged Angels in America, angry protests from local fundamentalists led to a showdown that attracted national media attention. Wes Ferguson, who edited the college paper at the time and whose sensationalist headline on a preview story ignited the fury, recounts how it went down and talks to some of the key participants about how they, and the town, were changed by the furor 20 years ago. – Texas Monthly
Liberating Stereotypes Of Indigenous Americans From Children’s Tales
“From the dull art of crafting Thanksgiving turkeys out of handprints to the bad politics of making headdresses out of turkey feathers, the point of contact between Indians and non-Indians begins and ends (for the most part) in grade school. It could be said that the primary place where Natives continue to exist for most Americans is in childhood imagination.” – The New York Times
Abstract Expressionist Painter Ed Clark Has Died At 93
Clark was “an African-American expressionist painter who used a broom and bold colors to capture the natural world and to convey emotions about the racial injustice of the 1960s, earning him international acclaim.” Clark, who lived in Detroit, was known for his experimentation with shaped canvases, bold colors, and a seven-decade career. – The New York Times