Today’s Stories
What Power Lies In A Name
In northern Australia, indigenous people are reclaiming land and landmark names. “These changes are about time, mate, but we always kept the names when we worked on country anyway – they never went away. But this does give us recognition and that makes us proud.” – The Guardian (UK)
Members Are Furious At SAG-AFTRA’s Plan To Change, And Limit, Health Coverage
Seriously, SAG-AFTRA? During a global pandemic that has a lot of members out of work? Well, trustees say, “By 2024, the Health Plan is projected to run out of reserves. We must prevent this from happening.” – Variety
How A Writer Pays, And Then Loses, Attention
Novelist Helen Garner terrified her friends for years with what they called her pitiless writer’s eye – detached, curious, and omnivorous. But as she ages, she’s found it’s harder and harder to pay that attention to the world. Then the virus, and lockdown, arrived. “The daily work habits of 40 years went up in flames and new ones sprouted from the ashes. Instead of going to bed early and starting work straight after breakfast, I wallowed on the couch till one in the morning, feasting on wild-eyed Jewish stand-up and cold case investigations by women detectives.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Superheroes We Have, The Superheroes We Need
Thinking about what we’ve had – Batman, Superman – well, it’s time for a change. “A new guard of superheroism doesn’t simply mean diversity. It makes room for the possibility that especially now, as our political systems and institutions are being questioned, there is no absolute moral authority, even for those tasked with saving the day.” – The New York Times
The Terrible Plight Of Music And Theatre Event Staff
Lighting designers, sound engineers, tour managers, caterers, bus drivers, and more – all laid off more or less permanently, nebulously, until a vaccine. Their unions and associations are trying to help. “We basically trawled the internet looking for temporary jobs for our members. … Some top technicians have got themselves into Amazon fulfilment centres, or driving for Asda. We had two members bump into each other in the same aisle in Tesco, stacking shelves on a night shift.” – The Guardian (UK)
Buckingham Palace’s Private Art Collection Is Going On Display For The First (And Perhaps Only) Time Ever
Talk about your unprecedented times. Buckingham Palace needs a plumbing update, so the paintings, including Vermeer’s The Music Lesson and two Rembrandts, have to find a temporary home, and the Queen’s surveyor sounds thrilled about it: “In a way, we’re obliged to do it. … We’ve got to get them out of the picture gallery for the building work.” – The Guardian (UK)
In The 2016 ‘Much Ado’ On PBS, Shakespeare Conveys How Much Black Lives Matter
This is a good time for some required quarantine viewing, no? And it’s always a good time to check out how good directors, dramaturgs, and designers (not to mention actors) can turn Shakespeare’s plays into a living, breathing commentary on contemporary life. – LitHub
As Boston’s Art Museums Reopen, There’s A Sense Of Hope
During the height of the first wave of the coronavirus, it seemed this day would never come. Now, “it’s odd how the surreal can become de rigueur. At the Gardner I barely noticed the masks, the arrows on the floor, the laminated signs tacked virtually everywhere.” – The Boston Globe
Linda Manz, Who Starred In Terence Malick’s ‘Days Of Heaven’ At Only 15, Has Died At 58
Manz also featured in Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue. – Variety
To Find A Book That Charts Our Own Distressed Times, Try Doris Lessing
The Golden Notebook, published almost 60 years ago now, gets to the heart of almost everything (depressingly, still) going on right now. “Lessing — like Anna — is unafraid to dirty her hands in the quest for truth. She might write with an acid touch but she doesn’t keep an Olympian distance from new causes or passionate affairs.” – The New York Times
Will Britain’s First Live Show To Return Actually Make It Back To The Stage?
Actors rehearsing for the musical Sleepless get test results within 45 minutes on an app. One of the actors says, “It does actually feel amazing to just be hearing people sing again. It’s made me realize the escapism of theatre and how much people will love to see it again.” (Especially if the audience can also get those speedy tests?) – BBC
Billy Goldenberg, Composer For Stage, Screen, And TV, 84
You may not know you know his work, but you definitely do. A partial description: “Emmy-winning composer who worked with Barbra Streisand and Elvis Presley, scored Steven Spielberg’s early work and wrote the theme music for more than a dozen television series.” – The New York Times
The Pain And Dedication Of Being A Reality Show Camera Operator
The camera operators’ job applications asked them to list their skills at things like mountain biking, river rafting, and hiking. Those aren’t on the skillsheets for a lot of camera operators, but “‘I wish every job application was like that, because that’s all the stuff I love to do,’ said camera operator Kathryn Barrows, 43. ‘I felt like this is the show I’ve been waiting my whole life to shoot.'” – Los Angeles Times
The Many Hatreds Of Horror Master H.P. Lovecraft
Lovecraft was clearly racist and clearly an anti-Semite – and guess what? He also thought the Irish were inferior. “Such prejudices weren’t simply background colour. They are front and centre of many of his most iconic tales.” (Which is why a new series would make him so mad.) – Irish Times
As We All Know Now, Time Both Is And Isn’t Real
OK, let’s get metaphysical: “‘The true present is a dimensionless speck,’ Alan Burdick writes in his book Why Time Flies. ‘The specious present, in contrast, is ‘the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’ ’—he quotes James. The specious present, Burdick adds, ‘is a proxy measure of consciousness.’ It is what we think of as now. Not the general now, as in “the way we live now,” but right now. And how long is now?” – The Paris Review
Premium Classifieds
Golden Thread Productions Hiring New Executive Artistic Director
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Earn your Certification in Creative Placemaking this Fall
NJIT's (New Jersey Institute of Technology) groundbreaking and highly respected Professional Certificate in Creative Placemaking will be conducted in virtual classroom format in Fall, 2020. This … [Read More...]
J.S. Bach: The Six Solo Cello Suites Performed by Wendy Sutter
Sunday, August 23 Perspectives Ensemble presents a two-part event: J.S. Bach: The Six Solo Cello Suites Performed by Wendy Sutter Part I: 3pm EDT (Suites 1-3) and Part II: 6pm EDT (Suites 4-6) … [Read More...]
A message to the arts and cultural sector from James Abruzzo: We are here to listen and eager to help
The pandemic has eviscerated the arts and cultural sector. Seasons are canceled, staff put on furlough, executives taking significant pay reductions, new productions and construction projects on … [Read More...]
Writing With Radical Ordinariness
Emphasis on that radical, please, when you’re talking about author Carol Shields. – The New York Times
The Traditional Ice Cream Truck Song Has Racist Roots, So Good Humor Asked A Musician To Create A New Song
But will New Yorkers accept the new song? Musician RZA: “I can assure you that this one is made with love.” – Gothamist
Think School Testing Is A Mess In The US? Take A Look At How The UK Shafted Students In The Pandemic
This is not to excuse the United States’ patchwork of school tests, the weirdness (and inequity) of the ACT or SAT, but … wow. “The coronavirus pandemic means exams were canceled and replaced with teacher assessments and algorithms. It has created chaos.” – Wired
Julia Garner’s Newfound Netflix Fame And Lockdown Angst
A casting director’s dismissive “You should try indie movies, honey” changed Garner’s career, and life. – The Hollywood Reporter
Congress Adjourns With No Help For Live Music Venues (Or Anyone At All)
That likely condemns a lot of venues to closure. “‘It’s shocking that they don’t just stay until they figure it out,’ says Audrey Fix Schaefer of the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA).” Small music venues and theatres are truly at dire risk. – Variety
A Wikipedia Battle Over Kamala Harris’ Entry
Once the news broke, many of the first edits to Harris’s Wikipedia page were the sort of structural maintenance done by veteran editors on the site: citing sources, attaching categories, improving captions, and adding a notice that Harris was “a person involved in a current event,” and as such, “information may change rapidly as the event progresses.” Someone clarified that, until she’s officially nominated at the Democratic convention next week, Harris is still only the “presumptive vice-presidential nominee.” Grammar was improved; typos were fixed. But then at 4:42 p.m., a user named Eee302 changed Harris’s first name from “Kamala” to “Cuntala.” – The Atlantic
Guitarist Julian Bream, 87
Interviewed in the Guardian aged 80, Bream, who retired in 2002, said he was no longer playing: “The thing I feel a little annoyed about is that I know I’m a better musician than I was at 70, but I can’t prove it.” – The Guardian
An Outdoor Dance Festival… And Some Hope
From this vantage point early in its run — and I’m pronouncing this with my fingers crossed that no virus outbreak occurs — the festival can be seen as a cultural marker in ways both subtle and magnificent. It’s a psychic harbinger, a sign that performing arts survive and that smart, creative planning can win — at least for the small audiences each night, who are screened on arrival and sit on socially distanced blankets or benches, or watch from their cars, and for the coronavirus-tested artists performing there. – Washington Post
The Future Of Dance – An Online Strategy
“Whether or not companies can figure out how to incorporate digital into their strategy is going to decide which will fold. Linking digital programming to data, marketing and operations is a long-term necessity. COVID has only made this more clear.” – Pointe
A Storied Hollywood Research Library – And It Needs A Home
Its roots go back to the Pickford-Fairbanks Studios, established in 1919 on a corner of Formosa Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood. Renamed United Artists Studio in the 1920s, the Lot, as it came to be known, eventually became the site of Samuel Goldwyn Studios. In 1961, Lillian Michelson, wife of renowned storyboard artist Howard Michelson, became a volunteer there, and eight years later, she made the library her own. – Los Angeles Times