CMU School of Drama


Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Burners at Maker Faire: Maker Faire Bay Area offers a look at big Burning Man projects, many with steampunk appeal

The Steampunk Explorer: One benefit of attending Maker Faire Bay Area is that you get to see large-scale Burning Man projects without the need to trek to Black Rock Desert. Some of those works, such as the Nautilus Submarine Art Car and Neverwas Haul, have become steampunk icons. Each year, I look forward to a new set of spectacular creations that would never fit inside a steampunk convention, or would never be allowed inside due to their pyrotechnics.

The Theatre Lover’s Guide To Toronto

Theatre Nerds: Mention the word “theatre,” and the first cities that come to mind are London and New York. However, there is another city with a vibrant theatre scene tucked away to the north.

Thriving metropolis Toronto, home to the CN Tower and Drake, boasts and arts and culture scene that is sure to add some dramatic flair to any vacation.

The Tony Awards: Crass Commercial Or Necessary Institution?

www.forbes.com: Conventional showbiz wisdom says awards are good for your box office. So much so that cynics (or realists) refer to the Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys as commercials for their respective industries, rather than ceremonies to recognize the year's most significant art.

GLAAD's sixth annual Studio Responsibility Index sees alarming drop in LGBTQ characters in major studio films

GLAAD: This morning, GLAAD released its sixth annual Studio Responsibility Index (SRI), a report that maps the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBTQ people in films released by the seven largest motion picture studios and their subsidiaries during the 2017 calendar year.

How Michael Jackson's tilt move defied gravity

CNN: But there's one move that stunned the watching world: the gravity-defying tilt he debuted in his 1988 music video for "Smooth Criminal." In one scene, Jackson and a few of his dancers lean forward 45 degrees, backs straight, feet flat upon the floor, and hold the pose until they return upright with little apparent effort.

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

“The Forest of Everywhere” at Bricolage Production Company

The Pittsburgh Tatler: An enormous storm has torn through the world, carrying animals from far-flung places and depositing them here in Pittsburgh, in the “Forest of Everywhere.” They’re lonely, confused, feeling out of place, and in need of kind and welcoming explorers to come listen to their stories, play with them, and help them feel at home again.

Lighting rig fatally crashes down on performers mid-concert

New York Post: Tragedy struck mid-concert in China when a lighting rig collapsed on the stage. Authorities are still investigating the incident, which killed one person and injured five others.

“A New Brain” at Front Porch Theatricals

The Pittsburgh Tatler: You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of William Finn’s 1998 quirky, feel-good musical A New Brain. The autobiographical tale, based on Finn’s own experience surviving a risky operation to correct an arteriovenous malformation in the brain, began life as a series of songs, written in the aftermath of Finn’s illness, that were then threaded together in collaboration with James Lapine to form a story; the musical had a relatively brief run Off-Broadway in 1998 and has been staged relatively sporadically since, most recently in 2015, as a concert performance at New York City Center.

The 5 Best Undergrad Drama Schools for an Acting Degree

Hollywood Reporter: Not all great actors get MFAs. Some, like Jennifer Lawrence, Nicole Kidman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp and Ryan Gosling, didn’t even finish high school. But there is a middle ground. Slews of colleges and universities offer undergraduate degrees in drama, with scores of ready-to-work, well-trained performers graduating every year. How to choose? Below, THR narrows the field down to five — the best bachelor's degrees to help launch an acting career.

“Nomad Motel” at City Theatre

The Pittsburgh Tatler: Gianni Downs’s apropos “split screen” set for Carla Ching’s new play Nomad Motel – confidently directed here by Los Angeles-based director Bart DeLorenzo – adeptly and precisely encapsulates both its form and content. On stage right, occupying a little over half of the width of the stage, is the large living room/kitchen of an upscale contemporary suburban home, with dove-grey walls, laminate wood floors, a granite kitchen countertop, and four large skylights in a cathedral ceiling.

Thursday, May 17, 2018

Inclusion Riders, Female-Led Projects and the Beginnings of Change around Gender Parity at the Cannes Film Festival

Filmmaker Magazine: Given the news events of the last year, it’s no surprise that the deficit of women and people from ethnic, disabled, and LGBT backgrounds working within the film industry has been a focus at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. On a positive note, practical action has been a key theme here, with many female industry figures expressing a sigh of relief that change is slowly happening across the various sectors of the film industry. Still, this is not without considerable effort.

ANGELS IN AMERICA's 'Angels Fund' Offers $5 Tickets to LGBTQ & HIV/AIDS Organizations

www.broadwayworld.com: Producers Tim Levy (Director, NT America) and Jordan Roth (President, Jujamcyn Theaters) announced today that the Olivier Award®-winning National Theatre revival of Tony Kushner's masterwork, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, has established the "Angels Fund" to provide hundreds of $5 tickets to each part of the play to NYC-area LGBTQ & HIV/AIDS service organizations. Some of the organizations that have received these specially-priced tickets include: Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (BC/EFA), Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), SAGE, Callen-Lorde Community Health Center and The LGBTQ Center.

Here’s to a Speedy Recovery:The Alley Theatre’s Comeback from Hurricane Harvey

Performing Arts Readiness: In late August 2017, the Alley Theatre was underwater – literally. Water flowed into the theatre’s main facility, submerging the Neuhaus Theatre, knocking out power, and causing worries about mold and other damage to the Alley’s performance spaces.

A Paint Primer for FM Professionals

www.buildings.com: Painting the office or school corridor is different from a home project. Instead of weighing the merits of this year’s hottest color, FMs have to prioritize longer durability, better resistance against abuse and the strength to hold up to washing and scrubbing.

The right paint for your repainting project is out there, but do you know how to find it? Determine what makes a product the right one with this guide to the types and ingredients of paint.

Stop Staying Late At Work By Doing These Three Things

www.fastcompany.com: Leaving work late sucks. As if fluorescent lighting and empty cubicles aren’t depressing enough, you know what lies ahead: a heart-pounding dash to the train, a night of unhealthy takeout, and your spouse giving you that disappointed “working late again?” look.

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Disney’s ‘Frozen’ Kicks off North American Tour at the Pantages

Variety: Tony Award-nominated musical “Frozen” will kick off its North American tour in fall 2019 with an official opening at the Pantages in Los Angeles during the theater’s 2019-20 season.

How Killing Eve Gets Its Killer Costumes

www.vulture.com: Some of the most interesting costuming work on TV right now is happening on BBC America’s Killing Eve. Clothing is an explicit part of the off-kilter, intimate relationship between Sandra Oh’s spy character Eve, and Villanelle, the serial killer she’s trying to capture (played by Jodie Comer). The show’s costume designer, Phoebe de Gaye, spoke with Vulture about the unusual opportunities of costuming someone like Killing Eve’s psychopathic Villanelle and the impossibility of making Sandra Oh look anything less than elegant.

Live Nation Announces Women Nation Fund to Invest in Women-Funded Businesses

Amplify: The early-stage investment fund will focus on female-led live music businesses.

Live Nation President and CEO, Michael Rapino, has announced today that the company has established a fund to provide access to the company’s resources and capital for underrepresented female entrepreneurs in the concert promotions, events and festival spaces.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Powerful, Immersive Play As Much as I Can Brings Voices of Southern Gay Black Men and HIV/AIDS Awareness to Harlem

www.theroot.com: Thankfully, some 60-plus blocks north of the Neil Simon Theater, where Angels is playing in Manhattan, there’s a production in Harlem that amplifies the voices of those most at risk and, sadly, often ignored.

As Much as I Can, a collaboration between ViiV Healthcare and design and branding studio Harley & Co., centers on black gay and bisexual characters from the South and colorfully explores the intersections of HIV/AIDS, racism, faith, masculinity, homophobia, stigma and resilience.

How Do They Create The Sounds In Sex Scenes?

www.vulture.com: A few months ago, Comedy Central released a video depicting the (fake) Foley art of the make-out scenes from The Bachelor: raw chicken cutlets slapped together; a man jamming his fist into a giant jar of mayonnaise. It’s not how the experts really do it, obviously — so how do they achieve the sounds of sweet, tender (or not) lovemaking for the big and small screen? We talked to several Foley artists about how they create the sounds behind sex scenes. The explanations are at once more pedestrian and more interesting than you might imagine.

David Letterman Can’t Imagine Why He Never Had Women Writers

www.thecut.com: David Letterman has hosted over 6,000 hours of a talk show, which means he should be good at talking. So I was surprised when he raised the issue of women in comedy with Tina Fey on his Netflix series My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, and triggered an awkward conversation.

Ultimate Ears Introduces Most Advanced In-Ear Monitor to Date and Refreshes Entire Lineup with New Sweatproof Cables

Sound & Picture: Today, at Musikmesse, Ultimate Ears, announced Ultimate Ears LIVE, the brand’s new flagship custom in-ear monitor (CIEM), and Ultimate Ears 6 PRO, both using Ultimate Ears’ patented hybrid acoustic architecture. And, in a relentless pursuit to improve reliability, the entire Ultimate Ears CIEM lineup is now upgraded with the Ultimate Ears IPX Connection System, a durable new cable connection system that can withstand the rigors of music touring and minimize the need for service and maintenance.

Here's a Great Look at Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's Awesome Practical Dinosaurs

io9.gizmodo.com: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom will have more dinosaurs in it than every single Jurassic movie before it combined, according to a recently posted featurette. Obviously, that means a lot of CG dinosaurs but it also means plenty of practical ones too, and both are on full display in this neat video.

Monday, May 14, 2018

Actors' Equity Announces New "#EquityWorks: Actors’ Equity Reaches First-Time Agreement with a Cruise Line"

www.actorsequity.org/NewsMedia: Actors’ Equity Association announced today that it reached an agreement with Norwegian Cruise Line to cover members on the cruise line's new ship, the Norwegian Bliss. From May 3 – May 5 while in New York, the Norwegian Bliss was under Equity Agreement, marking the first time that a full Equity cast has been used on a cruise ship.

Yes, We Cannes: The Lens Is on Equality at the World’s Most Fashionable Film Festival

theglowup.theroot.com: Liberté, egalité, fraternité (“liberty, equality, fraternity”) is France’s motto, and equality has appropriately emerged as the theme of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, taking place from May 8-19 on the French Riviera.

Ally Sheedy on Hollywood Sexism and Harvey Weinstein

www.vulture.com: I was eighteen years old when I went to Hollywood to begin my acting career, after growing up in NYC and being raised, in great part, by feminists. My mother, Charlotte, took me to small grassroots meetings that eventually evolved into the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s, and I had listened to arguments about the framework of the Equal Rights Amendment, gone on marches, and attended consciousness-raising sessions.

“Picasso at the Lapin Agile” at Throughline Theatre Company

The Pittsburgh Tatler: Polymathic comedian Steve Martin’s play Picasso at the Lapin Agile might best be described as a love letter to creativity and to the creative energies that birthed both the joys and the horrors of the twentieth century. The conceit of the play is a chance meeting at a Parisian café, the Lapin Agile (“Nimble Rabbit”), in 1904 between Albert Einstein (Steve Gottschalk) and Pablo Picasso (Nico Bernstein), both at the time in their twenties.

The 2018 Michael Merritt Awards

www.flyhouse.com: Theater is demanding work for creatives that love nothing more. Those in the spotlight may garner most of the attention when a performance is done, but it’s the work being done you don’t see that can make the show what it is.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Your guide to 16 of Southern Nevada’s most intriguing museums

Las Vegas Review-Journal: It’s easy to take museums for granted. Or, worse, to think of them just as warehouses for stuff from the past.

But the best museums do more than display objects. They use exhibits, artifacts and interactive displays to tell a story, whether that story is about mobsters, prehistoric monsters or, even, spooky spirits.

Universal Television’s The Bold Type spent $20 million in Québec and created over 350 jobs

globenewswire.com: New data released today examined the economic impact Season One of Universal Television’s The Bold Type has had on the province of Québec. In the first season alone, the production spent close to $20 million and created more than 350 jobs.

The Man Who Lives Inside His Dreams

VICE: Every morning, Stephen Wright gets up at around 4.30AM, makes a cup of tea, sits beneath the oak tree in his back garden and pretends he's the first person awake in the world. There are no sounds of passing traffic or nearby building sites, only the birds and the smell of bluebells. Whenever he sees a robin, he thinks of Donald. Then he finishes his tea and walks into his House of Dreams.

Senate Introduces Music Modernization Act

Variety: Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) today introduced the Music Modernization Act. The fact that the Senate bill, S.2823, is virtually identical to HR 5477 – the House MMA bill passed unanimously on April 25 – signals all systems go for smooth passage and an update to music laws that the industry has been laboring to update for the past decade.

The bill has been assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee and has been scheduled for hearing Tuesday.

Band director seriously injured during Chicago rehearsal when equipment falls from ceiling

Chicago Tribune: A prominent Chicago-area band conductor, musician and instructor has been hospitalized after a piece of equipment fell and struck him during a rehearsal.

Ralph Wilder, a mainstay in the local music scene for decades, broke his back in the accident that occurred Sunday at Northeastern Illinois University.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

Makita Cordless Track Saw Review: 18V X2 LXT XPS01

PTR: I am old enough to have been around when the first battery-powered tools came on the market. To classify the early ones as tools may be stretching the imagination a bit, but I digress. The cordless industry has come a lonnnnnnng way since then and I now have quite a few cordless tools in my arsenal. At the moment, I’m considering if the Makita cordless track saw has a place in my shop.

Construction Material Prices Surge in April

www.abc.org: Prices for inputs to construction materials expanded 1.3 percent in April and are 6.4 percent higher than at the same time one year ago, according to an ABC analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. This represents the largest month-over-month increase in almost three years and the largest year-over-year increase since October 2011. Prices for nonresidential construction inputs increased 1.6 percent on a monthly basis, and are up 6.3 percent year over year.

The Ugly Truth about Arts Institutions Led by Women of Color

HowlRound Theatre Commons: As the founder and executive artistic director for the Bishop Arts Theatre Center (BATC) in Dallas, Texas, I experience racism, sexism, and classism almost daily. It’s no secret that racial and gender disparity is a chronic problem for women in leadership at arts institutions in the United States, but for women of color, there is a severe, unconscious level of prejudice.

Report: Disparities Persist In Arts Funding For Minorities

90.5 WESA: Disparities persist in the number of arts grants, total amounts of funds and average amount of grant dollars received by organizations of color, compared to white, non-Hispanic groups.

These findings come from the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council's (GPAC) report, titled “Racial Equity and Arts Funding in Greater Pittsburgh,” which also found there have been no comprehensive studies on the subject of equity and arts funding.

Wednesday, May 09, 2018

This Immortal Coil: A Review of Prometheus Bound at City Lit Theater

Newcity Stage: Prometheus is the titan who molded mortals from clay, who stole the fire of the gods for them, and who dared to sweeten their lives with hope. When—goaded by Power and Force—flaming-haired Hephaestus pins him with unbreakable chains and a spike of adamant to the steep rock where Zeus has banished him, Prometheus (Mark Pracht) spits a globule of blood from a mouth that otherwise spends the next eighty-odd minutes preaching and moaning with a smugness that makes this all-too-human god difficult to pity or admire.

Rockin Rollers: Part 1

Guild of Scenic Artists: This past USITT 2018 Conference offered many good sessions to support our work as Scenic Artists, but the best might have been the session focused on one of our most overlooked, but perhaps most useful of painting tools: The Paint Roller!

Playwrights Say #NeverAgain

HowlRound Theatre Commons: On 17 February 2018, inspired by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, I reached out to playwrights across the United States with this message:

I wrote a five-minute play, and I would like to collect nineteen more original one-to-five minute plays—each one on a school shooting in America. Twenty kids were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary—so I want to weave together twenty pieces that touch on moments that came before or have happened since.

My worst moment: How Leslie Odom Jr. almost quit acting before 'Hamilton' made him a star

Chicago Tribune: “I almost didn’t make it here,” Leslie Odom Jr. said in his Tony acceptance speech in 2016. There’s a story behind that, and he tells it here.

It’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else originating the role of Aaron Burr in “Hamilton,” which earned him that Tony. Odom doesn’t pretend his path has been easy. “It took a really long time for things to congeal and move in the direction I wanted,” he said. Much of that is discussed in his new memoir “Failing Up: How to Take Risks, Aim Higher and Never Stop Learning.”

HBO Responds to PETA's Concern About 'Westworld's' Elephants

The Mary Sue: One of the cooler things about this season of Westworld is that we get to see a whole new side of the park. Or, rather, parks. There’s more than one “world” owned and operated by Delos Corporation, all of them featuring appropriate host animals. In the British Raj setting this week, we saw peacocks, elephants, and a tiger. All as man-made as the human hosts. The elephants used by production on Westworld, however, were real, and PETA was not happy.

Tuesday, May 08, 2018

'Columbinus' at Steppenwolf: As shootings continue, this play just gets more difficult to watch

Chicago Tribune: Nothing has changed, but everything is changing.

That’s the first gut reaction to “Columbinus,” the docudrama about the 1999 attacks at Columbine High School that ended with 15 dead, including the perpetrators. Created by P.J. Paparelli, the late artistic director of the now-defunct American Theater Company, and playwright Stephen Karam (“The Humans”) out of interviews, journals and other original source material, the show premiered in 2005 in Maryland, had an off-Broadway run in 2006, and has been presented locally at Raven Theatre in 2008 and ATC in 2013. The latter production was updated through interviews conducted with Columbine survivors 10 years after.

How Michael B. Jordan’s Black Panther Makeup Was Done

TwistedSifter: To play Killmonger in “Black Panther,” Michael B. Jordan had to be covered in 3,000 prosthetic dots. Makeup artist Joel Harlow created Killmonger’s hashmarks for the movie.

The 33rd Annual Lucille Lortel Awards Recipients Announced

Stage Directions: The 2018 Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway were handed out on Sunday, May 6th evening to recipients in 19 categories, with three honorary awards also bestowed. The Lortel Awards were distributed in a ceremony at NYU Skirball Center and this year's event was once again a benefit for The Actors Fund.

‘Alita Battle Angel’ Filmmakers: There’s ‘No Whitewashing’

www.vulture.com: Robert Rodriguez and Jon Landau — co-writer/director and producer, respectively, of the December manga movie-adaptation Alita: Battle Angel — have absorbed certain hard lessons from the financial underperformance and general audience disdain toward Ghost in the Shell. The $110 million Scarlett Johansson sci-fi thriller, itself an adaptation of a long-running Japanese comic book series, arrived in multiplexes in March last year amid fan petitions and howls of controversy over its perceived whitewashing of Johansson’s lead character. The scuttlebutt surrounding her casting — to the exclusion of Asian actresses who lobbied for the role — helped scare off Ghost’s core fanboy audience, resulting in a gigantic flop for the film’s distributor Paramount.

Methodical and Mesmerizing Tool Restoration Videos from Hand Tool Rescue

makezine.com: In a recent DiResta vlog, Jimmy was hanging out with Eric from Hand Tool Rescue, talking about tools and tool restoration. I had never heard of Hand Tool Rescue, but thanks to Jimmy’s recommendation, I spent the weekend binging on a bunch of the videos on the channel.

Monday, May 07, 2018

12 Tips to Promote Safe Rigging in the Entertainment Industry | #RigSafe

Columbus McKinnon Blog: On Friday, April 27, we celebrated #RigSafe day, an initiative started by the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) to promote safe rigging in the entertainment industry. USITT asked companies to join the initiative by sharing rigging safety tips on social media under the hashtag #rigsafe.

Ava DuVernay Tells Whiny-Ass Men to ‘Sue Me’ for Using Only Women Directors in Queen Sugar

thegrapevine.theroot.com: Ava DuVernay recently rolled her eyes for all of us who are tired of those with power complaining when an iota of their overwhelming privilege moves an inch toward parity.

Universal Orlando and the irony of 'more'

www.themeparkinsider.com: Universal Orlando has done the best job of placemaking among any multi-park theme park resort in the world. You can walk to anywhere from anywhere at the resort, which is connected by a Garden Walk that extends from the Cabana Bay Beach Resort to the Portofino Bay. While Disneyland and Dubai Parks & Resorts also offer easily walkable site plans, neither manages its space with the aesthetic sense that Universal has employed in Orlando.

“Byhalia, Mississippi” at Carnegie Stage

The Pittsburgh Tatler: The dilemma at the heart of Evan Linder’s play Byhalia, Mississippiis a knotty one: what should a man do when his wife gives birth to a child that is visibly – by virtue of its race – not his own?

First Look at Universal Studios Beijing

Theme Park University: Word on Universal’s first theme park in China has been fairly silent so far. Reports say that Universal Studios Beijing should open in 2020. Or at least the first phase. A few things to keep in mind as we go through the concept art for Universal Studios Beijing.

Sunday, May 06, 2018

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

Here are the top five comment generating posts of the past week:

Can’t we please just put away our cell phones and enjoy the show?

artsatl.com: It’s happened — I imagine — to almost everyone who attends theater, film or other kinds of arts events on a regular basis. A patron nearby brings out a cell phone, starts texting or checking their social media, and brings the show’s momentum to a halt. Not only can it disrupt the performance and an audience’s enjoyment of, but it brings with it its own litany of dilemmas.

Please Stop Giving Absolutely Everything a Standing Ovation

Houstonia: The Alley Theatre’s world premiere of Cleo features a great story—the sizzling affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the set of the 1963 movie Cleopatra in Rome—along with sumptuous staging and stellar acting.

But is it worth a standing ovation?

Broadway in a Year of Reckoning

HowlRound Theatre Commons: Molly Ringwald recently wrote in the New Yorker that when she re-watched the John Hughes films in which she starred, she was “taken aback by the scope of the ugliness,” seeing them now as "racist, misogynistic, and, at times, homophobic." Responding to this idea, comedian Bill Maher replied, "You can’t blame someone for not being woke thirty years before woke was a thing,” speculating that “you are tolerating things now that you’ll cringe at in twenty-five years: putting old people in old age homes, mass incarceration, beauty pageants, how we treat animals.” Any "music, TV, or movies from back when," Maher continued, will contain "something we just don’t do anymore.”

High School Production of "The Lion King" Cancelled Mid-Run Due to Copyright Issue

OnStage Blog: Once again, when it comes to licensing permissions, it appears as though educators have failed their students as a high school production has been canceled due to copyrights not being secured.

Over the weekend, students at Nansemond River High School in Suffolk, VA were told that their production of Disney's The Lion King would not continue because rights to the show had not been obtained. The worst part is, they had already begun performances.

7 Strategies For Conquering Procrastination And Avoidance

www.fastcompany.com: We’ve all experienced the nagging dread and anxiety that accompanies procrastination. Procrastination (avoiding specific tasks) and avoidance (a more general pattern) can also cause problems in relationships, especially if you make a habit of avoiding things or you routinely ask others to do things for you.

Friday, May 04, 2018

Broadway in a Year of Reckoning

HowlRound Theatre Commons: Molly Ringwald recently wrote in the New Yorker that when she re-watched the John Hughes films in which she starred, she was “taken aback by the scope of the ugliness,” seeing them now as "racist, misogynistic, and, at times, homophobic." Responding to this idea, comedian Bill Maher replied, "You can’t blame someone for not being woke thirty years before woke was a thing,” speculating that “you are tolerating things now that you’ll cringe at in twenty-five years: putting old people in old age homes, mass incarceration, beauty pageants, how we treat animals.” Any "music, TV, or movies from back when," Maher continued, will contain "something we just don’t do anymore.”

Finding a Story of Hope in a Historic Holocaust

Theatre Development Fund – TDF: Over a decade ago a stranger approached playwright Joyce Van Dyke in the lobby of a theatre. "My name is Martin Deranian," the elderly gentleman said. "Your grandmother and my mother were best friends and they were deported together from their homeland in 1915. I think you should write a play about them."

National Endowment for the Arts Selects Jen Hughes as Director of Design and Creative Placemaking

NEA: Jen Hughes has been selected as the National Endowment for the Arts director of Design and Creative Placemaking. Hughes has served as acting director of Design since June 2017, and will continue to oversee grant portfolios that support the design and creative placemaking fields at the National Endowment for the Arts. Hughes will also manage leadership initiatives that include the Mayors’ Institute on City Design and the Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design.

The "B" in NAB

Below the Line: It’s truly the “B” in NAB that signals how much the recently concluded annual event in Las Vegas has changed. Once “broadcast” shifted to also mean “streaming,” and since that includes everything digital, NAB has become a show that’s now about, well, almost everything. Everything at least, that you’d see or hear through a screen or electronic device.

2 Tony Winners Try to Upend Rodgers and Hammerstein

The New York Times: Two and a half years ago, the playwright David Henry Hwang approached the composer Jeanine Tesori with an idea for a show. Mr. Hwang had seen a recent revival of “The King and I” at Lincoln Center, which got him thinking about how much he loved that classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical (the songs, the story, the moment the king dies, which never failed to make him cry), and yet, how much he didn’t (the play’s history of showing a mostly white cast in yellowface, its implicit racism).

Data Extraction: Exploring the Features and Benefits of AutoCAD

AutoCAD Blog | Autodesk: Simply, data extraction is the ability to extract data from objects in your drawing or multiple drawings. Data extraction in AutoCAD enables you to streamline the process of “counting stuff” by reducing the manual counting and entering of table data.The extracted data can then be linked to a table in your drawing, or external files. AutoCAD provides a Data Extraction Wizard that controls the extraction of that data. In addition to the ability to extract drawing data, the Wizard also enables you to combine drawing data with external data such as information from an Excel spreadsheet.

Artificial intelligence may soon have more rights than animals in the U.S.

slate.com: What do Suda the elephant and e-David the robot have in common? Both are capable of creating beautiful paintings, free(ish) of human intervention—one uses its trunk to clutch the brush, the other a mechanical arm (though whether Suda is truly “free” when she paints is a matter of serious contention). Each can even sign their work. The quality of their paintings does vary slightly, though of course, beauty is in the visual sensor of the beholder. Suda, who lives in a Thai elephant camp, paints self-portraits, simple outlines of elephants and trees, while e-David, a German robot, paints portraits of others with detailed shading, strokes tailored even down to the choice of brush. Despite their artistic differences, e-David and Suda have another thing in common: dubious rights to legal authorship of the fruits of their labor. Neither is able to hold copyright under current U.S. law.

6 Carnegie Mellon University alumni earn a record 12 Tony Award nominations

TribLIVE: Six Carnegie Mellon University alumni have received a record-breaking 12 Tony Award nominations.

The university's School of Drama alumnus and 2016 Tony Award winner Leslie Odom Jr. and CBS star Katharine McPhee co-hosted the nominations announcement.

Can’t we please just put away our cell phones and enjoy the show?

artsatl.com: It’s happened — I imagine — to almost everyone who attends theater, film or other kinds of arts events on a regular basis. A patron nearby brings out a cell phone, starts texting or checking their social media, and brings the show’s momentum to a halt. Not only can it disrupt the performance and an audience’s enjoyment of, but it brings with it its own litany of dilemmas.

A UV Effect Gives An Angel Its Wings

Rosco Spectrum: In the fall of 2017, the UV project of my dreams was proposed as a possibility. My design advisor, Jon Young, approached me with a request for using UV paint in the University of Oklahoma Helmerich School of Drama productions of Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. I was thrilled and immediately started collaborating with the directors of both productions and members of the creative team to create a mural on the upstage wall and we discussed the potential of incorporating the use of UV paint for the production. The final design was a graffiti mural that masked the UV wings that would illuminate in the angel’s presence.

A Colorblind Make-up Artist Defies the Odds

Make-Up Artist Magazine: Being a make-up artist is a challenge. Being a colorblind make-up artist is a conquest.

Toby Derrig found out he was colorblind in first grade when he accidentally colored a Texas Longhorn green and almost got sent to the “time out chair” for messing around. That led to a doctor’s appointment where he was diagnosed with extreme deuteranopia. Derrig was colorblind.

A Boom in Filming Gives Atlanta Stage Actors Room to Maneuver

The New York Times: Danielle Deadwyler dreamed of being an actress, but in 2008 when she was a teaching assistant at a charter school, it seemed like an impossibility. Yes, the theater scene here was budding, but film and television opportunities were few and far between.

Thursday, May 03, 2018

Stage review: Public's 'Hamlet' hailed as a jewel in the crown for star and director

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: As Hamlet says, “the play’s the thing” — especially when it’s “Hamlet,” the world’s most famous play. Move over, “Oedipus.”

But oddly, although this “Hamlet” is admirably done and very entertaining, it is not the sole thing. It has to share billing with its occasion, the final directorial grand gesture of the Pittsburgh Public Theater’s longtime producing artistic director, Ted Pappas.

An Interview with Lauren Ridloff

THE INTERVAL: The title of the play Children of a Lesser God was inspired by Lord Tennyson’s narrative poem cycle Idylls of the King, which describes the death of the mythical King Arthur. A cynical, defeated Arthur wonders whether a “lesser god” made his imperfect world, filled with fallible human beings, or if we are simply too “dense and dim” to see the true magnificence of the world as it is. In Children of a Lesser God, Sarah, the play’s female lead, is seldom recognized for who she is, nor is she properly appreciated for her talents and her agency. Sarah has vowed to herself to communicate through ASL as opposed to through spoken language. However, she is an employee and student at a school that continuously tries to get her to renounce her decision and learn to speak instead.

Some majors are quite minor

News, Sports, Jobs - Observer Today: Consider college as an investment. According to the National Student Clearinghouse, roughly half — 53 percent — of students who in 2009 were enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities graduated within six years. Jaison Abel and Richard Dietz of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that in 2010, 62 percent of U.S. college graduates had a job that required a college degree. Thus, roughly a third of students who enroll in college graduate in a reasonable time and get a job that requires a college degree.

High School Production of "The Lion King" Cancelled Mid-Run Due to Copyright Issue

OnStage Blog: Once again, when it comes to licensing permissions, it appears as though educators have failed their students as a high school production has been canceled due to copyrights not being secured.

Over the weekend, students at Nansemond River High School in Suffolk, VA were told that their production of Disney's The Lion King would not continue because rights to the show had not been obtained. The worst part is, they had already begun performances.

Please Stop Giving Absolutely Everything a Standing Ovation

Houstonia: The Alley Theatre’s world premiere of Cleo features a great story—the sizzling affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the set of the 1963 movie Cleopatra in Rome—along with sumptuous staging and stellar acting.

But is it worth a standing ovation?

Create Dangerously: Albert Camus on the Artist as a Voice of Resistance and a Liberator of Society

Brain Pickings: “Those who tell you ‘Do not put too much politics in your art’ are not being honest,” Chinua Achebe observed in his superb forgotten conversation with James Baldwin. “If you look very carefully you will see that they are the same people who are quite happy with the situation as it is… What they are saying is don’t upset the system.” Half a century earlier, W.H. Auden both simplified and amplified this insight when he asserted that “the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act.”

New Mini-Course Strikes Chord with Students

News - Carnegie Mellon University: Carving a career path in the music tech industry just became easier for students at Carnegie Mellon University.

A new mini-course, “Inside the Music and Video Technology Industry,” debuted this spring and was a hit among those looking to land unique gigs after graduation.

Elizabeth Olsen Thinks Scarlet Witch Needs a New Costume, and She's Right

io9.gizmodo.com: Scarlet Witch is one of the heaviest hitters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a major power player in Avengers: Infinity War, but there’s one thing about the character that’s been (rightfully) bugging actress Elizabeth Olsen: her costume.

7 Strategies For Conquering Procrastination And Avoidance

www.fastcompany.com: We’ve all experienced the nagging dread and anxiety that accompanies procrastination. Procrastination (avoiding specific tasks) and avoidance (a more general pattern) can also cause problems in relationships, especially if you make a habit of avoiding things or you routinely ask others to do things for you.

Studio Ghibli Releases Tantalizing Concept Art for Its New Theme Park, Opening in Japan in 2022 | Open Culture

www.openculture.com: When you watch an animated film, you visit a world. That holds true, to an extent, for live-action movies as well, but much more so for those cinematic experiences whose audiovisual details all come, of necessity, crafted from scratch. Walt Disney understood that better than anyone else in the motion-picture industry, and none could argue that he didn't capitalize on it.

Positation in Action: Director Erin Ortman’s Multi-Year Journey with the Arabian Nights

HowlRound Theatre Commons: Several coincidences align to admit me to design meetings, workshop readings, and rehearsal rooms for One Thousand Nights and One Day [OTNAOD], a musical based on Jason Grote’s play 1001, produced by Prospect Theater Company. Love for the people involved, the creative magic in rehearsal rooms, and the opportunity to spend time with the enchanting director Erin Ortman inspired me accept her invitation to observe her directorial philosophy in action.

Five Shows with Live Nation New England's Ryan Vangel

Amplify: Ryan Vangel’s trajectory toward becoming the Vice President of Talent Booking for Live Nation New England has had some bumps. When he attended Babson College in Boston wielding a guitar and long hair, the business school wasn’t sure what to do with his desire to work in music.

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

CMU's Ann Roth collects three Tony nominations; Grey Henson grabs his first nod

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Costume designer Ann Roth, at 86 now a nine-time nominee and one-time Tony winner, came away with three nominations when names were called Tuesday for the 72nd annual Tony Awards.

The 2018 Drama Desk Nominees Announced

Live Design: The 2018 Drama Desk Awards, celebrating plays and musicals on Broadway and Off-Broadway, announced this year's nominees yesterday. Among the high-scoring are the Broadway revival of Carousel with 12, and new musicals SpongeBob SquarePants and Mean Girls with 11 and 10 nods, respectively. For plays, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child crossed the ocean to snatch eight nominations.

The Nominees Of The 2018 Tony Awards

Live Design: The American Theatre Wing announced the nominations for the 72nd annual Tony Awards on this Tuesday morning. New musicals Mean Girls and SpongeBob SquarePants led the way with 12 nominations each, followed by Angels in America, Carousel, and The Band's Visit with 11 each. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and My Fair Lady received ten nods each.

While comedy in Pittsburgh has always been a "guy’s club," it’s becoming increasingly inclusive

Comedy | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: “Damn. You’re funny for a woman.”

From comments like this to being drafted for shows just because a manager wants to sleep with them to being made to feel as if they’re female first, comic second, women in comedy face a different set of criticisms compared to their male counterparts.

EU rule could leave theatres dark

Letters | Stage | The Guardian: I am writing to you as the president of the Association of Lighting Designers, and as the Founder of Theatre Projects, an international theatre design company that for 60 years has been at the forefront of British theatre technology, responsible for the stage design of the National Theatre, and for over 1,500 theatre projects in 80 counties.

Ted Pappas caps a distinguished 18 years at Public Theater with Hamlet

Theater Reviews + Features | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: After an impressive 18 years with Pittsburgh Public Theater, artistic director and managing director Ted Pappas is moving on. And what better sendoff for a theater veteran than taking on Hamlet, one of the biggest monsters in all of theater?

Stage Left Theatre has a real history in Chicago — now future is in doubt

Chicago Tribune: As I walked my dog near Wrigley Field the other night, the two of us stopped among the bars and the noise, and stood and stared outside 3408 N. Sheffield Ave. That address used to be the home of Stage Left Theatre. I started seeing theater there in 1995.

Stage Left was one of the great train-influenced theaters of Chicago: the roar of the “L” intensified, or punctuated, many a dramatic moment. It also used to be the perfect place to stand on the sidewalk outside and watch barhoppers wonder what was transpiring inside. At intermission, the action outside was often as interesting as the show.

Little Lake Theatre’s The Dresser depicts an actor past his prime

Theater Reviews + Features | Pittsburgh | Pittsburgh City Paper: There’s a famous line in theater: “Be careful of the scenery … you never know who’s been chewing it before you.” In Ronald Harwood’s play The Dresser, the person previously gnawing down on every inch of available scenery would be the character known only as Sir. He’s an actor of the old school; bombastic, egomaniacal, shameless and now in the final act of his life.

Spotlight – Miles Green

Cinefex Blog: Miles Green works as effects department supervisor at Animal Logic. His career highlights include The Lego Movie, Happy Feet, Walking with Dinosaurs, Australia and The Golden Compass.

Charlie Douglass and his Laff Box invented the laugh track as we know it.

slate.com: Douglass was a mechanical engineer who had worked on radar for the Navy in World War II, so he knew his way around audio and electronics. In 1950, The Hank McCune Show, a mostly forgotten series from NBC, had used a rudimentary laugh track. But by 1953, Douglass had developed a better way to insert a laugh into a show. If you’ve ever watched an old sitcom, you’ve almost certainly heard his work.

A Matter of Legitimacy: Female Nudity On-screen

Balder and Dash | Roger Ebert: Hollywood is built on negotiations. Managers negotiate rates, stars negotiate their time. But actresses are often gifted an additional element to negotiate: the surrender of their bodies for the camera. Where a bare breast was once considered taboo, now audiences barely bat an eye at female nudity. It’s expected, anticipated, demanded. With the rise of #MeToo and #TimesUp we’ve seen women gain equal pay and a more comforting atmosphere regarding sexual harassment, yet on-screen nudity remains an ambiguous gray area.

Stage Managers And Human Reaction Time

TheatreArtLife: When I was first learning how to “be” a stage manager, I learned how to properly record blocking, how to lay out spike tape, and the best way to distribute a schedule. Nothing prepared me for having a direct impact on the physical well-being of my performers.

Tuesday, May 01, 2018

Six Carnegie Mellon Alumni Nominated for 12 Tony Awards

News - Carnegie Mellon University: Six Carnegie Mellon University alumni received a record-breaking 12 Tony Award nominations this morning. School of Drama alumnus and 2016 Tony Award winner Leslie Odom, Jr. and CBS star Katharine McPhee co-hosted the nominations announcement, which aired in part on "CBS This Morning" and in full on the Tony Awards page on Facebook.

Four Professors Earn Highest Faculty Distinction

www.cmu.edu/news: Four Carnegie Mellon University faculty members, Roberta Klatzky, Cindy Limauro, Lowell Taylor and Larry Wasserman have been named University Professors, the highest designation a faculty member can achieve. The faculty members were nominated and recommended for the title of University Professor by academic leaders and the community of CMU University Professors. Their appointments are effective immediately.

If You Think You Hate Puns, You're Wrong - In Defense of Puns

www.esquire.com: he English language is almost nightmarishly expansive, and yet there is no good way to respond when someone drops a bad pun in casual conversation.

“Stop” seems ideal, but it’s too late—they already did it. If your esophagus cooperates, you can mimic a human chuckle, or you can just steamroll through, ignoring the elephant now parked in your conversational foyer. Either way, having to deal at all with the demand that wordplay be acknowledged is probably the reason so many people think they hate puns.

Those people are wrong.

Review: new musical Snow Child at Arena Stage

DC Theatre Scene: Arena Stage’s world-premiere musical Snow Child tries to be many things at once—the personal story of a married couple struggling to cope with the loss of a child; a fairy tale incorporating elements of magic; a musical homage to the Alaskan wilderness and its local traditions; and a snapshot of a particular time in Alaskan history – the last gasp of American frontierism.

A Mass of Copyrighted Works Will Soon Enter the Public Domain

The Atlantic: The Great American Novel enters the public domain on January 1, 2019—quite literally. Not the concept, but the book by William Carlos Williams. It will be joined by hundreds of thousands of other books, musical scores, and films first published in the United States during 1923. It’s the first time since 1998 for a mass shift to the public domain of material protected under copyright. It’s also the beginning of a new annual tradition: For several decades from 2019 onward, each New Year’s Day will unleash a full year’s worth of works published 95 years earlier.

Tony Nominations 2018: ‘Mean Girls,’ ‘SpongeBob,’ “Band’s Visit’ Lead

Observer: This year’s top Tony Award nominees came from Bikini Bottom, Bet Hatikva, Hogwarts and… a suburban high school.

Broadway’s top awards show spread the wealth this year, with seven shows reaching double digit nomination hauls.

Now’s Your Chance to Write a Simpsons Episode

lifehacker.com: In the fallout of comedian Hari Kondabolu’s documentary The Problem With Apu, and the weirdly defensive response from The Simpsons, producer Adi Shankar wants to make a woke Simpsons episode about Apu. To get the script, he’s running a screenwriting contest. If you agree with Shankar and Kondabolu that Apu is a gross stereotype, then check out the contest rules

Tony Awards 2018: La MaMa to Receive Regional Theater Award

Variety: La MaMa E.T.C., the downtown Manhattan theater that was one of the major birthplaces of the Off Off Broadway scene, will receive the 2018 Regional Theater Tony Award.

Tribeca Film Festival 2018: Time’s Up Staged a Tribeca Takeover

theglowup.theroot.com: Saturday was a day of reckoning at the Tribeca Film Festival as voices from the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements brought their message of survival, empowerment and advocacy from Hollywood to New York City. Oscar-winning actresses Julianne Moore and Lupita Nyong’o, Tony Award winner Cynthia Erivo, actresses Jurnee Smollett-Bell and Ashley Judd, former NFL player Wade Davis, activist Tarana Burke—who was also awarded a Disruptive Innovation award at this year’s festival—and more were on hand to talk about the movement’s momentum and what comes next.