Wireless for AV and IT: Can They Play Nice?

ChurchProduction.com: It’s a networked world out there. If you’ve spent much time in the AVL production world, or just recently returned from NAB, you’ve probably noticed that wired or wireless networking is now a feature on just about every piece of gear you can imagine. We’ve seen serial control on pro-level gear for a long time, but network-based control has opened up a whole new world of possibilities, and along with it, a whole new world of challenges.

Many Paths Taken: Learning The Ways And Lessons Of Pro Audio

ProSoundWeb: Being on the team that makes a professional audio system work optimally in a public venue is a rich and rewarding experience – especially so if you enjoy working with the artist, as well as the music that the artist creates.

In fact, many audio professionals enter the craft because they’re attuned to music; I know that I did.

SawStop Router Tables & New Saw Options

coptool.com: We always wondered how SawStop might expand upon their brand, we all first got introduced to them for their innovative safety feature that prevents table saw injuries. Overtime however people have come to associate SawStop Saws not just as a safety feature, but for very high quality professional table saws. Already they have expanded to every type of table saw market from large industrial saws to the portable jobsite table saw JSS-MCA, which after a quick bout of competition is again the only portable table saw option with a flesh detecting technology.

Creative Residents’ Parting Words

Create: Throughout the past twelve months, Create Magazine has brought you articles and videos about Adobe’s Creative Residents. As the company prepares to welcome the next group of exceptional creatives, we wanted to hear from the current class one more time.

'Cinderella,' 'Dolly' closing out spring musical season

TribLIVE: As high school musical season draws to a close, Greensburg Central Catholic aims to bring the spring to a fairytale finish with its production of “Cinderella.” Directed by Joette Salandro, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical features one of the youngest and freshest casts in Westmoreland County.

Writers Guilds Talks Going Down to the Wire as Hollywood Wonders Why

Variety: Indications are strong that industry negotiators will need be working down to the wire during the next five days to avoid a writers strike.

Sources tell Variety that there have been mixed results from the past two days of contract negotiations Tuesday and Wednesday. There were no public comments from either side at the headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers as both camps are observing a media blackout.

Watch Adam Savage Geek Out on the Set of Alien: Covenant

io9.gizmodo.com: In the pantheon of cool movie sets, a Ridley Scott Alien set is right near the top. Here is the man who directed one of the most iconic genre films ever, returning to that world in modern times, and it’s a place on Earth that exists. Sure, most people don’t get to experience it but here’s the next best thing.

"Blurred Lines" Appeal Brief Says Artists Can't Copyright a Groove

Hollywood Reporter: Lines have been drawn in the copyright battle between Marvin Gaye's heirs and artists Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke — and they certainly aren't blurred.

Since Williams and Thicke appealed their 2015 trial loss, in which a jury found their "Blurred Lines" infringed upon Gaye's "Got to Give It Up," scores of musicians and songwriters have pledged their support to one side or the other.

Show must go on: Local theater company's 'blasphemous' twist on Bible story draws ire

11alive.com: Throughout the centuries it has existed, the Bible has been read by millions of people across the globe, translated into thousands of languages and interpreted in several different ways.

But there’s one modern interpretation of one of the Bible’s oldest stories that has thousands of people fired up.

A new stage play from the Out Front Theater company in Atlanta called The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told is set to open later this week. The story – written by playwright Paul Rudnick in 1998 – is a retelling of the Old Testament through the eyes of gay couples “Jane and Mabel and "Adam and Steve," not "Adam and Eve."

RTI NEO ONE Revolutionises Lasers for Large Scale Productions

LightSoundJournal.com: RTI NEO ONE features both DMX and ArtNET, making it compatible within existing control infrastructure, with no other control system required. The RTI NEO ONE is designed as multi-projector-laser-system: Several units can be attached to each other with a quick-lock system. Due to the octagonal shape, it is not only possible to use several units side-by-side, but also allows to create shapes of laser systems or mount them at unusual positions, like e.g. flanking the sound-line-arrays on big stages, arranged as circle or in other shapes on stage.

'Tenderly' is an intimate look at Rosemary Clooney's life

TribLIVE: Young theatergoers probably know more about Rosemary Clooney's nephew, actor George Clooney, than they do about his aunt, the popular recording artist who was admired as “America's favorite girl singer” in the 1950s and '60s.

The Theatre Factory's production of “Tenderly, the Rosemary Clooney Musical,” will introduce young audiences to — and reacquaint “young at heart” performing arts patrons with — the singer and her music.

The Artist as a Cultural Manager

HowlRound: From the perspective of the self-proclaimed (and later, experience-proclaimed) cultural manager, there is a small detail about my field of work that has constantly made me wonder about our status: the fact that our backgrounds and the paths that brought most of us here are suspiciously diverse. Most of us are completely lacking any formal training in our field of work.

Church Stage Design on a Budget

ChurchProduction.com: When you watch television or go to concerts, it is amazing to see the elaborate stage settings that support the performers. The highly advanced technology used in theatrical design can make even the smallest stages look massive. Unfortunately, this technology usually comes with a price. The large-scale professional productions that I design usually have set design budgets that range from fifty thousand to over a million dollars.

Analysis: New Canadian Softwood Tariffs May Have Limited Impact

Remodeling | Framing, Lumber, Lumberyards: The U.S. government's imposition of 20% countervailing duties will anger builders and delight dealers by helping prop up current prices, but it's unlikely to lead to any new surge in the cost of softwood because traders have factored the duties into their prices for months.

IATSE Wins Contract with NBC’s Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge after 1-Day Strike

Deadline: After a one-day strike in Atlanta, the producers of NBC’s Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge have come to terms with IATSE for a contract covering some 200 of the show’s crew members.

Pittsburgh Dance Council spotlights diverse styles in new season

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: After a year as the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s director of dance programming and special projects, Randal Miller’s vision for the position has stayed true to what it was on Day 1: make dance more accessible.

That’s his goal for the Pittsburgh Dance Council’s 2017-18 lineup, which opens earlier than usual with an outdoor, gravity-defying presentation by Blue Lapis Light during the Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival in June. Action will resume in the fall with a few returning artists, including Pittsburgh’s Kyle Abraham, while the latter half of the season will feature dance troupes new to Pittsburgh.

The Ears Know: Acoustics, Reflection and Reverberation

Performance Space: Why are some music venues better for concerts than others? Although our eyes may be captivated by the beautifully ornate décor of a historic auditorium or the modern architecture of an avant-garde concert hall, our ears are the truest, best judges.

For more than 70 years, the Wenger Corporation has worked to improve music spaces for both performance and rehearsal. Two important acoustical concepts – reflection and reverberation – play important roles in determining what our ears hear and how good (or bad) a venue sounds. This week’s blog will explore each concept and a related Wenger product designed to positively affect it.

DOCOMO Develops World's First Spherical Drone Display

News & Notices | NTT DOCOMO: NTT DOCOMO, INC., in a continuing quest to create innovative new business, has developed a spherical drone display - an unmanned aerial vehicle that displays LED images on an omnidirectional spherical screen while in flight - which DOCOMO believes to be a world first (as of April 16, 2017).

African-American cast in Paramount's 'Superstar' reinvents those familiar songs

Chicago Tribune: If you are one of those people who know every note of "Jesus Christ Superstar," the anthemic rock opera penned as a concept album by a couple of pimply upper-class Brits named Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, you might be surprised by much of what you hear at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora, where this perpetually popular and yet perennially bizarre show is enjoying a splashy new production with a formidably talented cast that really does have something new to give.

NEA study explains financial effect of the arts nationally — and California's huge cultural economy

LA Times: Data released Wednesday by the National Endowment for the Arts, in a joint effort with the Bureau of Economic Analysis, offers an argument for keeping arts funding alive at a time when the Trump administration seeks to eliminate the NEA altogether.

Women to Watch: Highlighting Powerful Women in the Production Industry

www.productionhub.com: The production industry is always changing, from new ways to film to new technology, with so many women spearheading new initiatives that continue to change the industry. We are thrilled to present a few of our favorite "Women to Watch" -- women who are constantly inspiring and reaching new ceilings in an industry that was previously male-dominated. Check back frequently as we add to this amazing list of women throughout Women's History Month, and place your own suggestions in the comments below.

Shapeways Offers Access to New HP 3D Printing Technology

makezine.com: Shapeways has established themselves as a leader in on-demand 3D printing services. With a community of over 40,000 shops and more than 600,000 items that you can browse, customize, and purchase right now, their impact on the market makes them a great place to try new materials and methods of 3D printing. Today, Shapeways has announced that they are teaming up with HP to give their community access to HP’s new Multi Jet Fusion 3D printing technology.

‘The Good Wife’s’ Zach Grenier Appears on the Pittsburgh Stage

The 412 - April 2017: Landing the lead role in “Death of a Salesman” at the Pittsburgh Public Theater marks a welcome return to the stage for New York City-based actor Zach Grenier.

Grenier, perhaps most well-known as divorce lawyer David Lee in “The Good Wife,” is playing Willy Loman, the play’s delusional protagonist. But don’t be fooled by thinking Grenier just has talent in front of the camera — Grenier started his acting career in the theater, touring with Little Flags Theater and appearing in a Boston Shakespeare Production of “As You Like It” at a young age, and has been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to return.

A manifesto for the creative industries

www.creativereview.co.uk: With Brexit, immigration and the NHS dominating the news, it’s unlikely that the creative industries will be a key focus for the UK’s political parties in the run-up to next month’s general election. But the Creative Industries Federation has today published a manifesto urging leaders to take action to support and protect the creative sector.

The Tony Awards Reinstate the Sound Design Categories for the 2017-2018 Season

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: The Tony Awards announces that the Sound Design categories -- Best Sound Design of a Musical and Best Sound Design of a Play -- will be reinstated for the 2017-2018 season. The categories had previously been removed in 2014, amid much protest from the theatre community and fans alike.

Biz Holds Breath as WGA, AMPTP Return to Bargaining Table on Tuesday

Variety: As the industry awaits the results of the WGA’s strike authorization vote, the real test of whether the biz should brace for labor unrest will come on Tuesday when the guild and the major studios return to the bargaining table.

In the week since the Writers Guild of America and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers suspended contract negotiations, the WGA has held membership meetings in Los Angeles and New York to update writers on the state of the talks and to rally votes for the authorization. Amid all this activity, there is a growing sense among plugged-in people on both sides of the negotiations that the pathway to a deal is starting to emerge.

France Election: Macron and Le Pen Put Film, TV Biz at Crossroads

Variety: Some voters in France liken their upcoming presidential runoff to choosing between “the plague or cholera.” But within the country’s film and TV industries, the young centrist Emmanuel Macron is the clear favorite over far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whose victory would have damaging consequences for France’s vibrant cultural sector, figures in the industry say.

Project Y Theatre Company Commissions 9 Plays by Women

www.broadwayworld.com: In an effort to broaden opportunities for women playwrights, Project Y Theatre Company has commissioned nine female playwrights in two separate productions, Great Again, an evening of plays by Crystal Skillman and Chiori Miyagawa, and The Hrosthvitha Project, 7 adaptations of the 10th century female-written play "Dulcitius" written by playwrights Caridad Svich, Pia Wilson, Julienne Hairston, Michole Biancosino, Lia Romeo, Stacie Lents, and Erin Mallon.

Great Again is an evening of plays in two parts: Test by Crystal Skillman (directed by Jessi Hill) and In the Line by Chiori Miyagawa (directed by Kristin Horton and choreographed by Sonoko Kawahara). Both plays were commissioned by Project Y Theatre Company and written as a response to the November 2016 election. Together they will receive full productions as part of the Women in Theatre Festival, June 1-24th 2017 at The A.R.T./New York Theatres.

Chicago Opera Theater’s ‘Perfect American’ brings American icon Walt down to earth

www.chicagolandmusicaltheatre.com: Walt Disney. By the end of the year, odds are every person reading this review will have partaken in some form of entertainment from one of the many offshoots and subsidiaries of the company that bares his name.

In his life, the man reached the pinnacle of fame and built a brand centered on wholesome, thoughtful entertainment that persists to this day. However, he was also a bigoted perfectionist whose company was built on the backs of thousands of employees who received no credit for their contribution to the cultural landscape of America. This dichotomy is the chief concern of Chicago Opera Theater’s The Perfect American.

10 Killer Resume Tips to Nail Your Dream Job

www.lifehack.org: Stuck in a job rut nightmare? It’s never too late to dig yourself out. And an all-star resume might just be the shovel you need.

Picture this: You finally get the chance to apply for your dream job. You already know what you’re going to wear to the interview. You’ve envisioned which pictures to hang in your office, and how you plan to decorate your desk. You just know that once they meet you in person, they won’t be able to say “No.”

Zombie king George Romero to be honored alongside young entertainment pioneers at 2017 Elly Awards

NEXTpittsburgh: Hollywood has the Oscars, but Pittsburgh has the Ellys, an award show created to honor area entertainment pioneers. For its second year, the Elly Awards will recognize a group of people who have helped define the city’s film and television scene.

On April 27, industry professionals from all over Pittsburgh will join the event’s organizer, Steeltown, at the newly renovated Union Trust Building for an evening defined by the undead. The Walking Dead executive producer Greg Nicotero will serve as a presenter, a fitting tribute to Elly Pioneer Award recipient George Romero, the famed horror director who unleashed zombies on Allegheny County with his iconic Living Dead film series.

Art at the End of the World: A Diary from the Antarctic Biennale

www.artsy.net: A typical sailing tour of the Antarctic Peninsula is a focused encounter with Mother Nature, a journey through icy tundras, past humpback whales and epic vistas—so I’m told.

But the expedition I took there last month, aboard the 117-meter-long Akademik Sergey Vavilov, as part of a project called the Antarctic Biennale, was anything but typical. It came replete with art installations, salon discussions, and a cast of colorful international characters—artists, scientists, and philosophers—not to mention a powerful sense that nothing quite like this had been ventured before.

In Portrait: The Women Playwrights Giving Broadway a Moral Compass

Vanity Fair: “I wanted to write a new play,” explains the playwright at the center of Paula Vogel’s Indecent, “that posed contemporary moral questions, that forced us to face some uncomfortable truths.” Vogel’s inventive portrayal of a 20th-century Yiddish theater troupe struggling with controversial material does just that, as do Anna Deavere Smith’s Notes from the Field and Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, for which Nottage received the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

In Broadway's New Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a Little Something For Everyone

Vogue: Few modern stories have had as many retellings as the improbable, outlandish, often harrowing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which Roald Dahl published in 1964—but few have made such a confection of the human state. Since its appearance, Charlie has been adapted into two mainstream films, an opera, and various video games (an irony for a parable of childhood overindulgence, but one its creator might have found truly scrumptious). In 2013 it became a London musical directed by Sam Mendes, with songs by Hairspray team Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and set a record for weekly box-office grosses in the West End. This spring’s New York production, directed by the Broadway veteran Jack O’Brien, is a ground-up reimagining, complete with new songs, a modified script, and, as envisioned by its star, Christian Borle, a more humanized idea of the candy-making genius.

What's next for pioneering Twin Cities director Michelle Hensley? Not theater, she says

StarTribune.com: For Michelle Hensley, the closing act of her theater career is more predictable than the beginning.

Ten Thousand Things, the itinerant troupe she founded in Los Angeles in 1989 with $500 and a prayer before growing it and moving to the Twin Cities in 1993, announced last week that Hensley will step down as artistic director at the end of the 2017-18 season.

Warner Bros. Unveils Metropolis and Gotham City for Abu Dhabi Park

Variety: Warner Bros. and Abu Dhabi’s Miral have unveiled details for their planned $1 billion theme park — including worlds for Superman’s Metropolis and Batman’s Gotham City.

The park, which will open next year, will also include Cartoon Junction, Bedrock, and Dynamite Gulch, themed after the Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera brands; and Warner Bros. Plaza, which will be reminiscent of old Hollywood. Warner Bros. World Abu Dhabi, located on Yas Island and set to open in 2018, will include thrill rides, interactive family friendly attractions and live entertainment.

The Niagara Falls Lighting Episode

The Podcast at Delphi.org: The decision to upgrade the lighting that illuminates Niagara Falls seems as though it should be the main story but, it’s not. The part of the project we are interested in is the one where the Niagara Falls Illumination Board (NFI) added a requirement to build a more flexible color illumination scheme to replace the old guillotine color-changing scheme that had been in place since 1974. The guillotine color-changing synchro-server mechanical system was to be replaced by a digital color control system and the twenty-one 4000w Xenon lights were to be replaced by 1400 digital-friendly nine-light LED modules in which the LED’s would be multi-color rather than having to place a filter in front of the white light of the Xenons. The LED system of lights would be software controlled from a 22-inch touch screen from over a 2000 foot distance from the falls.

Fueled by Fury: Finding the Language to Fix Us

HowlRound: The notion that I would write a play in which someone discovers the solution to climate change was never the point of Two Degrees (though I believe that climate change is a fixable, solvable problem). After all, there is no silver bullet, no singular, magical solution for this issue.

More to the point, how to fix climate change wasn’t really the question. To fix climate change, we have to move people from inaction to action, from doubt to conviction. Finding the language and the arguments to do this is clearly important, but in order to do that we have to ask the more important question: How do we fix us?

"Untangled": Gender-focused Comedy Brings Realities of Egyptian Youth to Stage

The Theatre Times: The play Untangled (Hal El-Dafayer) was staged at Cairo’s Hosapeer Theatre last week, where a full house roared continuously with laughter at a comedy tackling social issues among youth.

The play is directed by Mohamed Fouad Abdeen, who co-wrote it with Sally Zohney, and performed by Wojood theatre troupe. The 8 and 9 April stagings came five months after the play’s premiere at Hosapeer in November 2016.

How to Use PivotTables to Analyze Your Excel Data

business.tutsplus.com: The problem we all face is that we have mountains of data and need a way to digest it. We're all looking for a way to make sense out of large sets of data and find out what the data indicates about the situation at hand.

Excel's PivotTable feature is a drag and drop analysis tool. Point Excel to tables of data in your spreadsheet, and slice your data until you find an answer to your question. Most importantly, it's an easy-to-use tool right inside of Excel where your data might already live.

"Consent": A New Play About a Rape Case That Makes Audiences the Jury

The Theatre Times: In the airy sitting room of a nice house, a group of friends are catching up over a glass of wine. “So what have you been up to lately?” says one. “Me? Oh I’ve been raping pensioners,” replies another.

This is Consent, a white-hot new play by Nina Raine, which opened to critics at the National Theatre on Tuesday 4 April. Its subjects are not, as the above conversation might suggest, psychopathically hardened criminals, but barristers. Raine discovered their peculiarly offhand way of speaking over the course of a research lunch in an “unglamorous, threadbare” courthouse canteen.

Pittsburgh CLO festival fosters next generation of small musicals

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pittsburgh CLO held a sneak peek of a new music festival that will bloom in Pittsburgh next spring, with the emphasis on small-scale shows and nurturing the next generation of writers.

The festival is part of a $10 million capital campaign that is 95 percent complete, with 35 percent coming from board members. The campaign includes $5 million for new works development, with $3 million specifically for the festival. More than 100 local and national artists will converge here March 26-April 8, 2018, providing an attraction for the National Alliance for Musical Theatre, which will hold its 2018 spring conference April 4-6 in Pittsburgh.

Award-winning play 'Absence' delves into dementia

TribLIVE: Alzheimer's disease or dementia affects a patient's loved ones and makes it harder to assess what's going on inside the patient.

Newhaven Court at Lindwood in Hempfield will explore that heartbreaking issue by presenting the play “Absence” on April 26 at Greensburg's Palace Theatre.

Creating Cinema in the Round

fxguide: All special venue films have their own challenges, requiring filmmakers to not only be technically inventive but often at times reinvent their very language of film for a new storytelling environment. While one can research such projects extensively, these one off specialist theatres pose a real challenge and a need to remain focused on providing an engaging story in the midst of complex one off technology. One such highly successful project just opened in Sydney.

“Wild With Happy” at City Theatre

The Pittsburgh Tatler: Wild With Happy is a seriously funny play. I mean that quite literally: what else could it be, given that it’s a comedy about a man grieving the death of his mother?

For the most part, that counterintuitive combination of the serious and the funny works quite well, thanks mainly to the work’s playful structure and its ostentatious and outrageous characters.

Lower Stage Volumes Mean Better Shows

UE Tips and Tricks: Lower stage volumes equal better shows for everyone. And lower volumes mean happier ears for you in the long-run. In this day and age There is no reason that any musician should suffer from hearing damage because of loud stage monitor volumes. I have worked with many legacy artists that just can’t do what they used to because of hearing loss from high stage volume.

Turning the NFL draft into grand theater, with Philadelphia as the stage

www.philly.com: "Standing on those steps and seeing that this is such a heroic moment, this is a culmination for these [draft picks], we set out on, 'Could we create a theater? Could we build a theater here?' " said Peter O'Reilly, the NFL's senior vice president of events.

"We know it's going to be complicated. We know it's going to be audacious. But this is what we have to do, and the Parkway itself was natural. It's a home to so many iconic events over the years."

Why Decolonization Means The Possible End Of Shakespeare In South Africa's Schools

The Theatre Times: South Africa’s education authorities are reviewing the school curriculum. Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga has confirmed that the review will feature a focus on “decolonization,” reflecting the need to move towards the use of more African and South African novels, drama, and poetry. This might spell the end of William Shakespeare in the country’s classrooms. The Conversation Africa’s education editor Natasha Joseph asked Professor Chris Thurman about the implications of the proposed review.

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

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

Down With 8 A.M. Classes: Undergrads Learn Better Later In The Day, Study Finds

NPR Ed : NPR: Mariah Evans, a sociology professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, began to notice a trend in her morning classes: Her students were falling asleep.

While this would make most feel discouraged in their teaching abilities or agitated over their students' idleness, Evans instead was curious. Was there more to this than just laziness?

Posted by David at 17 Comments Here

This Makeup Artist Can Transform Her Face Into a Glitch in the Matrix

TwistedSifter: Mimi Choi (@mimles) is a makeup and visual artist from Vancouver, Canada that has built a huge following online for her incredible makeup transformations.

Posted by David at 14 Comments Here

When You’re a Stage Hand and It Snows 2-4 Inches Onstage Every Night

Playbill: John Snow has been working as a stage hand at Lincoln Center Theater for five years, during which he’s taken on a variety of roles backstage, above the stage, and even under the stage—he helped push the gigantic boat in the recent Broadway revival of The King and I. He’s now on staff at the Mitzi E. Newhouse theatre, where he took some time to chat to Playbill about his latest gig: Sarah Ruhl’s How to Transcend a Happy Marriage, a play about monogamy, middle age, and the breadth of our desires.

Posted by David at 11 Comments Here

Unseen workers make stage magic happen

www.postcrescent.com: There is a world in entertainment many never get a chance to see. Behind the performers and scenery are hardworking people that are integral to providing us with a quality show, often invisible to those in the audience. Everything from makeup, costumes, hair, sound, sets and lights, stagehands make the magic happen.

Posted by David at 10 Comments Here

‘Hamilton’: Hype or $100,000 value?

Storia.me: It’s no secret that “Hamilton: The Musical” has taken the country by storm. With its catchy, upbeat anthems and vivid scenes portraying the struggles of one of our founding fathers, the play resembles a history book that comes to life and takes a contemporary, urban approaches to Alexander Hamilton’s character.

Posted by David at 10 Comments Here