It's become a different world

Chicago Reader: We see a show and later learn that it had to close abruptly. We can empathize with the actors’ disappointment and distress because we can visualize their faces and recall their voices. But how has the pandemic impacted those we see only briefly in the lobby as we enter or don’t see at all? How are they managing this crisis?

‘There is nothing more magical’: resurrected theatre brings ancient Greece to life

Archaeology | The Guardian: For nearly two millennia, the Little Theatre of Epidavros lay underground. Its engraved seats, concentric and tiered, belonged to a world of roots; in this case the roots of an olive grove owned by Christos Zafiris, a local farmer. “They say that had it not been for pigs digging at the soil, we might never have known of its existence,” says Prof Vassilis Lambrinoudakis. “Until the appearance of the stones in 1970, the theatre was a secret hidden under the earth for 18 centuries.”

Can artists wake us from COVID apathy?

limelightmagazine.com.au: Bob Dylan’s words from 1963 could have been written today. The answer is figuratively blowing in the wind, as dozens of people are dying each week due to a pandemic that is spread through the air. Like many artists, Bob Dylan spoke out about injustices throughout his career. What can we, as artists, do to bring attention to the suffering of those who cannot protect themselves from COVID? Are we missing-in-action? Have we abandoned a society that has failed to support us, when artists have been suffering themselves?

Omicron continues to hit the performing arts

limelightmagazine.com.au: Anyone who went to the Sydney Festival opening night of Decadance at the Sydney Opera House or Girl From The North Country at Sydney’s Theatre Royal will have found a COVID-19 case alert in the COVID Safe Check-in history on their Service NSW App, saying that they may have been in contact with a person infected with COVID-19 and that they should monitor for symptoms.

FOCUS ON: Yamaha DHR & CHR Series

LightSoundJournal.com: In August 2021 Yamaha announced two important new products for professional audio loudspeakers, the DHR (active) and CHR (passive) series, each consisting of three models optimised to meet the needs of a wide variety of applications.

'Phantom of The Opera' Brings Its First Black 'Christine' to Broadway

www.theroot.com: New York City is rejoicing! After major pandemic related setbacks, Broadway is back. And with strong attempts made to diversify its full time casts, there is additional reason to celebrate. Broadway’s longest running musical, ‘Phantom of The Opera’ has debuted its first Black actress to play the lead role of Christine Daaé.

REVIEW: Pittsburgh Opera’s “The Rose Elf”

onStage Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh Opera finished the four-performance run of David Hertzberg‘s The Rose Elf with this afternoon’s matinee. Although the seating capacity of the George R. White Studio, in the renamed Bitz Opera Factory in the Strip, is limited to a couple of hundred people, all performances were sold out.

Could 'No Time to Die' VFX Team Land Oscar Nod After Four Decades?

Variety: With “No Time to Die,” Cary Joki Fukunaga took great care when it came to using VFX and special effects. From underwater fights to an Aston Martin DB5 shootout to an explosive finale, the latest James Bond installment “No Time to Die” is bursting with action-packed moments, but Fukunaga wanted to keep the emotional arc of the storytelling front and center. He didn’t want to undermine that sense of reality and use effects purely to enhance the emotional connection to Bond’s story.

3D Printer Showdown: $350 Consumer Vs $73,000 Pro Machine

Hackaday: The quality of consumer-grade 3D printing has gone way up in recent years. Resin printers, in particular, can produce amazing results and they get less expensive every day. [Squidmar] took a miniature design and printed it (or had it printed) on some cheap resin printers and a 65,000 Euro DWS029. How much difference could there be? You can see for yourself in the video below.

Robe BMFLs Provide Perfect Fixxx for Metallica 40 Concerts

LightSoundJournal.com: Metallica – among the most influential and legendary hardcore speed metal bands of all time – treated their fans to two epic concerts at San Francisco’s Chase Center in December, celebrating an incredible 40 years of provocative, ground-breaking music and performance.

Manipulate festival review – a wealth of delights for the imagination

Theatre | The Guardian: No single word can encapsulate Manipulate. The festival’s mix of animation, physical theatre and puppetry defies easy categorisation. The organisation itself opts for “visually led work”. On the strength of this year’s opening weekend, you could also call it a celebration of making something out of nothing.

PANDEMIC PUMMELS AMBASSADOR THEATRE GROUP

broadwayjournal.com: The self-described “world’s No. 1 live theater company” has taken a drubbing. The parent company of U.K.-based Ambassador Theatre Group reported a pretax loss of $202 million for the 12 months ended in March 2021. The holding company attributed the results to Covid-19, which decimated rental income when its theaters shuttered in March 2020.

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

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

What Are the 'Sunday Scaries,' and How Can You Beat Them?

lifehacker.com: You probably know the feeling: The night before you have to go back to work or school after being off for a couple of days (or longer), you start to feel anxious. You can’t focus, can’t sleep, and find yourself imagining all the stressful or annoying things that await you at work in the coming week. Welcome to the “Sunday Scaries.”

Posted by David at 1/28/2022 01:08:00 PM

Euphoria's Costume Designer on Dressing Maddy, Cassie, Jules, Kat

Variety: The second episode of “Euphoria” Season 2 begins with a dreamy sequence in a luxurious walk-in closet as Maddy Perez (Alexa Demie) — the alpha of the show’s many catty, mean girls — plays dress up with a wealthy mom’s clothes while babysitting.

Posted by David at 1/28/2022 01:08:00 PM

‘Encanto': Germaine Franco on Being the First Female Composer of a Disney Animated Feature

www.thewrap.com: “Encanto,” Disney’s latest animated musical, is having a moment. What’s so odd about this is that the movie was released back at Thanksgiving, but only now is reaching the kind of cultural critical mass that is usually associated with Disney’s most zeitgeist-capturing efforts. With the movie landing on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, its popularity exploded, particularly when it came to the songs by “Hamilton” mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda, which are now topping streaming charts along with the full album, featuring the lush original score by Germaine Franco.

Posted by David at 1/26/2022 10:01:00 AM

This startup is turning nonrecyclable plastic into building blocks fit

www.fastcompany.com: In a world of disposable everything, single-use plastics continue to reign supreme. Every year, Americans generate about 42 million tons of it. And yet only 9% of that gets recycled, in part because the recycling infrastructure in the U.S. can’t keep up with the country’s plastic production, but also because some plastics simply can’t be recycled.

Posted by David at 1/25/2022 11:01:00 AM

 

New dance performance features costumes made of spider silk

www.wallpaper.com: How do you make a substantial dance performance out of mist? That was the question that faced choreographer Damien Jalet, artist Kohei Nawa, and designer Sruli Recht as they developed their new project for Nederlands Dans Theater.

Posted by David at 1/28/2022 01:05:00 PM

 

What Are the 'Sunday Scaries,' and How Can You Beat Them?

lifehacker.com: You probably know the feeling: The night before you have to go back to work or school after being off for a couple of days (or longer), you start to feel anxious. You can’t focus, can’t sleep, and find yourself imagining all the stressful or annoying things that await you at work in the coming week. Welcome to the “Sunday Scaries.”

Euphoria's Costume Designer on Dressing Maddy, Cassie, Jules, Kat

Variety: The second episode of “Euphoria” Season 2 begins with a dreamy sequence in a luxurious walk-in closet as Maddy Perez (Alexa Demie) — the alpha of the show’s many catty, mean girls — plays dress up with a wealthy mom’s clothes while babysitting.

Artist Creates Beautiful Hairstyles That Look Like Ornate Flowers

mymodernmet.com: Who doesn't want to look like a flower in bloom? Vietnam-based artist Nguyễn Phát Trí transforms hair into complex floral designs that look like sculptural works of art. Each updo is made up of layers of gently-sculpted petals which create a mesmerizing flower that appears to grow from the person's head.

Metabo 18V Cordless 6 1/2-Inch Circular Saw KS 18 LTX 66 BL

PTR: With a set of short guide rails, you can make smooth and accurate bevel and miter cuts using just your circular saw. Longer rails let you replace a circular saw when cutting sheet goods. A good track-capable circular saw can cut down on the number of tools you need to bring to the jobsite.

New dance performance features costumes made of spider silk

www.wallpaper.com: How do you make a substantial dance performance out of mist? That was the question that faced choreographer Damien Jalet, artist Kohei Nawa, and designer Sruli Recht as they developed their new project for Nederlands Dans Theater.

AVIXA Launches Online-Proctored Certified Technology Specialist Exams

ProSoundWeb: AVIXA (Audiovisual Integrated Experience Association) has announced that the Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) exam is now available to take through online proctoring. “AVIXA is dedicated to helping AV professionals around the world on their pathways to certification.

10 Deck Building Tools You Didn't Know You Needed

Fine Homebuilding: You can build a deck with a very short list of tools, but if you have extra room in your budget, here are a few more items that will make the job easier.

Production Designer Ida Random to Receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 26th Annual Art Directors Guild Awards

News | wfmz.com: Academy Award®-nominated Production Designer Ida Random, best known for her work on Rain Man, The Big Chill and Silverado, will receive the Art Directors Guild (ADG, IATSE Local 800) Lifetime Achievement Award at the 26th Annual ADG Awards. The Awards ceremony returns to a live event on Saturday, March 5, 2022, at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown in the Wilshire Grand Ballroom.

These unique creations for three films had us at hello

Los Angeles Times: Every awards season, much oohing and aahing is done over meticulously rendered sets and gloriously tailored costumes in movies. But many contenders go one step beyond and present something unique and special — an object or gizmo that without it the whole film could flop over.

An Inside Look At A Late-Sunset Lighting Effect For The Witcher

www.rosco.com: UK-based Gaffer and Rosco Ambassador Wayne Shields recently worked with Cinematographers Jean-Philippe Gossart, Romain Lacourbas, and Terry Stacey on Season 2 of the popular Netflix fantasy epic The Witcher. The filmmakers worked to create a distinct visual aesthetic that combined fantasy with a medieval period setting. The set lighting team used a number of Rosco’s DMG MIX® LED fixtures to light the interior of the Witcher’s fortress – Kaer Morhen.

Darlinghurst Theatre Company appoints new Executive Director

limelightmagazine.com.au: Darlinghurst Theatre Company has announced the appointment of experienced arts executive Viv Rosman as its new Executive Director. Rosman takes over the role from outgoing ED and company founder Glenn Terry, who recently announced that he would be stepping away from the after 30 years of work with the theatre company.

NY Theatre Workshop Announces New Resident Companies

AMERICAN THEATRE: New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) has announced that Safe Harbors NYC, Dominican Artists Collective (DAC), and JAG Productions will join Noor Theatre as companies-in-residence. NYTW created the companies-in-residence program in 2005 to offer artistic and institutional support to small theatre companies and support growth through mentorship, access to free rehearsal and performance space, supplies, office space, and connections to the NYTW theatrical community.

Las Vegas conventions not deterred by COVID-19

Las Vegas Review-Journal: World of Concrete, a construction show specializing in masonry materials and services, and the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show, the largest firearms and ammunition event of its kind, both begin Tuesday in Las Vegas. They come a little more than two weeks after CES, which drew only a quarter of the anticipated attendees and has event organizers wondering how the rest of the year’s convention calendar will unfold.

Southwest Shakespeare Names Debra Ann Byrd Its New Artistic Director

AMERICAN THEATRE: Southwest Shakespeare Company has named Debra Ann Byrd to be the company’s new artistic director. A native of Spanish Harlem in New York City, Byrd is the founder of Harlem Shakespeare Festival and an award-winning, classically trained actress and producer.

Cirque du Soleil to debut major international shows in Saudi Arabia

www.arabnews.com: Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture has signed an agreement with the Canadian entertainment group Cirque du Soleil to enable it to put on its renowned creative performances in the Kingdom.

Dune: Oscars win for Best Makeup and Hairstyling like past sci-fi?

GoldDerby: Gold Derby odds-makers are betting on Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” to clean up in the below-the-line categories – as of this writing it’s projected for six wins! – but one category where it might have some stiff competition is Best Makeup and Hairstyling. As I noted in my previous piece about the category, transforming actors for biopics has often led to Oscar gold, and yet there’s also plenty of historical precedent for the academy to pick a fantasy or science-fiction epic like “Dune,” which features exemplary work by Donald Mowat and his team of artists and stylists.

2022 Without Walls (WOW) Festival Initial Lineup Announced

by NoPro Newswire | Jan, 2022 | No Proscenium: Without Walls (WOW) Festival in San Diego has long been the leading showcase for site-specific and immersive theatre in the United States, In years past the festival has brought artists like Pittsburgh’s Bricolage to the West Coast, and given a platform to homegrown voices like David Israel Reynoso’s Optika Moderna.

Sondheim’s Final Score & Last Word: Chameleon Composer, Wordsmith of Wordsmiths

Newcity Stage: Like so many, I have had Stephen Sondheim on the brain since his passing in late November. Much of what has been said about Sondheim seems to only scratch the surface or even miss the boat. The analogies to Shakespeare don’t work because Sondheim never wrote his own books. What does make Sondheim stand apart as a Broadway lyricist is that Sondheim lyrics can be read standalone as great poetry.

An interview with Amber Whatley, lighting designer

et cetera...: When Amber Whatley decided to study lighting design in college, she quickly realized that many of her peers were coming to the program with prior training because of the programs that existed at the high school level. Unfortunately, in the majority of Black communities in the United States, public schools aren’t able to offer arts programs because they are focused on raising enough money to hire core-subject teachers. Drama clubs, AV clubs, and theatre classes, simply don’t exist.

Surge Festival, A Reflection of Madrid’s Diverse Alternative Theater

The Theatre Times: October was the month of Surge Madrid festival. A collection of the alternative theater whose purpose was to show what artists on the fringes are doing. Dozens of plays could be enjoyed in the capital and in its surroundings during this time. It was a challenge for any reviewer or journalist covering the festival, as they had to select what to see and where to go in a city rich in theater temptations, even beyond the festival.

Prolight + Sound 2022: “Opus – German Stage Award” goes to “Dionysos Stadt Open Air”, special award for “Woodkid @ ZDF Magazin Royale”

LightSoundJournal.com: This year, the Opus honours two projects that could not be more different, and yet both are in the spirit of a creative approach to the challenges of the crisis. Last summer, the “Dionysos Stadt Open Air” showed that, with the courage to take risks, impressive art and culture experiences can be realised even in times of tough restrictions. The creators of the project “Woodkid @ ZDF Magazin Royale” broke new technological ground.

Ground Lessons: Performing with the Potato People at Bread and Puppet

HowlRound Theatre Commons: For the past four years, I have been a puppeteer with Bread and Puppet Theater, a radical political puppet company. Founded in 1963 by Peter and Elka Schumann in New York City, Bread and Puppet later relocated to its current home base in rural Vermont. At Bread and Puppet, I have performed with many puppets: a small puppet of an angel playing the trumpet, flat cardboard chairs of various sizes, a giant embracer puppet’s skirt, the butt in a two-person cow costume, a buffalo butt, a tiger butt, a zebra butt… generally lots of butts.

72 hours of unpaid work? 'Unacceptable,' say dancers and critics of Super Bowl halftime show

Los Angeles Times: Hundreds of excited “fans” will pour onto the field while hip-hop dream team Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar perform during the Super Bowl LVI halftime show on Feb. 13. Viewers will probably see them move their bodies to the music. What they won’t see are the 72 hours they spent over nine days in unpaid rehearsals lasting as long as nine hours a stretch — and how they were asked to provide their own transportation and adhere to a strict confidentiality protocol.

NEA Announces American Rescue Plan Grants to Arts Organizations

National Endowment for the Arts: The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) today announced it has recommended American Rescue Plan (ARP) awards totaling $57,750,000 to 567 arts organizations to help the arts and cultural sector recover from the pandemic. The organizations may use this funding to save jobs, and to fund operations and facilities, health and safety supplies, and marketing and promotional efforts to encourage attendance and participation.

‘Encanto': Germaine Franco on Being the First Female Composer of a Disney Animated Feature

www.thewrap.com: “Encanto,” Disney’s latest animated musical, is having a moment. What’s so odd about this is that the movie was released back at Thanksgiving, but only now is reaching the kind of cultural critical mass that is usually associated with Disney’s most zeitgeist-capturing efforts. With the movie landing on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, its popularity exploded, particularly when it came to the songs by “Hamilton” mastermind Lin-Manuel Miranda, which are now topping streaming charts along with the full album, featuring the lush original score by Germaine Franco.

2022 Cinema Audio Society Awards nominations: Dune leads

GoldDerby: The Oscar frontrunner for Best Sound, “Dune,” reaped a bid for Best Sound Mixing at the the Cinema Audio Society Awards on January 25 as as did two of the other predicted Oscar nominees: “No Time to Die” and “West Side Story.” Also in contention with the CAS are “The Power of the Dog” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” They bumped two of our predicted Oscar nominees: “Belfast” and “tick, tick… BOOM!”

'Fight Club' Censored in China, Gets New Ending in Censorship Wars

Variety: David Fincher’s classic “Fight Club” has been given a different ending in China, where it’s now available on Tencent Video. The story of exactly how the new version came about is unsurprisingly murky, but it does provide something of a win-win situation for all parties.

Peter Dinklage Slams Disney's 'Snow White' Remake

www.themarysue.com: Peter Dinklage blasted Disney’s planned remake of Snow White in a new interview on the WTF with Marc Maron podcast. The Game of Thrones actor said, “There’s a lot of hypocrisy going on … Literally no offense to anyone, but I was a little taken aback when they were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White. But you’re still telling the story of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me.”

Disney Assures Peter Dinklage on ‘Snow White’ Reboot: ‘We Are Taking a Different Approach’ on Dwarf Characters

www.thewrap.com: Disney responded Tuesday to Peter Dinklage’s recent comments to Marc Maron about the upcoming remake of Disney animated classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” assuring him that the new movie won’t be as incendiary as imagined.

'Chasing Andy Warhol' Unveiled by Bated Breath Theatre Company

Variety: Theatergoers can soon get an up-close-and-personal brush with a legendary pop art provocateur. Bated Breath Theatre Company, which recently produced the award-winning “Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec,” will launch its newest immersive and theatrical walking tour production, “Chasing Andy Warhol.”

Bringing Trouble: An Account of a Travelling Bicycle Puppet Show

HowlRound Theatre Commons: The hill was revealed by oncoming headlights, beacons signaling the steep ascent before us. Our legs instinctively pedaled faster, the weight of our cargo pulling us backwards even as we climbed. The cargo consisted of two brightly colored boxes built around modified bicycle trailers, each mounted with a magenta flag that had the word “circus” stitched on it. Their contents included a dancing bear, a singing toad, a talking rat, and the strongest of all turtles. Our starlit journey carried us over the coastal terrain of the southern shore of Nova Scotia, Canada—another performance behind us, more to come in the next county.

Oscars: Best Makeup and Hairstyling advantage for biopics

GoldDerby: “Actor X loses him/herself in a role.” “So-and-so’s performance was transformative.” “They literally become this real-life person.” We’ve heard statements along those lines so many times over the years when critics and movie journalists are talking about an actor’s performance in a biopic. Usually, that praise is well-earned, but rarely is the work by the makeup artists and hair stylists adequately acknowledged, especially the prosthetics makeup artists who need to do a lot of the often-overlooked work to alter an actor’s features to be more in line with the real-life people they’re portraying.

Does Buying Carbon Offets When You Travel Even Do Anything?

lifehacker.com: If you’re traveling again and have any amount of anxiety over climate change, you might have considered whether to buy carbon offset credits to minimize the environmental impact of your flight. One study found that 8% of carbon emissions across the globe are generated by tourism—and approximately half of that comes from transportation. Air travel makes up a very small percentage of overall emissions compared to driving (and industry, obviously), but it’s not nothing. So is it worth it to purchase carbon offsets for your flight?

Costume Designers Awards Predictions: 'Dune' and 'House of Gucci'

Variety: The nominations for the Costume Designers Guild Awards will be released on Wednesday, recognizing the achievements of the artisans that created some of the most memorable outfits and clothing designs of the year. Following the 10-month eligibility window, the community of over 1,200 members separates the film categories into three groups — contemporary, period and sci-fi/fantasy.

As "Tootsie" opens big run, are Fox Theatre's Covid protocols strict enough?

ARTS ATL: Rescheduled from December, the musical Tootsie premieres tonight at Atlanta’s 4,665-seat Fox Theatre for an eight-performance run. Based on the beloved Oscar-winning film and the winner of two Tony Awards, the production is expected to draw sizable crowds. Yet, at the same time, safety concerns about attending large venues hang over the heads of many theatergoers, especially with the Omicron variant still spreading, even if it appears finally to have peaked.

How Theatres Are Facing the Omicron Wave

AMERICAN THEATRE: Shows postponed or canceled. Heated debates over ventilation systems, the “hygiene theatre” of masking, and whether the promise that everything will be back to normal in a few weeks is a fallacy. Sound familiar? If you’ve found the last six weeks too reminiscent of March 2020, you’re not alone: Artists and arts administrators across the country have been up to their ears in discussions of budgets and grants, season calendar rearrangements, rights and royalties disputes, and other quotidian but draining tasks, thanks to the surging Omicron variant of COVID-19.