A casino in hectic Times Square? This theater critic says heck no.

The Washington Post: That “permanent floating crap game” that good old reliable Nathan is always trying to set up may be coming to Times Square. I’m not talking about “Guys and Dolls” — though that, coincidentally, may be in the cards, too. No, what’s actually being pitched is a casino in the heart of the theater district, a serious proposal that has deeply alarmed the Broadway establishment.

Brit Row Reflects on Supporting Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concerts

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: The untimely passing of Foo Fighters' charismatic drummer, Taylor Hawkins, left the music industry in a state of shock, with some even speculating as to whether the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees would ever perform again.

Production Sound Mixer Lawrence Chick Captures The "Sound Of Scary" With Lectrosonics

ProSoundWeb: In Brando Lee’s film Don’t Look at the Demon, an American team of paranormal investigators visits an opulent house in the highlands of Fraser’s Hill, Malaysia, where production sound mixer Lawrence Chick turned to Lectrosonics Digital Hybrid wireless gear that includes four SMQV, two watertight WM and plug-on HMa transmitters for boom work joined by five UCR411a and an SRb receivers, with ALP650 amplified directional antennas delivering additional support while IFB was handled by an IFBT4 transmitter and three R1a receivers.

3D technology setting the stage for faster, more efficient theatre costumes

www.abcactionnews.com/news: Costume-making for theater hasn’t changed much since electric sewing machines were invented more than 100 years ago. It’s a time-consuming and expensive process, but using existing technology for a new purpose could bring a whole new dimension to costume design.

Limitless AI immersive show tests limits of media servers

www.avinteractive.com: An army of Hippotizer media servers are feeding vast amounts of visual data to 63 HD projectors inside ArtsDistrict Brooklyn’s Limitless AI immersive experience, filling the 1,000 sq m gallery space with a 360° video.

The Museum of Broadway Is Open. Here Are 10 Highlights.

The New York Times: When a Broadway show closes, the next stop for the hundreds of costumes, setpieces and props is often … the dumpster. “The producers often stop paying rent in a storage unit somewhere, which is heartbreaking,” said Julie Boardman, one of the founders of the Museum of Broadway, which opened in Times Square this month.

Being Disorganized Is Costing You Money

lifehacker.com: As long as inflation keeps making our lives more and more expensive, it’s crucial to be as conscientious a spender as possible. The last thing you want is to keep losing money on the typically avoidable costs that come with being disorganized. As someone who has dabbled in being a disorganized procrastinator, I know just how expensive being scatter-brained can be.

How I became a hologram

Boing Boing: Okay well I guess the short answer to the question there in the headline is "Some PR person emailed me and said 'hey, you wanna try out our new holopresence tech?'" So obviously, I took them up on it. Who doesn't want to be a hologram?

How I Found 25 Yiddish-Speaking Actors for Fiddler on the Roof Off-Broadway

Playbill: “A Fiddler Afn Dakh. Meshugeh, neyn?” “A fiddler on the roof: Crazy, no?” These are the opening lines uttered by Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof In Yiddish now playing Off-Broadway, for the third time, at New York Stages. They also happened to be the first words I thought of when I was asked to cast the show.

With an ‘Othello’ of His Own, Clint Dyer Comes Full Circle

The New York Times: When Clint Dyer was an aspiring actor in the mid-1980s, he made his first visit to the National Theater, the revered London playhouse whose productions are a showcase for the great and good of British drama. “I’d never seen a stage that size,” Dyer recalled recently. “I’d never seen actors of that level. What a thing! How inspiring!”

rafael lozano-hemmer's glimmering 'pulse topology' arrives in miami with BMW i

www.designboom.com: After its previous debut in Switzerland at Design Miami/ Basel 2022, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer‘s ‘Pulse Topology’ comes to Miami Art Week together with longstanding Art Basel partner BMW i. The immersive installation comprises three thousand suspended lights, which together form an undulating new landscape within the lofty gallery space of Superblue Miami. Visitors are invited to engage with the interactive artwork, whose custom-made pulse sensors translate an individual’s heartbeat into a glimmering and pulsating light show.

Can This Man Stop Lying?

The New York Times: Christopher Massimine is trying not to lie. He’s trying not to lie when his wife asks him whether he has sorted the recycling, or when his mother-in-law’s friend Mary Ann asks whether he liked the baked appetizers she brought over.

James McAvoy: ‘Cyrano’ Cast Was Racially Abused on Glasgow Stage Play

IndieWire: James McAvoy is grappling with his Glasglow roots. The Scottish actor revealed that during a two-week stint of the West End play “Cyrano de Bergerac” in Glasglow, his female co-stars were “racially abused” on a daily basis.

Front Porch Theatricals reveals ‘Falsettos,’ ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ as 2023 musicals

onStage Pittsburgh: The 2023 season just announced by Front Porch Theatricals is further evidence that the company that bills itself as “Pittsburgh’s boutique musical theater company” has a keen eye for works that capture the current zeitgeist while paying homage to giants from the past.

Extensive, unified RTS deployment delivers “cohesive comms” at Latin Billboard Awards

LightSoundJournal.com: The 2022 Latin Billboard Awards, staged live from the Watsco Center in Coral Gables, Florida, was an ambitious production, made just a bit more fraught as Hurricane Ian approached the peninsula. Fortunately, the weather event did not hit the Miami area directly – although it did cause the red-carpet event to move indoors.

Top of the Stack: Colossal's Favorite Art Books of 2022

Colossal: As we near the end of 2022, we’re taking a look back at the year, starting with the books we found most compelling, impressive, and inspirational. We’ve published dozens of articles on artist monographs and compendiums of broader topics across art and design and science and history over the last 12 months, and these are the 10 titles that impacted us most.

Interested in Choreographing During College? Read These Tips Before Stepping Into the Directing Role

Dance Magazine: For many dancers, college offers a first opportunity to experiment with choreography and produce work for the stage. The availability of dancers, studio space and faculty guidance can give students a safe environment in which to try a new avenue of dance. Karen Stokes, director of the dance department at the University of Houston, encourages dancers to take advantage of choreographic opportunities, even if they’re new to the process of getting a completed work onstage: “Whether or not they end up producing their own work, through the process they learn time management and how to collaborate with other people,” she says. Because getting dance onstage extends beyond choreography, we asked recent dance majors for advice on what to keep in mind when producing work in a college setting for the first time.

TikTok's Jessie Voice Is at Peace With People Saying Bad Things

www.businessinsider.com: The woman behind TikTok's famous text-to-speech voice, Jessie, said she's made peace with the platform's creators using it to say bad things on the app. Kat Callaghan, a radio host on Canada's 91.5 The Beat station, told The Verge she can distance herself from TikToks that use her voice to say profane things.

Gear Guide 2022

Transom: The annual timetable of holiday shopping has increasingly smeared in the last few years, with sales offered by various retailers appearing before and after the traditional “Black Friday” and newer “Cyber Monday” focuses. Regardless of the specific timing, it’s a good time to shop for audio production gear, as a gift for a producer or reporter you know, or as an end-of-year upgrade to your own studio or remote-recording rig.

Producers and Filmmakers now have Secret Weapon for vetting crews

Reel 360 News: Every producer and filmmaker (especially this filmmaker) understands the headaches (and heartburn) that accompany finding, and keeping, a great crew. Face it, great crews are hard to find. And they get scooped up fast. Add to that the studio re-orgs, budget cuts, and consistent Covid delays, and you have a perfect storm.

Embrace curiosity. Rorschach Theatre's 'Dissonant City' begins.

DC Theater Arts: It’s an exciting premise: a mysterious box appears at your home. Contained in the box are artifacts and objects that give hints to a larger story, as well as an address and invitation to explore an unknown location. Travel to that location and follow instructions in the box to go on a journey of the mind and body that promises to “dive into more than a century of DC music and find out just what it means to be immortal.”

Dealing with the Feels: Demystifying Emotions in Acting Classes with Emotional Intelligence

HowlRound Theatre Commons: “Very little” was the response to the question, “What role do you feel emotions play in teaching acting?” The respondent was a male acting professor teaching at a public university in the Northeast. Through my research on the utilization of emotions in college acting training, I discovered that there are many valid reasons why acting teachers are not talking about emotions in their acting classes. What I have heard over and over again is acting teachers are afraid that if they talk about emotions students will “play” emotions while performing. Most commonly, however, is the fact that both students and faculty do not feel equipped to discuss emotions.

Did Ticketmaster’s Market Dominance Fuel the Chaos for Swifties?

Yale Insights: Ticketmaster currently controls over 70% of the market for ticketing and live events and is far and away the market leader. Strictly speaking, that does not make Ticketmaster a monopoly because it is not the only seller, but its large market share gives it a dominant position which raises concerns that it may abuse its market power.

15 Roadie Gift Ideas 2022 - Give Something They Will Love

Rich Roadie: Roadies are some of the hardest people to shop for. They only have a limited number of things they can bring with them in their travels. So, everything they do have is vital to their lifestyle. With that being said, I put lots of thought into choosing products that are an asset for any roadie and are must-haves on the road.

John, Paul, Pyramus, and Thisbe: The Beatles performing Shakespeare

shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu: On April 28, 1964, the most famous band in the history of popular music taped a television special at Wembley Park Studios in London. The show was called Around the Beatles, and it followed hard on the heels of the Beatles’ legendary first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show less than three months earlier. This time, though, the group’s appearance did not begin with a rock and roll song, but rather with the performance of something quite different: the “Pyramus and Thisbe” episode from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Josie Rourke: ‘If Shakespeare was alive now he’d be under commission to Nica Burns’

Theatre | The Guardian: As You Like It comes to London’s new venue @sohoplace this winter. The play’s director and the theatre’s owner discuss arts cuts, the industry’s gender balance and the pandemic

London’s Theater Cuts Matter, on Broadway and Beyond

The New York Times: Standing ovations at London theaters are drearily routine these days, but I experienced one a few weeks ago that felt genuinely impassioned. I’m thinking of the fervent audience response to a new two-character play, “Blackout Songs,” on Hampstead Theater’s intimate second stage.

Honoring Legends in Dance at the 2022 Dance Magazine Awards

Dance Magazine: The dancers, choreographers and scholars that make up this remarkable group of 2022 Dance Magazine Award honorees are notable not only for their artistry but also for their impact on the field of dance and the world at large.

The Wonder: Netflix's story of 19th century 'fasting girls' reminds us starving bodies remain a public spectacle today

theconversation.com: In October, US tabloid the New York Post reported somewhat gleefully that the early 2000s trend for “heroin chic” is back. After a brief period of limited body diversity, it reported, runways were once again full of extremely young, wraith-like white women.

Holiday Gifts For Theater Lovers 2022

New York Theater: The return of in-person theater is accompanied by new opportunities for theater-adjacent gift-giving. How about subsidizing a visit to the new Museum of Broadway? (my review: 10 things I learned, 11 rooms I liked.) You can browse the reopened Drama Book Shop, new co-owner Lin-Manuel Miranda (my visit) — or check out the store’s online shopping page.

Global Creatures invites people to get a taste of backstage work

limelightmagazine.com.au/features: There is currently a shortage of backstage staff and crew in Australia, so much so that Global Creatures, the producer of Moulin Rouge! The Musical, is staging a free event at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre called GET TECHNICAL! Behind the Curtain of Moulin Rouge! The Musical.

Black Panther is a step in the right direction and a diverse audience is hungry for more inclusive roles and storylines

theconversation.com: From Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness to the recent She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, comics and their adaptations or spin-offs are big business. The just-released Black Panther: Wakanda Forever earned an astonishing US$330 million worldwide (£278 million) in its opening weekend.

And Reverie Shall Restore Amends

AMERICAN THEATRE: As they say in the theatre, the show must go on. It is a motto of perseverance and priority, a signifier that no matter what happens, whether a prop breaks, your stockings tear, the set falls down, or your microphone cuts out, at the end of the day a curtain must rise and a story must be told. But what happens when this motto is taken too far? When the art becomes more important than the artists, when the production matters more than the conditions you cultivate, what recourse does anyone have?

The largest stadium in Switzerland relies on RCF HL Line Arrays

LightSoundJournal.com: The St. Jakob Park, locally referred to as “Joggeli”, looks back on a long history. The largest stadium in Switzerland follows a new construction managed by the architects Herzog & de Meuron. After several extensions, St. Jakob Park is the first multifunctional venue in Switzerland with apartments, a shopping center, restaurants, department stores, and is also a UEFA Category 4 stadium.

Andy Blankenbuehler Opens Up About Only Gold and the Road Ahead

Dance Magazine: It begins with a magazine photograph of a preposterous necklace, five strands of more than 2,000 diamonds, one of them the size of a golf ball. Some dozen years after seeing it, Andy Blankenbuehler brings a long-cherished pet project, a stunning dance musical called Only Gold, to off-Broadway’s MCC Theater for a two-month run (ending November 27).

Julie Hesmondhalgh: ‘I wasn’t aware of class until I went to drama school in London’

Acting | The Guardian: Our arts industry, like our country, is class-ridden. And yet to talk about class is often seen as a throwback. For decades, politicians have been trying to tell us that class doesn’t exist, possibly in the hope that we’d all conveniently stop looking at the unequal ways in which the UK’s wealth continues to be distributed. What does it mean to be “working class” anyway? And how do we fairly and authentically measure that?

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

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

How to Accept Help (Even When It Feels Awkward)

lifehacker.com: Asking for or accepting help can bring up a wide range of complicated emotions. There’s the fear of being seen as needy or weak; the nervousness associated with showing vulnerability; or the worry that asking for help means you are entitled. But as hard as it can be to accept help from others, giving and receiving is a necessary part of life.

Posted by David at 11/25/2022 10:34:00 AM

How You Will Get Sick Created a Wheat Field On Stage, With Real Wheat

Playbill: When director Sam Pinkleton is asked what the play You Will Get Sick by Noah Diaz is about, he has a very straightforward answer: “It's about a guy who turns into a scarecrow.” Suffice it to say, there’s a lot of hay involved. And wheat. Because a scarecrow always needs to be in a wheat field.

Posted by David at 11/23/2022 11:17:00 AM

Taylor Swift ticket sale problems spark widespread criticism of Ticketmaster

CANVAS Arts: Fans of Taylor Swift hoping to score tickets to her upcoming tour have met a confusing and chaotic system, prompting outrage from fans and lawmakers alike.

Posted by David at 11/25/2022 11:21:00 AM

Robots that Can Feel Cloth Layers May One Day Help with Laundry

www.cmu.edu/news: New research from Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute (RI) can help robots feel layers of cloth rather than relying on computer vision tools to only see it. The work could allow robots to assist people with household tasks like folding laundry.

Posted by David at 11/24/2022 10:32:00 AM

3D for everyone? Nvidia’s Magic3D can generate 3D models from text

Ars Technica: On Friday, researchers from Nvidia announced Magic3D, an AI model that can generate 3D models from text descriptions. After entering a prompt such as, "A blue poison-dart frog sitting on a water lily," Magic3D generates a 3D mesh model, complete with colored texture, in about 40 minutes. With modifications, the resulting model can be used in video games or CGI art scenes.

Posted by David at 11/22/2022 10:56:00 AM

 

‘Meet the Experts’ Film Production Design roundtable panel

GoldDerby: How do you ensure authenticity so that your designs don’t look like sets and props? What film of TV series do you hold up as a gold standard in production design? These were some of the secrets revealed by four top film production designers when they joined Gold Derby’s special “Meet the Experts” Q&A event with 2022/2023

Daniel Pemberton (‘Amsterdam’ composer) video interview

GoldDerby: “I came on the film pretty late,” says composer Daniel Pemberton while discussing his work on David O. Russell‘s latest film “Amsterdam.” “They had tried a few things out with music beforehand that hadn’t worked out, which I think is partly due to the film being complex. It’s not a straightforward, generic, formulaic movie. It is a complicated movie with so many different strands in it. I think it was difficult to work out what the score should be.”

IATSE International Rep Yvonne Wheeler elected President of the LA County Federation of Labor

IATSE: IATSE International Representative Yvonne Wheeler was unanimously elected Monday evening as the President of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Wheeler, the first Black woman to hold the position, will oversee the organization of 300 affiliated unions and over 800,000 members.

Play On Shakespeare Develops Program Pairing Shakespeare Translations and New Work With Magic Theatre

Playbill: Play On Shakespeare is partnering with The Magic Theatre for a multi-year residency focused on developing new plays. The partnership kicks off December 18 with Naomi Iizuka's version of Richard II, performing at 7 PM.

MÜPA Budapest invests in Robe

LightSoundJournal.com: Palace of the Arts – enjoys a commanding position on the shores of the Danube in Hungary’s vibrant capital Budapest and is a powerhouse for high quality arts productions. Its prestigious venues include the 1700-capacity Bartok National Concert Hall and the festival theatre which accommodates 450 people.

Arcade Comedy Theater is Sketching Out an Exciting December

onStage Pittsburgh: From the deck of the Titanic, to a scene on Mars, to a motel in the year 0 B.C., Sketchville is a production filled with surprises. Directed by Parag S. Gohel and written by over 15 local authors, the show offers audiences a chance to be transported into a world of wild ideas, big characters, and timely satire.

Taylor Swift ticket sale problems spark widespread criticism of Ticketmaster

CANVAS Arts: Fans of Taylor Swift hoping to score tickets to her upcoming tour have met a confusing and chaotic system, prompting outrage from fans and lawmakers alike.

LDI Awards 2022

LightSoundJournal.com: LDI concludes with the customary LDI Awards, which honored booths, projects and products featured in Las Vegas this year. Jessi Cybulski, LDI director, welcomed the various participants, inside the Circle Bar, once again provided by Andrew Gumper and AG Productions.

Jess Gonchor (‘White Noise’ production designer) video interview

GoldDerby: “Rarely as production designers do you get a chance to work on something that you feel like you have a grasp on the visuals of it,” admits Oscar-nominated production designer Jess Gonchor (“True Grit,” “Hail, Caesar!”) about designing the genre-bending comedy/drama “White Noise.” For our recent webchat he adds, “we have to become experts in things in 12, 14 weeks that we have no right being an expert on.