Stove becomes stage in Playful People's interactive cooking class with theater twist

Datebook: Broadway actor and San Jose native Aaron Albano had his stage set: garlic, onion, distilled white vinegar, soy sauce, chicken legs, spices and a rice cooker. And it was important to have a rice cooker filled with good rice — none of that “cheap garbage rice,” he instructed his audience in advance.

Aroma-turgy: What’s Smell Got to Do With It?

AMERICAN THEATRE: I still can’t shake the smell of the blood.

It’s been a few weeks since I saw Ivo van Hove’s Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, which ended with a waterfall of stage blood that drenched the huddled performers, staining their all-white costumes and the all-white set. But as startling as it was to look at, it was even more unsettling to smell.

AI Platforms for Interactive Storytellers: New and Improved Tools

by ~shirin anlen | Sep, 2020 | Immerse: At the beginning of 2018, I curated a list of five accessible tools aimed at anyone with basic Python scripting abilities for Docubase. I was a beginner in the field of machine learning and overwhelmed by its complexity. Machine learning can be a fantastic tool for creators, but integrating AI into your workflow is a challenge for those who don’t have much coding experience.

Best Of Venice VR 2020: Oculus Quest Impressions

uploadvr.com: The 77th Venice International Film Festival is currently in full swing, with a big offering of virtual experiences this year as part of Venice VR Expanded.

There’s a wealth of VR content available across multiple platforms, but of particular interest are some of the 6DoF Oculus Quest experiences available to those with festival accreditation. Some of these are premiering at Venice while others were already available at festivals earlier in the year.

charles petillon's interactive balloon installation generates sound and music

www.designboom.com: french artist and photographer charles pétillon has installed his trademark white balloons within the grand hall of bordeaux’s national opera. however, in developing the project, pétillon — who has previously ‘invaded’ sites in both milan and london with large scale balloon compositions — took a slightly different approach. rather than a static display, the artist created a truly interactive installation that generates sound and music for visitors.

Mira Sorvino worried she’d be blackballed over #MeToo: “Instead, we were the tip of a tidal wave”

Salon.com: A year ago, Mira Sorvino thought her acting career was over. The Oscar winner found herself wondering if she could stage a reinvention as a full time humanitarian. Instead, she's as in demand as ever, with recent costarring roles on "Modern Family" and "Condor," and now, joining the cast of Crackle's thriller series "StartUp" as Rebecca Stroud, an NSA agent with a few quirks and a lot of secrets.

Riot Games sued over allegations of sexual harassment, pay disparity

Ars Technica: Two women—one who used to work at Riot Games, and one who currently does—have now sued the game studio, alleging violations of California equal pay laws, sexual harassment, and discrimination.

Impressions of MuseumNext NYC 2018

ExhibiTricks: The Museum Exhibit Design Blog: I attended my first MuseumNext Conference that just happened in Manhattan. MuseumNext often bills itself with the tagline "The Future of Museums" and while this NYC edition had a decidedly digital bent, I was pleased to discover that not everything in the museum world's future appears to be digital.

How to Work with Different Communication Styles in the Office

www.lifehack.org: We all have our own unique way of communicating with each other. This is true in our personal lives as well as at work.

We all have run into people at both work and play that we just don’t seem to get. Not only do we not hit it off with them, we honestly have a hard time understanding the point they are making. It can be very frustrating interacting with someone when it seems like we are miles apart in the understanding department.

Take the Hell Out of Hell Week

AMERICAN THEATRE: “Hell week” doesn’t actually have to be hell. Sure, it can mean long hours in the theatre, with first tech runs that can make even the most confident practitioners question if it will all come together. But it still doesn’t need to be awful. What’s the key to a more humane tech? It can be as simple as remembering that everyone involved is human.

7 Scream Queens Traumatized by Directors Who Made Them Famous

The Mary Sue: Ever since I watched Heather O’Rourke get sucked into the TV in Poltergeist, I’ve always wondered about child actors in horror movies. As a perpetual scaredy cat growing up, I struggled to see how the hell these kids coped on-set. Did they understand what was really going on around them? Did the grown-ups sugar-coat it to retain their innocence?

Parkland kids' Rube Goldberg machine illustrates the aftermath of school shootings

Boing Boing: Alex Little writes, "The Parkland kids created a rube goldberg machine that shows the predictable domino effect of responses from politicians and media after every school shooting."

Are Church Planting Techniques Suited To The Arts?

Butts In the Seats: I was recently listening to an episode of This American Life on church planting and found it a little strange to be listening to people use venture capitalist terminology to describe efforts to build new worship communities as “target the unchurched.”

Gauging Levels of Participation in the Arts across America

NEA: Every segment of the economy, every branch of knowledge, and every field of human endeavor requires stories and statistics to help explain it to others and to itself.

Storytelling is the main approach we use, no matter who we are or where we come from, to justify choices as individuals or members of society. When it comes to decisions involving the arts—whether we’re talking about resource allocation for a school or community, how to curate a playlist or personal library, which furniture pieces to buy, or which show to attend—emotion-fueled narratives play an outsized part. This is to be expected. As we all know (increasingly through neuroscience), the arts routinely activate our deepest personal responses.

The Value of a Human Life: A Director's Perspective on Pass Over

Breaking Character: Directing is elusive. There is something ephemeral and fleeting about the art of directing. You can’t read it, hold it in your hands, or e-mail it. It must be felt. Direction lives in the thin space between the play and the audience—the exchange of performer and spectator. It lives in the freedom and rigor of the physicality of the performers and in the detail of the design world that ensconces the text. Directing lives in the tone of the play and in the perspective by which we view the play.

What to think about before being honest

www.fastcompany.com: Giving someone negative feedback, even when it’s requested, can be uncomfortable. You never know how well your input will be received, and you don’t know what the person will do once they have the information. But people can’t grow unless they know where their gap areas are, says Cheryl Hyatt, partner at Hyatt-Fennell Executive Search.

What it's like going to Burning Man for the first time

Business Insider: There are three of us, cramped inside a dusty Toyota that's packed to the gills along with a triad of busted bicycles hanging precariously off the back.

We are flanked on every side by travelers who, like us, have driven several hours to form what has turned out to be a particularly sluggish caravan into Black Rock City, Nevada.

Les Moonves: The Dark Side of Working for the CBS Head

Variety: For all the years it has been America’s most-watched network, CBS’ secret weapon was always recognized in the industry to be the stability of core management under the leadership of Leslie Moonves.

I’m Still a Terrorist in Hollywood’s Eyes, Years After 9/11

www.vulture.com: This week, we observe the 17th anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11, as well as the beginning of a new fall TV season. As unconnected as those are for most Americans, they are totally intertwined for me, and many other MENA (Middle Eastern and North African) actors. I moved to Hollywood a few months after 9/11. One of my first TV roles was on a TV pilot called Homeland Security, where I actually played one of the 9/11 hijackers in flight school. I had a handful of lines, including, “Is okay, I don’t need to land.” At the time, I was happy to be working, and I didn’t mind playing such a one-dimensional character because I hoped and expected I would eventually play more complex non-terrorist roles. But in the last 17 years, nearly every MENA role I’ve played or auditioned for was in some way informed by 9/11.

CMU's Tepper Quad opens as a hub for collaboration, study and socializing

www.nextpittsburgh.com: It’s been nearly three years since ground was broken for Tepper Quad. Today, the sprawling 315,000-square-foot building officially opened at Carnegie Mellon University.