BUT I GET TO BE RACIST BECAUSE ART: The Mikado

Bitter Gertrude: With last year’s massive national controversy about The Mikado in Seattle, it’s difficult to believe that anyone, anywhere, would be doing The Mikado in yellowface, right? I mean, Rick Shiomi at Skylark Opera in collaboration with Mu Performing Arts in Minneapolis showed us all how it’s done back in 2013: Since the work is actually meant to lampoon British Victorians, why not actually dress them as British Victorians? A few very small, non-invasive line changes and voila. Now you get to have Mikado sans racism. That’s what we all want, right?

Judge Upholds OSHA Fines on ‘Midnight Rider’ Filmmakers

Variety: A judge has refused to overturn almost $75,000 in fines against the “Midnight Rider” filmmakers for safety violations in connection with the Feb. 20, 2014 train accident that killed camera assistant Sarah Jones and injured eight others.

The judge, Sharon D. Calhoun, upheld the fines in a decision issued on Tuesday.

Five Entertainment Tech Trends You Need to Know

Variety: Entertainment technology has shrunk time and space over the centuries, preserving performances for posterity and allowing them to be seen far away from the performance venue. The next generation of tech promises to deliver to audiences ever-more-lifelike screen images, to give filmmakers and shutterbugs alike more flexibility at less cost, to take audiences to places they could never go — and even to change the way audiences perceive reality in real time.

#SayNoToMikado: Here’s a Pretty Mess

2AMt » Blog Archive: Nearly 4 years ago, as a fresh face on New York’s scene, I attended the inaugural Asian American Performer’s Action Coalition (AAPAC) meeting held at Fordham University. A multicultural caucus of over five hundred Asians and non-Asians alike we were gathered to discuss the severe lack in quantity and quality of stage roles available to actors and performers of Asian descent.

A Brief History of Creative Borrowing

The Creators Project: Ariana Grande’s song with Mac Miller entitled, "The Way," has been viewed 253 million times on YouTube. I can’t even hear that song anymore I’ve heard it so much. Don't get me wrong, I love it—the summer it came out, I played it in my sleep. Now I’m wondering how many kids have watched and listened to that song without recognizing that the piano melody at the core of it was taken from a Brenda Russell song back in 1979 called "A Little Bit of Love," which was then taken and sampled in the late rap singer Big Pun’s record "Still Not a Player." All before before Grande was six years old.

How To Talk To Non-Techies

SoundGirls: There’s nothing like an international project where you’re working remotely to highlight the importance of clear communications – especially when you have to entrust the sound play out to colleagues who admit to knowing nothing about sound.

I recently worked on a work-in-progress show where the company rehearsed and performed in France and I designed the sound remotely from my studio in London. My task was to create the sound design and programme it into the play out system (QLab) ready for the stage manager to operate. Budget constraints meant it wasn’t possible for me to attend any of the rehearsals or the final performances. I had to create a complex and reactive sound design without watching any of the rehearsals and without seeing the venue, then trust to the company of performers to make it work in the venue without me.

How the Women's Voices Theater Festival Is Paving the Way for Gender Parity

TheaterMania.com: Arena Stage artistic director Molly Smith is quick to point out just how unlikely it is that seven artistic directors competing for audiences in one city would come to a joint decision, let alone a unanimous one, over a mid-morning meal. Equally improbable, Smith posits, is that they would quickly agree to open up their new project to include the city's entire theater community. However, the fact that such a chain of events really did unfold just two years ago in Washington, D.C., at the home of Eric Schaeffer, artistic director of the Signature Theatre, can be seen as a testament to the vital importance of the issue at hand: a glaring lack of gender parity among the playwrights being produced in the American theater.

The Most Important, Invisible Person in the Theater: The Stage Manager

L.A. Weekly: Easy to ignore is the one player who should never be ignored — the woman ever so quietly pushing a table into place on the stage and setting on the table a few props, rubber representations of knives, a bowl. And, at some distance from the table, setting up a video camera, which will be pivotal to the play's action. That player is Megan Crockett, the stage manager.

Choose yourself: tips on starting a producing playwrights collective

The Playwrights' Center: Orbiter 3 is an experiment that reimagines the 13P model for our particular Philly context. Our mission is to embrace artistic risk, empower local artists, and chase the playwright’s vision. In three years, we’ll produce six plays, and then transform into an online resource. We’re a theatrical startup, inspired by collectives like the Welders, Applied Mechanics, and Workhaus, modeling out a new way of producing we hope will catch on and scale up.

FALL THEATER 2015

Chicago Tribune: Roll up the beach blankets and break out the warm blankets. Fall will be here before you can say "pumpkin spice" and that means a harvest of fine theater. Below are 50 promising shows to fill up your calendar, challenge your mind and touch your heart.

Living the Dream Podcast # 2: Elena Araoz, Part Two

HowlRound: She’s an actress and director based in New York City. As an actress, she has appeared on television, in film, and in theatre Off-Broadway and around the country. As a director, she has worked internationally, Off-Broadway, and regionally for both theatre and opera. Some of her favorite projects have included directing in Beijing, Prague, New York City Opera, Cherry Lane Theatre, and Women's Project Theatre. And she teaches, too. If you think you’re firing on all your creative cylinders, you haven’t yet met Elena.

The Top 20 Most-Produced Playwrights of the 2015–16 Season

AMERICAN THEATRE: You’ve seen (and maybe argued about) our Top 10 Most-Produced Plays list. Now let the debate begin over the most-produced names in the country; goodness knows we’ve wanted to shout these names from the rooftop in the past few weeks.

Jason Robert Brown Joins Creative Team for Broadway-Bound KING KONG; NYC Reading Set for October

www.broadwayworld.com: KING KONG, which ran in Australia is 2013, has long been rumored for a trip overseas to Broadway. As previously reported, following a successful run in Melbourne, the producers of KING KONG were planning to bring the mega-musical to Broadway in December 2014. Due to the "huge scale of the production" and to allow the creative team necessary time to implement changes, the producers decided "to not rush in before the end of the year."

Carnegie Mellon University and its ETC to Host SATE 2015 Conference on Themed Entertainment

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and its Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) are partnering to host the Themed Entertainment Association's (TEA) annual SATE conference, September 17 - 18, 2015. Shirley Saldamarco, president of Interactive Media Productions and an ETC faculty member, is co-chair of the event with Loren Barrows, director of business development at Alcorn McBride.

Safety and Reliability in High Mast, Light Tower and Area Lighting

Occupational Health & Safety: When illuminating a work area, sporting complex, roadway, or any populated area, safety and reliability are of the utmost importance. Without proper illumination, risk for accidents and injury is increased. Power outages, mechanical or equipment failure, or acts of nature can introduce unwanted hazards into the environment. Advances in LED technology have solutions that address these safety issues.

Live Sound: How Low Can They Go?

Pro Sound Web: Visceral, deep, percussive, tight, punchy – just some of many words used to describe bass response. A prominent low end forms the foundation for many styles of music and helps get the audience moving.

Subs are specialized loudspeaker cabinets, typically operating somewhere inside the range between 20 Hz and 150 Hz, and they usually cross over into the full-range mains around 100 Hz.

Selecting The Right Lighting Console

ChurchProduction.com: Recently, at a worship planning meeting, I made the comment that the church lighting console board was showing signs of wear and should be replaced sometime in the near future. “Why, what’s wrong with it?” I was asked. “Well, our board was designed in 2003, is DOS-based and uses floppy disk for backup, which are both obsolete. And the page knob skips some of the pages making it difficult to use.”

Everything is a Remix: the remastered fifth anniversary edition

Boing Boing: Kirby Ferguson writes, "Everything is a Remix has been polished, merged and rereleased for its fifth anniversary."

Everything is a Remix is Ferguson's amazing, must-watch series of videos analyzing the way that incorporating direct lifts from songs, movies and other art forms is critical to creative production.

Hand Injury Statistics: Cost of Hand Injuries in the Workplace

www.superiorglove.com: The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that cuts and laceration injuries – some of the most common work injuries to the hands – accounted for 4,120 job transfer or restriction cases in 2012.

Cuts and lacerations on average resulted in six working days lost to job transfer or restrictions for the injured worker.

Stage renderings for papal Mass, other events

6abc.com: The World Meeting of Families released the final renderings of the performance stages for the papal Mass, The Festival of Families, and Pope Francis' speech at Independence Hall.

Study shines a spotlight on darkness within the entertainment industry

www.theage.com.au: They were 30 hours that turned Matthew Henderson's life on its head. Back in March, the respected theatrical stage manager lost three friends to suicide, all of whom he had worked alongside in the entertainment industry.

Funny and Titillating, REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES Opens Big at Pasadena Playhouse

BWW Review: The film of Josefina Lopez's Real Women Have Curves in 2002 was a big hit in art houses and won several Sundance prizes including an audience award for Best Actresses Lupe Ontiveros and America Ferrera, long before her Ugly Betty fame. Lopez's semi-autobiographical play from the 90s about the garment industry and the Latina women who struggle to survive in it - the basis for the film - is currently running at the Pasadena Playhouse through October 4 and has terrific direction from Seema Sueko and a closely connected ensemble of five actresses.

Study Says Women Are Still Underrepresented on TV in Front of the Cameras and Behind the Scenes

The New York Times: While the television industry now counts producers like Shonda Rhimes, Jenji Kohan (“Orange Is the New Black”) and Jill Soloway (“Transparent”) among its most celebrated showrunners, progress has stalled overall when it comes to equal representation for women both on screen and behind the scenes.

DMM Issues Carabiner Recall

Climbing: DMM are issuing a product recall, subject to user inspection. This document details the products that are affected by the recall and contains instructions to identify whether or not an affected product should be returned to DMM.

Review: Steeler Rocky Bleier relives his glory days in a play with humor and heart

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: It was like old times at Heinz Hall Tuesday night. A play was created for Rocky Bleier, and he took the ball and ran with it.

Make that “The Play,” a new work about and starring the former Steelers running back. For 90 minutes Tuesday evening, he was the solo star of his own story, with Steelers Nation rooting him on in a venue known as the home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

WIcreations Creates Flying, Fire, and Flames at the European Games

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: Audiences were left enthralled and entranced by two dazzling opening and closing ceremonies staged in the National Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the first European Games ... which saw Belgian-based engineering specialist WIcreations involved in making some key elements of these innovative and beautiful shows come alive.

Appeals court strikes a blow for fair use in long-awaited copyright ruling

Ars Technica: The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit today issued a ruling that could change the contours of fair use and copyright takedown notices.

In an opinion (PDF) published this morning, the three-judge panel found that Universal Music Group's view of fair use is flawed. The record label must face a trial over whether it wrongfully sent a copyright takedown notice over a 2007 YouTube video of a toddler dancing to a Prince song.

Theatre in a Fly-over State: The Racial Divide

HowlRound: The Slant Culture Theatre Festival (now defunct) is a Louisville festival whose third year coincided with my decision to be an arts writer in Louisville. I reviewed several of the festival’s plays and saw all but one of the sixteen productions. I had a great time watching and celebrating the Louisville theatre scene come together.

New Play Focuses on Pittsburgh Steelers Great

Pittsburgh Magazine - September 2015 - Pittsburgh, PA: His high-school football team went undefeated. His college team won the national championship. His NFL team won four Super Bowls in six years.

But Rocky Bleier, the former running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers, says the greatest game he ever played was against a neighbor in Appleton, Wis., when he was 9 years old.

“I scored 51 touchdowns,” Bleier recalls with pride. “It was a game of not only immense skill and will on my part, but I knew my opponent’s weakness … and his weakness was that he was 5.”

This City Might Be the Most Overlooked Background Actor in the World

The Creators Project: Whether you know it as the Canadian Hollywood, or the butt of jokes about it being the Canadian Hollywood, Vancouver, B.C. is one of the most prolific chameleons in the movie biz, tricking audiences into thinking it's New York, Chicago, Gotham, Tokyo, Pyongyang, or Absolutely Nowhere, U.S.A.

ScholarshipOwl uses big data, machine learning to fix the convoluted scholarship application process

Gigaom: Earlier this year, a bipartisan bill was put forward in Congress to fix one of the biggest impediments preventing hopeful American high school students from receiving an affordable higher education: the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, otherwise known as FAFSA.

Although it sounds ludicrous, the 10-page, 100 question document, which students (or, more likely, their families) are expected to complete in order to receive government-backed college grants or qualify for loans, has become so burdensome that some 2 million students who would have qualified for Pell grants in 2011 and 2012 did not file a FAFSA form, according to voxgov.com.

Whitney Houston Hologram Maker Promises 'Absolute Authenticity'

Rolling Stone: Whitney Houston will come to digital life as a hologram in 2016 as part of a new deal between the singer's estate and Hologram USA. The company's CEO Alki David talked to Billboard about the proposed touring stage show and attempted to dispel preconceived notions of what the show would entail. "The show will not just be Whitney comes on, sings and gets off," David said. "The narrative will document parts of her life, her achievements and celebrate Whitney."

PLASA Volunteer Award to ETCP Entertainment Electrician Subject Experts

Staging & Rental content from Live Design: PLASA will present the 2015 Volunteer of the Year Award to the ETCP Entertainment Electrician Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for their continued dedication and extraordinary amount of work with the ETCP Program. The award to the SMEs will be presented by Eddie Raymond, chair of the PLASA North American Regional Board and Tim Hansen, Chair of the ETCP Council at the PLASA AGM at LDI October 22 from 2:30pm - 4:30pm at the Las Vegas Westgate Casino and Resort.

Inside the Tribute in Light

Control Geek: It's been five years since I was once again fortunate (2010 and also 1985 pictures here) to be able to visit my friends at the moving and beautiful Tribute in Light here in New York on September 11. Here's a few photos and a video of the lights being turned on after one of the times they turned the lights off to disperse migrating birds who end up circling in the lights

Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh part of national effort to improve urban areas

Pennsylvania Business Daily: Carnegie Mellon University and the City of Pittsburgh are founding members of the MetroLab Network, a new national alliance of 20 metro areas and over 25 universities created to develop and deploy innovative technologies to address challenges in urban areas.

The creation of MetroLab was announced on Monday at a White House event in Washington.

Company One Has A Social Network All Its Own

ARTery: Social events are de rigueur for arts organizations today as the search for new audiences becomes a matter of survival. These days, everyone’s doing under-35 nights, date nights and all kinds of other experiments aimed at broadening the base.

At Company One Theatre, these social events are built into the mission.

Brazilian music festival breaks U2’s record for largest stage rig ever

Guinness World Records: Brazil's biggest music festival – The Villa Mix Festival Goiânia Edição 2015 – has set a new world record for the Largest stage rig for a music concert, usurping the title from veteran rock band U2.

Hosting some of the biggest names in Brazilian music and attended by approximately 48,000 people, organisers of the fifth edition of the festival which took place earlier this month had decided to construct the ultimate stage for the event.

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

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

Faking It

The California Sunday Magazine: Inside a 110,000-square-foot warehouse in northeast Los Angeles, Gregg Bilson Jr. is showing me his blood. There’s drinkable blood, chunky blood, dried blood, and flowing blood, all sitting in tidy rows on a display shelf. Puddles and pools of blood — resin blood — of varying sizes are affixed to a nearby wall. Each has its own consistency, color, and refractive properties, which Bilson says are important distinctions when your customers are as likely to have a favorite blood guy as they are a favorite restaurant.

Posted by David at 9/11/2015 02:54:00 PM

Why Theatre?

Cultural Weekly: In my recent review of Rob Mersola’s Luka’s Room, a play that straddled comedy and soft porn with some dexterity but not much wit, I had to ask myself the question (yet again): What is the point of theatre? That was my opening line. And I attempted to answer it. Up to a point. But it remained on my mind during Cultural Weekly’s summer hiatus and it seemed like a good way to launch the fall season.

Posted by David at 9/11/2015 02:54:00 PM

A Performer Quitting a Production During the Run Can Be a Theater's Worst Nightmare

The Stranger: One winter in the early 1980s, the Empty Space Theatre was running a production of Tartuffe when one of the actors bailed to be in a movie. "Midrun and he was gone in two days," said Carl Sander, a longtime theater artist who now works at the Burke Museum. Losing an actor to another gig can be a producer's nightmare.

Posted by David at 9/11/2015 01:59:00 PM

Things You Can’t Say in Children’s Theatre

HowlRound: In my last three posts, I made the modest proposal that There Are No Children, and defined some of the unbreached borders of the discipline. What things are not “children’s theatre?” Taking a broad spectrum performance studies approach, I looked at diverse examples of performance by and for children. These examples were a far-spread range: how children perform sexuality from Shirley Temple to Toddlers in Tiaras; how children perform intelligence and capability from spelling bee champions to Toddlers in Mensa; how children perform nationality from protests of the ethnic studies ban in Arizona to mock Olympics in China. This was an artificial and somewhat arbitrary scope of study, and, I admit, focused heavily on my own obsessions and opinions. Isn’t that what blogs are for?

Posted by David at 9/09/2015 12:58:00 PM

Nothing Sacred: Satire Comes to Salt Lake City

On Being: Even as a faithful Mormon I have to admit that the South Park portrayals of Latter-Day Saints over the years haven’t been all bad. In an odd way, I was honored that the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith was numbered among the “Super Best Friends” in a couple of episodes, representing — for good and ill — all the world’s religions. But when Trey Parker and Matt Stone announced the production of a Broadway musical mocking Mormons exclusively, I rolled my eyes.

Posted by David at 9/08/2015 02:03:00 PM
 

What You Need to Know About Acoustics (Part 2)

blog.rosebrand.com: Fundamentally, absorption of sound occurs when air molecules interact with the pores of a porous material. Acoustical energy, transmitted through air, is dissipated as a result of viscous effects and thermal conduction with the material. The effective absorption of a material is determined by a combination of characteristics: the porosity and thickness of the material, how deeply air penetrates it, whether it is mounted to a hard or soft backing, and whether there’s an airspace behind it.

Twitter Plays: When Theatre Connects with Reality

HowlRound: During my first year in Philadelphia, I was working from home. While some might consider this an enviable task, I had no connections, and no resources to test out my playwriting. I had left behind a theatre in California—a small, dirty space that served as an essential theatrical training in my impressionable younger years. Suddenly, I found myself approaching thirty with little to do. So I did what a stranger in a strange land would naturally do: I spent a lot of time on social media. And during this time, I found myself particularly drawn to Twitter.

New Bosch Wireless Charging L-Boxx Bay

toolguyd.com: Bosch’s wireless inductive charging system, which allows their specially equipped 18V Li-ion batteries to charge while still attached to a drill, driver, or other similar free-standing tool, incorporates some promising technology, but has been met with some criticism from tool users.

Marriott goes tech with new VR room service

www.eventmagazine.co.uk: Marriott Hotels has expanded its guest service offering to include VRoom Service, enabling guests to order virtual reality (VR) experiences to their rooms.

Ursula Le Guin’s writing guide Steering the Craft, reviewed.

www.slate.com: The first thing you learn when you set out to teach writing is that you will never teach anyone to write well. It’s a cruel joke universities play on humanities grad students. As you’re preparing to step into a classroom, they assign you an impossible task, one they cloak with a label like “Introduction to Rhetoric” or “Expository Composition.” Here are 20 undergraduates, they say. Show them how to make their prose sing. Staring your new charges down, you begin to speak. Your voice cracks. They see the fear in your eyes.

Kimberly Peirce's Remake of Carrie Struggled With Vagina-Phobic Execs Who Couldn't Say "Vagina"

io9.com: When Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce remade Carrie in 2013, everyone dismissed her version of the film as an unnecessary do-over. But Peirce had some ideas for how to make her version stand apart—including an awesomely weird ending, which freaked out studio executives who couldn’t even say the word “vagina.”

“Too Street”: Hypocrisy in Policing the Speech of our Actors

Bitter Gertrude: I just had an interesting conversation with someone whose white teens are using the slang words “finna,” “aight,” “brah,” etc. She characterized it as “shortening words to sound hip.” I’m almost certain she just didn’t know where the terms came from; I don’t think she was trying to be erasive. But it brought to mind how poorly we’re handling political issues around language, especially in the theatre.

Fair Wages? Are Actor Unions Fairly Serving All Actors?

OnStage: There's been an alarming shift towards lower actor wages within the unions. And too many members of AEA and SAG have been complacent in letting their union reps negotiate less compensation in return for a producer's promise of expanded employment opportunities.

Whitney Houston Hologram to Embark on World Tour in 2016

Flavorwire: The late Whitney Houston will be greeting her fans as she takes the stage once more. Yep, it’s another hologram. The new concert will be created by Hologram USA in collaboration with Pat Houston, the performer’s sister, who is also the head of her estate. You can see the recreation of the beloved powerhouse vocalist on a world tour in 2016, but the show will also air on cable and VOD, according to Rolling Stone.

Lantern Theatre company raises pay rates for union and non-union staff

NewsWorks: A Philadelphia theater company, Lantern Theatre in Center City, will give all of its actors and crew a fifty percent pay increase for the next four years. The raise is a call to action for the city's art community.

The Lantern Theatre is a small but well-established company in Center City, employing about 60 people during a season of five productions. Last fiscal year the company, for the first time, brought in over $1 million in earned and donated revenue.

Epic #Ham4Ham Lottery Shares 'Love for the Techies' with Help from Full HAMILTON Company Video

www.broadwayworld.com: Today's edition of HAMILTON's mega-popular #Ham4Ham lottery celebrated 'Love for the Techies Day' with creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda and the entire company of the show, including production stage manager J. Philip Bassett calling the cues to 'Ten Duel Commandments.'

DuPage Children’s Museum Reopens September 19 'Back stronger and better than ever!'

Positively Naperville: DuPage Children’s Museum (DCM) experienced a major internal flood that damaged most of its 50,000 sq. ft. facility and exhibits in Naperville, IL. Now, after eight months of redevelopment, a re-imagined Museum will officially reopen to the public at 9AM on Saturday, September 19, 2015.

The Best Tools and Toolbox

The Sweethome: After more than 300 hours of research and testing of more than 180 tools, we’ve put together the best tool kit for your home (and found the best toolbox to hold them all). To come up with these 22 recommendations, we consulted three carpenters with a combined experience of 36 years, got input from six leading tool experts, and had many, many conversations with tool manufacturers.

Why Theatre?

Cultural Weekly: In my recent review of Rob Mersola’s Luka’s Room, a play that straddled comedy and soft porn with some dexterity but not much wit, I had to ask myself the question (yet again): What is the point of theatre? That was my opening line. And I attempted to answer it. Up to a point. But it remained on my mind during Cultural Weekly’s summer hiatus and it seemed like a good way to launch the fall season.

Faking It

The California Sunday Magazine: Inside a 110,000-square-foot warehouse in northeast Los Angeles, Gregg Bilson Jr. is showing me his blood. There’s drinkable blood, chunky blood, dried blood, and flowing blood, all sitting in tidy rows on a display shelf. Puddles and pools of blood — resin blood — of varying sizes are affixed to a nearby wall. Each has its own consistency, color, and refractive properties, which Bilson says are important distinctions when your customers are as likely to have a favorite blood guy as they are a favorite restaurant.

Shaw Fest Examines Women's Struggles

Cultural Weekly: The mission of the Shaw Festival, presented annually in the pretty little town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, is not only to present the works of George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries, but also that of modern playwrights who, like the great master, explore social issues in a complex manner. On a recent visit to the fest, I took in seven plays by Shaw and others, many examining women challenging the restrictive roles forced on them by a male-dominated society both in Shaw’s time and today.

Forbes’ Findings on Highest-Paid TV Actresses Shows Gender Pay Gap, Lack of Diversity

The Mary Sue: Last month Forbes released a list of 2015’s highest-paid TV actors, and now they’ve shared their findings on the world’s highest paid TV actresses. Although the amount made by all of the actors and actresses is obviously astronomical, the results showcase the entertainment industry’s gender wage gap and lack of diversity, a problem that trickles down and impacts members of the business whose earnings are more modest.

Shakespeare Theatre Company goes Jeopardy with 'That Is the Question'

DC Theatre Scene: Trivia buffs – brush up your Shakespeare. Shakespeare Theatre Company invites you to show off your knowledge Saturday, September 19th at its Shakespeare Trivia Challenge, ‘That Is the Question’.

'Aladdin' Musical to Close at Disney California Adventure... to be Replaced by 'Frozen'

www.themeparkinsider.com: Disney announced this evening that its award-winning musical show "Aladdin" will close at Disney California Adventure in January, to be replaced by a new "Frozen"-themed musical.

"Aladdin" debuted at the park's Hyperion Theater in late 2002 and won this year's Theme Park Insider Award for the world's best theme park live show. Frequently updated with topical jokes from the show's iconic genie, Aladdin has proven to be a solid crowd-pleaser for more than a decade.

Living the Dream Podcast # 1: Elena Araoz

HowlRound: When I was in college studying acting, we were told that there was a tried and true path to being a working actor. A path every actor worth respecting has trodden.

Now that I’ve taught acting for fifteen years, and watched the whole business utterly transform in the wake of all sorts of new developments, I’m wondering if that path we were told about in college still exists.

Forget Dark Energy: MIT Physicists Have Finally Cracked Overhand Knots

Motherboard: Climbing ropes are amazingly tough (and stretchy), but that doesn't matter a bit if the climber isn't attached to one of those ropes by a bombproof knot capable of taking several thousand newtons worth of sudden impact. It's a peculiar combination of high-tech (ropes are pretty advanced these days) and the amazing, ancient low-technology of a knot.

Broadway's Patrick Page Shares His Personal Struggle with Depression; Reflects on Death of Robin Williams

BWW Exclusive: Broadway star Patrick Page, a veteran of eleven Broadway shows including Casa Valentina, Lion King, and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, has recently been sharing open and honest pieces on social media regarding his longtime struggle with depression, and his strong desire to help others fighting their own battles with the illness. After reading his moving posts, BWW reached out to the actor and asked him if he would consider sharing his story with our readers.

The Best Ear Training Apps for Producers, Engineers & Recording Musicians

SonicScoop: For most engineers, the ultimate goal is to be able to “feel” their way through a mix, and to do their work in a completely natural and intuitive way.

Much like professional musicians, who often transcribe great solos with the hope that in time, that conscious effort will lead to improvements that creep out unconsciously in their playing, engineers can use intentional critical listening drills to dramatically improve their instincts and skills.

A Performer Quitting a Production During the Run Can Be a Theater's Worst Nightmare

The Stranger: One winter in the early 1980s, the Empty Space Theatre was running a production of Tartuffe when one of the actors bailed to be in a movie. "Midrun and he was gone in two days," said Carl Sander, a longtime theater artist who now works at the Burke Museum. Losing an actor to another gig can be a producer's nightmare.

Work to rule

The Economist: EVERY few decades there is a sea change in the rules governing labour relations in the United States. In the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt shifted the balance of power towards labour. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan shifted it back towards employers. Two new legal rulings raise the possibility that the balance of power is changing again.

Women’s Voices Theater Festival Celebrates Female Playwrights

The New York Times: Ordinarily, plays written by men dominate stages in the nation’s capital, just as they do in the rest of the country — an imbalance that female playwrights have been agitating to change for a while. But for the next couple of months here, the usual rules will not apply.

Alcorn McBride's Loren Barrows Participates As Co-Chair Of TEA's SATE

Briefing Room content from Live Design: Alcorn McBride's Director of Business Development, Loren Barrows, is serving as co-chair of The Themed Entertainment Association's annual SATE conference. A unique, professional conference on Experience Design for the international themed entertainment industry, SATE 2015 will be held September 17-18 on the Carnegie Mellon University campus, Pittsburgh PA, UA.

Quantum’s got a brand-new take on The Winter’s Tale — as Baroque opera

Theater Reviews + Features | Pittsburgh City Paper: When Karla Boos began adapting The Winter’s Tale as a Baroque opera, her biggest challenge, ironically, was Shakespeare’s words. And not because she dislikes them. “I worship Shakespeare,” says Boos, whose Quantum Theatre stages the Bard regularly. Rather, the difficulty was that Shakespeare’s plays are, to put it mildly, full of words, and Boos would have to cut most of them to accommodate all the music.

Cinematographers Guild Reports Ballot Snafu In Recent Film/TV Contract Vote

Deadline: A few days before the August 24 voting deadline, Local 600 President Steven Poster, writing on behalf of the local’s seven elected officers, sent an email to the local’s members explaining the situation.

“Within the last few days, we started receiving reports that members in the eastern and central regions had not yet received their Basic Agreement ratification ballot package,” he wrote.

Feeling a Labor Shortage Crunch? Here's Where to Look

Remodeling | Labor Burden, Education, Training, Workforce, Judy Mozen, NARI: One of the greatest privileges of serving as 2015-2016 NARI president is the opportunity to travel the country, meeting and speaking to NARI members and industry partners. While our conversations differ, many topics and concerns are repeated nearly everywhere I travel. What I hear about from coast to coast, and see in my own hometown of Atlanta, is a severe shortage of skilled workers in the construction industry.

What Stick Welding has in Common with Clams

Tools of the Trade: On the scale of macho, welding is up there heavy equipment operator and lumberjack. How could it not, when it involves molten metal? But it requires plenty of know-how too—about the various tools, materials, and techniques of the trade. If there is anyone better at explaining that stuff than Jody Collier, I don’t know who it is.

Why Introverts Make Great Entrepreneurs

WSJ: Imagine a typical entrepreneur.

A quiet, reserved introvert is probably not what first came to mind. Aren’t entrepreneurs supposed to be gregarious and commanding—verbally adept and able to inspire employees, clients and investors with the sheer force of their personality? No wonder the advice for introverts who want to be entrepreneurs has long been some form of: “Be more extroverted.”

Lighting Designer Anne Militello

Architainment content from Live Design: There are the never-satisfied globe trotters, and there are the ever-elusive time travelers, and then there’s Anne Militello, who travels through various worlds of light. She has navigated the genres of theatre, concerts, opera, and architectural lighting within the entertainment design industry for more than 30 years, before it was even an “industry.”

The Beginner's Guide to EDC Flashlights

Everyday Carry: So you want to carry a flashlight… You’ve considered your needs, you’ve drooled over other people’s EDCs, and you’ve been left in the dark one too many times for your liking. But after shopping around and browsing different lights, you’re suddenly bombarded with acronyms, numbers, graphs, and more numbers. You might know some of those words, like lumens or titanium, but flashlight spec pages may as well be hieroglyphics when translating numbers into the experience of using your next EDC flashlight. So, what does it all mean?