MOULIN ROUGE, JAGGED LITTLE PILL & More Earn Nominations for 23rd Annual IRNE Awards

www.broadwayworld.com: The Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) today announced the nominees for the 23rd Annual IRNE Awards, which honor the best of the previous year's actors, directors, choreographers, designers and companies across the full spectrum of large, mid-size and fringe theater companies.

‘Basket Down’ on a Structural Beam

Prolyte: People keep discussing about the ‘Basket’ methods of slinging. Since there is not a specific definition, the assumption is that it does not matter where and in which direction the basket slinging is carried out. However, there is a big difference in a physical way. When comparing slinging a structural steel beam at 25 meter elevated over the arena floor or slinging a truss when the structure is lying on the arena floor.

Are community choruses exploitative?

Exeunt Magazine: The concept of community theatre is evolving. A new wave of productions are casting local people in commercial shows, alongside a principal cast of professional actors. In the past few years, top London theatres including Almeida Theatre, Bush Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, Young Vic Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East and National Theatre have all made use of this casting method. But it isn’t exclusively a London thing; the Actors’ Touring Company production of The Suppliant Women cast a new group of women in each city of its UK tour. More recently, Royal and Derngate’s Our Lady of Kibeho and Eclipse’s Princess & The Hustler join the list of productions that feature a community cast.

Setting The Stage For Climate Change: Place

The Theatre Times: The Mayor of London’s 2008 practical guide to “Green Theatre” reported that the total carbon footprint of London’s theatre industry is approximately 50,000 tonnes a year. You would need to cultivate 3 million seedlings every year to offset this, equivalent to a plantation three times the size of Regent’s Park.

Elton John “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” Tour

PLSN: The legendary Elton John is on his “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour. With a career spanning 50 years, his tour, which launched Sept. 8, will travel to five continents and perform more than 300 shows. Selling more than 300 million records and numerous accolades to his credit — Grammy Awards, BRIT Awards, an Academy and Tony Award, and even a British knighthood since 1998 — few can match the talent, longevity and popularity attained by this 71-year-old artist.

Know Your Fits And Tolerances

Hackaday: When designing parts on a screen, it’s very easy to type in a bunch of nice round numbers and watch everything slot together in perfect harmony. Unfortunately, the real world is not so kind. A 10mm shaft will not readily fit in a 10mm hole, and producing parts to perfect dimensions simply isn’t possible. This is where fits and tolerances come in, and [tarkka] have created a practical demonstration of this on Youtube.

5 Best Compressor Plugins for Mixing

Pro Audio Files: Option overload is a very real thing, particularly in the world of compressors. Compressors tend to be a little daunting to learn to begin with, as there’s a lot they can do (I have a comprehensive course on it if you want to understand compression thoroughly). Couple that with the fact that almost every software brand has its own compressor series and you’ve got an overwhelming number of options.

“Saviour Samuel” at Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company

The Pittsburgh Tatler: Set on the Kansas prairie in the late 19thcentury, Mark Clayton Southers’ Saviour Samuel might best be described as an African-American version of Little House on the Prairie – with a supernatural twist.

Like Little House, the play focuses on a family that has moved west to settle in the aftermath of the Civil War. Benjamin Clayson (Wali Jamal), his wife Virginia (Cheryl El-Walker), and their deaf teen-aged daughter Essie (Aaliyah Sanders) are struggling homesteaders on a remote piece of land, where Ben hunts and traps to put food on the table and makes a living distilling and selling moonshine to the local “Injuns.”

The Vatican’s Swiss Guards are now using 3D printed helmets

The Verge: For hundreds of years, the Swiss Guard have worn a distinctive, brightly-colored dress uniform while protecting the Pope and Vatican City, with only a couple of minor changes over the years. This year, they’re making a big change: the traditional, metal helmet — called a morion — is being replaced with ones that are 3D printed.

Of Sound Mind: Fitz Patton Sees Theater As Tonal Adventure

www.clydefitchreport.com: Fitz Patton is a Drama Desk and Lortel-winning composer and sound designer who has built an extensive and varied body of work on Broadway, Off-Broadway and across the country. While building his portfolio, Patton also channeled his frustration with the static conventions of theatrical production photography into Chance Magazine, a publishing experiment that he calls a “serial art book.”

"Savior Samuel"

Pittsburgh in the Round: Faith is in the eye of the beholder. It is an abstract concept. It is reliant on context. It is difficult to hold on to when the harsh realities become overwhelming.

The consequences of not having faith can be dire. Believing in only what you can perceive with your brain can leave you aimless. Faith can be your north star on the path of life, even if that means guiding you in the right direction towards an unknown destination.

Student Loans: Some Employers Help Workers Pay Them Down

NPR: Kelly O'Brien graduated from college six years ago with a political science degree and $28,000 in student loan debt.

"It was stressful, because coming out and having to have a payment of about $217 a month, it just seemed like a lot of money to pay back when you don't really know where you were going to be working, how much you're going to be making," she says.

#87 Clifton Taylor

in 1: the podcast: This week we are sitting down with Lighting Designer Clifton Taylor to discuss he new book, Color & Light: Navigating Color Mixing in the Midst of an LED Revolution. He tells us where the idea for the book came from, the process of writing about a technology that is rapidly evolving and what he hopes readers will get out of it.

12 Podcasts to Bring the Arts to Your Playlist

AMT Lab @ CMU: Podcasts aren’t just for news and politics anymore. With more than 550,000 active podcasts in over 100 languages on iTunes alone, spanning every topic from society and culture to business and economics, podcasts are one of the fastest growing forms of media. Although Apple was for a long time the only mainstream distributor since it first added podcast support to iTunes in 2005, podcasts are now widely available across several platforms such as Stitcher, Google and Spotify. In fact, Spotify recently made podcasting history with its acquisitions of Gimlet Media, the podcasting studio behind hit shows such as Homecoming and Reply All, and Anchor, a podcast creation and monetization platform, signaling a potential new road ahead for content creators.

Oscars: audio description brings film to life for blind people, it deserves an award too

theconversation.com: Awards season is in full swing but as Oscars weekend approaches there is one group of cinema professionals who will not be preparing to take their place on the read carpet: audio describers.

For blind cinema goers, audio description is a crucial part of any film. It is just as important as acting, cinematography and score. Yet many sighted movie fans have no idea that audio description even exists – and it is not a skill that is awarded at the BAFTAs, Oscars or any other of the countless film institute ceremonies around the world.

Seven ESTA TSP Documents in Public Review

ETNow.com: Seven documents – six draft standards and one informational book – are posted on the ESTA Technical Standards Program website for public review through 8 April 2019. All are available at no cost at http://estalink.us/pr.

Theater Workers ‘#LiftTheCurtain’ on Racism After Lawsuit

KQED Arts: It was a standing room-only crowd as supporters of Stephen Buescher, the plaintiff in a discrimination lawsuit against his former employer American Conservatory Theater (ACT), gathered Wednesday evening to discuss racism in the theater world.

In a complaint filed a day prior, Buescher alleges that ACT, where he held faculty and creative roles for ten years until 2018, created a racially hostile environment and systematically discriminated against black artists, staff and students.

Wearing Their Subtext on Their Sleeves

Theatre Development Fund – TDF: How do you give outfits subtext? That's one of the many challenges Dede M. Ayite faced designing the costumes for Signature Theatre Company's revival of Lynn Nottage's By the Way, Meet Vera Stark. The story of the titular character, a Depression-era black maid turned Hollywood actress who dreams of saying more than "yes'm," the satire skips from the '30s to the '70s to the 2000s, and Ayite's pitch-perfect period pieces help ground each era. Thematically, the show is about image versus authenticity, as the characters perform who they think they're supposed to be, both onscreen and off. Ayite's tailored designs unearth the truth behind who they really are.

Billy Porter On Why He Wore a Gown, Not a Tux, to the Oscars

Vogue: I’ve always been inspired by fashion. My grandmother, my mom—they were always stylish. I grew up loving fashion, but there was a limit to the ways in which I could express myself. When you’re black and you’re gay, one’s masculinity is in question. I dealt with a lot of homophobia in relation to my clothing choices. [Even] when I had my first working contract at A&M Records, I was silent for a long time. I was trying to fit in to what other people felt I should look like. When I landed a role in Kinky Boots, the experience really grounded me in a way that was so unexpected. Putting on those heels made me feel the most masculine I’ve ever felt in my life. It was empowering to let that part of myself free.

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

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

The Color Orange: History & Meaning of This Culturally Important Hue

mymodernmet.com: Orange is a color that provokes an immediate reaction. What is it about the color orange that makes it so effective? In some cultures, it’s considered a sacred hue, while in others it’s a symbol of royalty. Bold and dynamic, orange is used to signal danger while at the same time create a sensation of excitement.

Posted by David at 2/22/2019 10:46:00 AM

Where Movies Get Their Vintage Electronics

gizmodo.com: Have you ever watched a show like Mad Men and wondered where they found those early Xerox machines? Or where The Americans got their hands on all the Reagan-era IBMs that you thought would be piled in a landfill? Well, there’s a good chance these historically-accurate gadgets came from a massive warehouse in Brooklyn with a specific mission: to preserve some of the world’s oldest, most cherished electronics.

Posted by David at 2/20/2019 11:12:00 AM

Is It Time for Academy to Honor Stunt Work With Oscars?

Variety: Every movie nominated this year for a best picture Oscar employed a stunt coordinator. Yet not one of these individuals will have the opportunity to receive Academy Award recognition.

The Oscars acknowledge categories ranging across multiple disciplines that support a film’s story and visual dynamics. But the stunt department’s contributions remain unsung. This might be due to misperceptions about what stunt performers actually do these days.

Posted by David at 2/21/2019 11:45:00 AM

Production Notes: Haze Machines

Nevada Film Office: What Are Haze Machines and How Are They Different From Fog Machines?

Haze machines, also known as hazers, are used for creating atmospheric haze, which help make light beams more visible, soften colors, and decrease contrast.

Posted by David at 2/20/2019 11:10:00 AM

8 Artists Pushing the Limits of Digital Effects and VR

Artsy: Artists have long been the pioneers of the digital realm
, pushing its technological, aesthetic, and critical potential. While the net art
of the 1990s was the first to fully embrace and popularize “new media” in an art context, digital image-making hails back to earlier artists like Lynn Hershman Leeson
, who, in the late 1980s, transferred the critical concerns of video art
into a digital reality.

Posted by David at 2/21/2019 11:34:00 AM