Managing: Getting Into, and Out of, the Way

HowlRound: For many theatre practitioners, the act of creation is tied to the act of living—they cannot exist separately. This is the third of a series of posts that explore positive practices and principles to help keep our art mindful, expressive, and sustainable. Phil Weaver-Stoesz is a multi-disciplinary director, devisor, and performer studying and working at Arizona State University.

College textbooks 1,041 percent more expensive now than in 1977

Salon: Incoming college freshmen will be paying 1,041 percent more for their textbooks than their peers did in 1977, according to NBC’s review of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Nicole Allen, a spokeswoman for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, claimed that the dramatic increase is the result of students being “captive consumers,” incapable of buying anything other than the books they’re assigned. But such sentiments don’t accord

Stage Wages

Reason: Los Angeles stage actors are fighting a minimum wage battle. But these thespians are opposing the $9 hourly minimum instituted in April by the Actors' Equity Association (AEA), the national stage actors' labor union.

Under old rules, only theaters with 100 or more seats had to pay equity actors a minimum wage, while smaller venues could get away with a token stipend per performance. Under the new rules, however, small Los Angeles County theaters must pay actors $9 per hour for all performances and rehearsal time. Shows with fewer than 50 seats may be exempted from the wage requirement, but they're then limited to a 16-performance run and three shows per season.

5 Reasons Why You Should Embrace Anxiety (Myths Debunked)

LifeHack: After years of unending worry, I had decided to talk to my doctor about what I’d been feeling. I always felt worried about things going wrong and people being angry with me. Other people seemed so much more relaxed than me. Why? Was there a different way of thinking? Was there a different way to handle stress?

For Penn & Teller's Magical Partnership, The Trick Is Telling The Truth

NPR: What does a couple do for its 40th anniversary?

If you're Penn and Teller, you play Broadway. Thirty years after they first played New York, the duo are back with a new show. And it's no quiet celebration, either. In the course of a single performance, they make a cellphone ring inside a dead fish, swallow both needles and fire — and make a rare African spotted pygmy elephant disappear.

The 2015-2016 DC area theatre season opens this week

DCTheatreScene: With 286 shows already announced, and 24 companies still to be revealed, the new season, which begins this week, can already be predicted to surpass the busy 2014-2015 season.

The Page-to-Stage festival at Kennedy Center on Labor Day Weekend has traditionally been the celebratory start to the season, but more producers found they could draw audiences for summer shows. This year, companies such as Signature, Constellation, NextStop, Keegan and Venus join Longacre Lea with openings in August.

TDF's Autism Theatre Initiative Announced 5th Season of Autism-friendly Performances on Broadway

Stage-Directions: Autism Theatre Initiative comes under the umbrella of TDF’s Accessibility Programs, also known as TAP.  Autism Theatre Initiative’s mission is to make theatre accessible to children and adults on the autism spectrum, and their families. To create an autism-friendly setting, the shows are performed in a friendly, supportive environment for an audience of families and friends with children or adults who are diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder or other sensitivity issues. Slight adjustments to the production will include reduction of any jarring sounds or strobe lights focused into the audience. In the theatre lobby there will be staffed quiet and play areas, if anyone needs to leave their seats during the performance. For these special performances, TDF purchases every seat in the theatre for sale at discount prices exclusively to families, groups, schools, etc. whose members include individuals on the autism spectrum.

Paper4Everyone puts teamwork on the table and screen

GizMag: No matter how many new forms of technology we come up with for writing, pen and paper always seems to have a place. It's with this in mind that smart pens like LiveScribe and the Neo Smartpen N2 have come into use. Now, a new device called Paper4Everyone aims to take the idea of a connected pen a step further by adding in a collaborative element.

Test Your Eye For Color With This Addictive iPhone Game

FastCoDesign: A hue test can be a maddening exercise. Arranging colors into a perfect gradient sounds easy enough, until you’re staring at two teals that you swear are exactly the same. The glee of bragging rights goes out the window as you’re faced with the limits of your own perception.

Five Clever Tool Hacks

MakeZine: Cut with a Drill (Above image) “If you need to shorten a bolt, let your drill do the hard work. Spin two nuts onto the bolt, tightening them against each other. Then chuck the bolt into the drill and hold a hacksaw blade against the spinning bolt. The nuts help to steady the blade and clean off burrs when you unscrew them.”

DEWALT 18 GA Precision Point Brad Nailer

ToolBoxBuzz: As part of their new pneumatic line of nailers, DEWALT unveiled the DWFP12233 18 gauge Precision Point Brad Nailer in June of 2015 at their DEWALT Experience event in Charlotte North Carolina. The Tool Box Buzz Crew was at the event when the new pneumatic line was unveiled and had a brief chance to test and evaluate them. We could not get a complete evaluation on this nailer due to time restrictions, so DEWALT sent one for us to review and evaluate actually using it on the jobsite and in the workshop. DEWALT’s new line of finish nailers features Precision Point Technology, very similar to their Bostitch line of nailers’ Smart Point Technology. The Precision Point Technology offers much better accuracy and easier nail placement through a smaller nose footprint.

SawStop Sues Bosch Over REAXX Table Saw

CopTool: Well no surprise here, SawStop who seems to get more press coverage for involvement in lawsuits than their actual saws is now filing another lawsuit, this time with Bosch over their REAXX Table saw GTS1041A ($1499). Timing falls just days before the largest national Woodworking Shows AWFS, July 22nd-25th where both companies will most likely be displaying their latest products to dealers and professionals alike.

‘Homeland’ Shoot Prompts Berlin to Add $1.63M a Year to Film and TV Funding

Variety: BERLIN — Citing the economic impact of international TV series such as “Homeland,” which is currently being shot in the German capital, Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller has announced a €1.5 million ($1.63 million) increase in the annual budget of film and TV subsidy organization Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg to some $37 million.

AP to Put Nearly 17,000 Hours of Archival News Footage on YouTube

Variety: The Associated Press is uploading more than 550,000 video clips to YouTube — covering news events dating back to 1895 — which the news org said will be the largest collection of archival news content on the Google-owned platform to date.

AP, together with newsreel archive provider British Movietone, will deliver more than 1 million minutes of digitized film footage to YouTube. The goal: to provide high-profile, searchable repositories that let documentary filmmakers, historians and others find news footage, and to promote licensing deals for rights to use the video.

How The Walking Dead uses special effects to fake gory zombie kills

 Gizmodo: The Walking Dead is probably one of the goriest and grossest shows on television because all they do is kill zombies. And though zombies are not real (yet, at least), the blood and gore look real because of all the amazing special effects on the show. Here’s a reel from Stargate Studios showing their best work of VFX on The Walking Dead.

Emma Thompson On Sexism In Hollywood: “I Still Think It’s Complete Shit”

TheFrisky: Emma Thompson sat down with The Radio Times and delivered a very important message: sexism in Hollywood is still horrible. Thompson acknowledges that the general inequality and shittiness that runs rampant towards women in Hollywood has gotten worse:

Call for Entries Opens for Nickelodeon’s $25,000 Animation Scholarship Competition

Variety: Nickelodeon and education nonprofit Get Schooled have opened a call for entries for their inaugural “What’s Your Nickfluence?” Animation Challenge, which will give young animators a chance to win a $25,000 scholarship.

The $25,000 scholarship competition is open only to college students, aged 17-24, but there is a separate competition for high schoolers, aged 13-17. The high-school aged applicants will be vying for a Wacom Cintiq 13HD Interactive Pen Display and a one-year subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud. There will only be one scholarship winner, but there will be five winners in the high school category.

TPP's Copyright Trap

EFF: Few arguments around copyright are as self-evidently fact-free as the length of its term. Defying economic reasoning, the astonishingly long period of restrictions has only grown over the years, and frequently the newer, longer terms have been retroactively applied to earlier works. The argument against term extension, and retroactive term extension in particular, is so obvious that the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman reportedly agreed to sign a Supreme Court brief opposing the most recent extension only on the condition that it used the word “no-brainer.”

7 Tips To Rock Any Networking Event

TheGrindStone: Networking events can be painful, but they don’t need to be. In fact, if you play you cards right, you can actually have fun and make handy contacts in your industry. Here are a few tips and tricks to make the most of any networking event.

How Thomas The Tank Engine Appeared In Ant-Man

I09: In the trailers for Ant-Man, Marvel played up a funny gag: one of the fights featured a battle on a Thomas the Train Engine play set. Over on FilmSchoolRejects, director Peyton Reed talks about how that scene made it into the film.