Burners at Maker Faire: Maker Faire Bay Area offers a look at big Burning Man projects, many with steampunk appeal

The Steampunk Explorer: One benefit of attending Maker Faire Bay Area is that you get to see large-scale Burning Man projects without the need to trek to Black Rock Desert. Some of those works, such as the Nautilus Submarine Art Car and Neverwas Haul, have become steampunk icons. Each year, I look forward to a new set of spectacular creations that would never fit inside a steampunk convention, or would never be allowed inside due to their pyrotechnics.

The Theatre Lover’s Guide To Toronto

Theatre Nerds: Mention the word “theatre,” and the first cities that come to mind are London and New York. However, there is another city with a vibrant theatre scene tucked away to the north.

Thriving metropolis Toronto, home to the CN Tower and Drake, boasts and arts and culture scene that is sure to add some dramatic flair to any vacation.

The Tony Awards: Crass Commercial Or Necessary Institution?

www.forbes.com: Conventional showbiz wisdom says awards are good for your box office. So much so that cynics (or realists) refer to the Oscars, Emmys, and Tonys as commercials for their respective industries, rather than ceremonies to recognize the year's most significant art.

GLAAD's sixth annual Studio Responsibility Index sees alarming drop in LGBTQ characters in major studio films

GLAAD: This morning, GLAAD released its sixth annual Studio Responsibility Index (SRI), a report that maps the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBTQ people in films released by the seven largest motion picture studios and their subsidiaries during the 2017 calendar year.

How Michael Jackson's tilt move defied gravity

CNN: But there's one move that stunned the watching world: the gravity-defying tilt he debuted in his 1988 music video for "Smooth Criminal." In one scene, Jackson and a few of his dancers lean forward 45 degrees, backs straight, feet flat upon the floor, and hold the pose until they return upright with little apparent effort.

“The Forest of Everywhere” at Bricolage Production Company

The Pittsburgh Tatler: An enormous storm has torn through the world, carrying animals from far-flung places and depositing them here in Pittsburgh, in the “Forest of Everywhere.” They’re lonely, confused, feeling out of place, and in need of kind and welcoming explorers to come listen to their stories, play with them, and help them feel at home again.

Lighting rig fatally crashes down on performers mid-concert

New York Post: Tragedy struck mid-concert in China when a lighting rig collapsed on the stage. Authorities are still investigating the incident, which killed one person and injured five others.

“A New Brain” at Front Porch Theatricals

The Pittsburgh Tatler: You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of William Finn’s 1998 quirky, feel-good musical A New Brain. The autobiographical tale, based on Finn’s own experience surviving a risky operation to correct an arteriovenous malformation in the brain, began life as a series of songs, written in the aftermath of Finn’s illness, that were then threaded together in collaboration with James Lapine to form a story; the musical had a relatively brief run Off-Broadway in 1998 and has been staged relatively sporadically since, most recently in 2015, as a concert performance at New York City Center.

The 5 Best Undergrad Drama Schools for an Acting Degree

Hollywood Reporter: Not all great actors get MFAs. Some, like Jennifer Lawrence, Nicole Kidman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp and Ryan Gosling, didn’t even finish high school. But there is a middle ground. Slews of colleges and universities offer undergraduate degrees in drama, with scores of ready-to-work, well-trained performers graduating every year. How to choose? Below, THR narrows the field down to five — the best bachelor's degrees to help launch an acting career.

“Nomad Motel” at City Theatre

The Pittsburgh Tatler: Gianni Downs’s apropos “split screen” set for Carla Ching’s new play Nomad Motel – confidently directed here by Los Angeles-based director Bart DeLorenzo – adeptly and precisely encapsulates both its form and content. On stage right, occupying a little over half of the width of the stage, is the large living room/kitchen of an upscale contemporary suburban home, with dove-grey walls, laminate wood floors, a granite kitchen countertop, and four large skylights in a cathedral ceiling.

Inclusion Riders, Female-Led Projects and the Beginnings of Change around Gender Parity at the Cannes Film Festival

Filmmaker Magazine: Given the news events of the last year, it’s no surprise that the deficit of women and people from ethnic, disabled, and LGBT backgrounds working within the film industry has been a focus at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. On a positive note, practical action has been a key theme here, with many female industry figures expressing a sigh of relief that change is slowly happening across the various sectors of the film industry. Still, this is not without considerable effort.

ANGELS IN AMERICA's 'Angels Fund' Offers $5 Tickets to LGBTQ & HIV/AIDS Organizations

www.broadwayworld.com: Producers Tim Levy (Director, NT America) and Jordan Roth (President, Jujamcyn Theaters) announced today that the Olivier Award®-winning National Theatre revival of Tony Kushner's masterwork, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, has established the "Angels Fund" to provide hundreds of $5 tickets to each part of the play to NYC-area LGBTQ & HIV/AIDS service organizations. Some of the organizations that have received these specially-priced tickets include: Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (BC/EFA), Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), SAGE, Callen-Lorde Community Health Center and The LGBTQ Center.

Here’s to a Speedy Recovery:The Alley Theatre’s Comeback from Hurricane Harvey

Performing Arts Readiness: In late August 2017, the Alley Theatre was underwater – literally. Water flowed into the theatre’s main facility, submerging the Neuhaus Theatre, knocking out power, and causing worries about mold and other damage to the Alley’s performance spaces.

A Paint Primer for FM Professionals

www.buildings.com: Painting the office or school corridor is different from a home project. Instead of weighing the merits of this year’s hottest color, FMs have to prioritize longer durability, better resistance against abuse and the strength to hold up to washing and scrubbing.

The right paint for your repainting project is out there, but do you know how to find it? Determine what makes a product the right one with this guide to the types and ingredients of paint.

Stop Staying Late At Work By Doing These Three Things

www.fastcompany.com: Leaving work late sucks. As if fluorescent lighting and empty cubicles aren’t depressing enough, you know what lies ahead: a heart-pounding dash to the train, a night of unhealthy takeout, and your spouse giving you that disappointed “working late again?” look.

Disney’s ‘Frozen’ Kicks off North American Tour at the Pantages

Variety: Tony Award-nominated musical “Frozen” will kick off its North American tour in fall 2019 with an official opening at the Pantages in Los Angeles during the theater’s 2019-20 season.

How Killing Eve Gets Its Killer Costumes

www.vulture.com: Some of the most interesting costuming work on TV right now is happening on BBC America’s Killing Eve. Clothing is an explicit part of the off-kilter, intimate relationship between Sandra Oh’s spy character Eve, and Villanelle, the serial killer she’s trying to capture (played by Jodie Comer). The show’s costume designer, Phoebe de Gaye, spoke with Vulture about the unusual opportunities of costuming someone like Killing Eve’s psychopathic Villanelle and the impossibility of making Sandra Oh look anything less than elegant.

Live Nation Announces Women Nation Fund to Invest in Women-Funded Businesses

Amplify: The early-stage investment fund will focus on female-led live music businesses.

Live Nation President and CEO, Michael Rapino, has announced today that the company has established a fund to provide access to the company’s resources and capital for underrepresented female entrepreneurs in the concert promotions, events and festival spaces.

Powerful, Immersive Play As Much as I Can Brings Voices of Southern Gay Black Men and HIV/AIDS Awareness to Harlem

www.theroot.com: Thankfully, some 60-plus blocks north of the Neil Simon Theater, where Angels is playing in Manhattan, there’s a production in Harlem that amplifies the voices of those most at risk and, sadly, often ignored.

As Much as I Can, a collaboration between ViiV Healthcare and design and branding studio Harley & Co., centers on black gay and bisexual characters from the South and colorfully explores the intersections of HIV/AIDS, racism, faith, masculinity, homophobia, stigma and resilience.

How Do They Create The Sounds In Sex Scenes?

www.vulture.com: A few months ago, Comedy Central released a video depicting the (fake) Foley art of the make-out scenes from The Bachelor: raw chicken cutlets slapped together; a man jamming his fist into a giant jar of mayonnaise. It’s not how the experts really do it, obviously — so how do they achieve the sounds of sweet, tender (or not) lovemaking for the big and small screen? We talked to several Foley artists about how they create the sounds behind sex scenes. The explanations are at once more pedestrian and more interesting than you might imagine.