The Future of Theater?
Harvard Mag and Robert Brustein wonder if “the play’s still the thing” in a digital age.
“THERE’S A SYNDROME in our profession—to blame the audience, especially young people,” says Diane Paulus ’88, artistic director of the American Repertory Theater. “ ‘They don’t want to go to the theater anymore—why? They don’t have attention spans. They’d rather be in control, with their personal handheld devices. There are too many entertainment choices. We’re a depraved culture.’ I’ve always found this deadening, because it doesn’t give you any room to change. We have to flip that analysis and say, ‘Maybe it’s us—maybe it’s the arts producers. Not just the writers and actors but the whole machine—perhaps we have to do a better job of inviting this audience back to the theater. Have they left? Yes. Have they not developed the habit of coming? Yes. Is it their fault? No!”
reblogged from thaumaturgy
Winter Break
Read:
- Bossypants, Tina Fey
- The Invisible Man, HG Wells
- A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan
- The Frozen Sky, Jeff Carlson
- The Imperfectionists: A Novel, Tom Rachman
- Dead Reckoning: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel, Charlaine Harris
- Full Dark, No Stars, Stephen King
- Drawing Conclusions: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery, Donna Leon
- State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
- The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You, Eli Pariser
Watched:
- Crazy Stupid Love, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
- Good Will Hunting, Gus Van Sant
- Andalucia (Andarushia: Megami no Houfuku), Hiroshi Nishitani
- Outbreak, Wolfgang Petersen
- 3 Idiots, Rajkumar Hirani
- Drive, Nicholas Winding Refn
- One Day, Lone Scerfig
- Flypaper, Rob Minkoff
- Manhattan, Woody Allen
- The Abyss, James Cameron
- Saturday Night Fever, John Badham
- The Guard, John Michael McDonagh
- The Prestige, Christopher Nolan
(via This Recursive Google Image Search Video Is Mindflippingly Nuts)
“As you may know, you can search for photos by dropping a picture on Google Images. It shows you images that are equal or similar to yours. This is what happens when you feed one search with the result of the previous search. 2,951 times.”
2 Year Old Freestyle Raps in Gibberish with a Hype Man.mp4 (by TeddyC)
This. Baby.
(via @elisedesiderio)
reblogged from thaumaturgy
Amadi Talks: Siri Failures, Illustrated
People have suggested that this about a lack of female programmers. I don’t think it is. One doesn’t have to be female to know that if you’re going to provide your customers with the benefit of the doubt that they’re adults and will give information on where to buy condoms, beer, the names of local escort companies and “tongue in cheek” locations for hiding a dead body, you should provide information about health clinics, especially when customers know their full names and basic locations. I don’t think you need females on your programming staff to know that a person can go to an ob/gyn for birth control, not just a “birth control clinic.” I don’t think that it’s necessary to be female to know that rape is a violent crime and that a rape victim will need a hospital and/or the police before they need a “treatment center.” This isn’t just about gender. This is about something more esoteric and far far less simple to explain.
reblogged from amaditalks
Ask the Siri, the new iPhone 4 assistant, where to get an abortion, and, if you happen to be in Washington, D.C., she won’t direct you to the Planned Parenthood on 16th St, NW. Instead, she’ll suggest you pay a visit to the 1st Choice Women’s Health Center, an anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) in Landsdowne, Virginia, or Human Life Services, a CPC in York, Pennsylvania. Ask Google the same question, and you’ll get ads for no less than 7 metro-area abortion clinics, 2 CPCs and a nationwide abortion referral service.
Ask in New York City, and Siri will tell you: ‘I didn’t find any abortion clinics.’
reblogged from interweber


