Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Broadway’s 2018 Word of the Year: Complicit

OnStage Blog: “Complicit” was Dictionary.com’s 2017 Word of the Year – and if the 2018-19 musical lineup continues as planned, it may define Broadway’s upcoming season as well. It’s a trifecta of shows featuring so much gaslighting, outdated gender norms, and straight up domestic abuse that it feels like a season straight out of 1960, at best.

Posted by David at 2/20/2018 12:22:00 PM

Database Shows Time to Diversify Theater Leadership is Now

Art Wire | KQED Arts: The U.S. theater world is seeing widespread changes in leadership, and Bay Area theater professionals tracking the development say it’s an opportune time for theater companies to diversify.

Posted by David at 2/22/2018 12:51:00 PM

Cliff Williams III: Why theatres need to hire intimacy choreographers.

DC Theatre Scene: The theatre can be a messy place, and often this is most evident in the rehearsal process. Violence and intimacy scenes stand as two of the more interesting challenges. How do we display violence on stage, while keeping the actors safe? How can an actor sit there and take a punch every night, for 20+ performances, not to mention every rehearsal, without getting injured? How do we make it look believable? If the audience sees even an inch of air, they’re likely to tune out and go: “Whoops, that was fake.” We actor-combatants need the audience to believe that the moment was real. Paradoxically, we need them to know that it’s fake, otherwise they’re concerned for the actor, and are taken out of the story.

Posted by David at 2/22/2018 12:41:00 PM

California's IMDb Age Censorship Law Declared Unconstitutional

Hollywood Reporter: A California law that allowed actors to forbid IMDb from posting their ages may have been well intentioned, but on Tuesday, a federal judge declared it not only to be unconstitutional, but also a bad solution to the wrong problem.

Posted by David at 2/21/2018 12:12:00 PM

Call for Equality as Scale of Gender Gap in European Industry Revealed

Variety: Directors Barbara Albert and Isabel Coixet pledged to keep up the fight for equality Friday in Berlin as new figures revealed the scale of the gender gap in the European film business.

Posted by David at 2/21/2018 11:08:00 AM

Worth a Look - Time's Up

And five more...

Sexual assault experienced by 94% of women: Exclusive USA TODAY Survey

www.usatoday.com: The first number you see is 94% — and your eyes pop with incredulity.

But it's true: Almost every one of hundreds of women questioned in an exclusive survey by USA TODAY say they have experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault during their careers in Hollywood.

Posted by David at 2/21/2018 12:08:00 PM

 

Disney Theatrical’s Thomas Schumacher Accused of Sexual Misconduct

Variety: Former employees have accused Thomas Schumacher, the president and producer of Disney Theatrical Productions and the chairman of the Broadway League, of harassment and inappropriate language.

Posted by David at 2/22/2018 12:48:00 PM

 

Six Women Allege Physical, Emotional Abuse at Dream Theatre Company

www.clydefitchreport.com: Amidst increasingly widespread allegations of sexual misconduct in the performing arts, six Chicago-based actresses report an extensive pattern of verbal and physical abuse by Jeremy Menekseoglu, artistic director of the Dream Theatre Company (DTC), a small non-Equity company which recently relocated to the Atlanta area from Chicago.

Posted by David at 2/23/2018 12:37:00 PM

 

Soulpepper loses $375K of planned federal funding in wake of sexual harassment scandal

Toronto - CBC News: A planned increase in federal funding for Soulpepper Theatre has been voted down by the Canada Council for the Arts' board of directors.

On Thursday, the council's board voted to rescind an increase of $375,500 the theatre company was set to receive. That was on top of a $184,500 "core grant" which the company will still collect this year and again next year, Canada Council said in a statement sent to CBC Toronto.

Posted by David at 2/21/2018 12:07:00 PM

 

The History of Hollywood's Difficult Women

Balder and Dash | Roger Ebert: When the revelations of rampant sexual harassment and assault against former Miramax CEO Harvey Weinstein came out last October, industry veterans on social media commented about how much of an open secret it was. In its wake it revealed a string of actresses whose careers, once promising, were derailed after refusing Weinstein’s advances. Since then the movement against sexual harassment in Hollywood—from #MeToo to #TimesUp—has brought forward one word that’s brought down the careers of many females and was utilized by Weinstein against those who rebuffed him: difficult. Difficult is far from a career killer for male actors; Mel Gibson’s aggressive temperament has become a part of his filmic persona. But looking at its connection to actresses throughout film history, and especially its ability to stall or outright stop a female’s career, showcases it as a term of inherent sexism, labeled and controlled by men to demean and undermine female agency.

Posted by David at 2/19/2018 11:02:00 AM

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Mass Shootings on Stage: Healing or Titillating?

New York Theater: The mass shooting on Valentine’s Day at a Florida high school is the latest in a long line of school shootings, some of which are instantly identifiable: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook.

Each of these has been the subject of plays, as have some of the other most notorious mass shootings in the United States.

Posted by David at 2/16/2018 12:02:00 PM

Conscious Casting and Letting Playwrights Lead

HowlRound: Can a Japanese family be Mexican? That question was at the heart of an email exchange with a theatre doing one of my plays. It wasn’t really a debate; the roles had already been cast. But the director wasn’t trying to pull a fast one—in writing my play’s character notes, I had sent mixed messages about what I valued and expected. And I know I’m not alone in still learning how to navigate this terrain.

Posted by David at 2/14/2018 02:04:00 PM

National Endowment of the Arts Chairman Responds to Trump's Proposal to Eliminate the NEA

www.broadwayworld.com: Earlier today, the National Endowment of the Arts Chairman Jane Chu released the following statement regarding President Trump's budget plan for 2019.

Today we learned that the President's FY 2019 budget proposes elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts. We are disappointed because we see our funding actively making a difference with individuals in thousands of communities and in every Congressional District in the nation.

Posted by David at 2/13/2018 02:16:00 PM

Cutting Federal Funding for the Arts Wouldn't Kill Them; Might Make Them Better

Hit & Run : Reason.com: Give the president credit, though. He's diverted attention from his overall increase in spending and gigantic increases in deficits by driving critics crazy with proposed cuts to programs and agencies they love, such as the EPA, the Small Business Administration, food stamps (SNAP), and, of course, the National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) and the Humanities (NEH).

Posted by David at 2/14/2018 02:08:00 PM

Taylor Swift Decision: Copiers Gonna Copy, Copy, Copy

Reason.com: The only obvious similarities between [plaintiff Sean Hall's Playas Gon' Play and defendant Taylor Swift's Shake It Off] is that Playas Gon' Play contains the lyrics "Playas, they gonna play / And haters, they gonna hate," and Shake it Off contains the lyrics "'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play / And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate." The lynchpin of this entire case is thus whether or not the lyrics "Playas, they gonna play / And haters, they gonna hate" are eligible for protection under the Copyright Act.

Posted by David at 2/15/2018 11:45:00 AM

Worth a Look - Time's Up

And five more...

Live Nation, CAA, UTA, & WME Join Los Angeles Mayor's Fund to Promote Diversity in Entertainment

Amplify: Live Nation has signed on as a partner for Evolve Entertainment Fund, a public-private partnership aimed at creating new opportunities for communities that have been historically excluded from the entertainment industry. The concert industry giant joins agencies CAA, UTA, WME, and 50 other entertainment companies.

Posted by David at 2/13/2018 02:19:00 PM

SAG-AFTRA Releases Sexual Harassment Code of Conduct

AFL-CIO: SAG-AFTRA recently released a code of conduct on sexual harassment as part of a broader program to protect its members, confront harassment and advance equity in the workplace.

Posted by David at 2/15/2018 11:40:00 AM

UK Construction Week bans "inappropriate" outfits after showgirl backlash

www.dezeen.com: UK Construction Week is introducing new equality guidelines following the outcry against the use of promotional models wearing Vegas showgirl outfits at last year's event.

Media 10, a publisher and the organiser of the annual trade show, has released a code of conduct for exhibitors "setting the standard" for equality and diversity in the industry.

Posted by David at 2/16/2018 11:55:00 AM

Viola Davis Talks MeToo, Inequality for Women of Color With Tina Brown

Variety: Is the #MeToo movement a true tipping point? Or will this moment pass with no real impact on our culture?

That was the main question posed at the Women in the World salon, held Tuesday at NeueHouse in Hollywood.

Reprising a powerful quote from her speech at the Women’s March in Los Angeles last month, Viola Davis said, “Nothing can be great unless it costs you something.”

Posted by David at 2/14/2018 02:04:00 PM

SAG-AFTRA Releases Official Code of Conduct for a Post-Weinstein World

Backstage: With Hollywood still reeling from the onslaught of sexual harassment revelations, the nation’s union of screen actors, SAG-AFTRA, has released a code of conduct for sexual harassment, revealing a “Four Pillars of Change” initiative.

Posted by David at 2/14/2018 02:03:00 PM

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Chez Stock: The Girl With The Audio Tattoo(s)

ProSoundWeb: I remember meeting Chez Stock for the first time. The first thing I noticed were the tattoos across her fingers spelling out “COMP” and “GATE.” I made a comment along the lines of “nice digital inserts” (I pun involuntarily) and, in spite of that, we had a nice conversation.

Posted by David at 2/08/2018 11:30:00 AM

$25 Million in Grants Support Art Projects Nationwide

NEA: Each year, more than 4,500 communities large and small throughout the United States benefit from National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grants to nonprofits. For the NEA’s first of two major grant announcements of fiscal year 2018, more than $25 million in grants across all artistic disciplines will be awarded to nonprofit organizations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. These grants are for specific projects and range from performances and exhibitions, to healing arts and arts education programs, to festivals and artist residencies.

Posted by David at 2/08/2018 11:25:00 AM

So let’s talk about representation of bodies… richard iii redux

disabilityarts.online: spate of high profile all-female productions of Shakespeare the past few years – Maxine Peake playing Hamlet in Manchester and Phillyda Lloyd’s trilogy of Julius Caesar, Henry IV and last year’s The Tempest, to name just a few. As a woman working in theatre, I applaud any attempt to provide more visible platforms for women practitioners, and believe there is still much to be mined from the classics with cross-gender casting (and I mean male actors playing female roles here, too…). Yet in the midst of all this welcome talk about diversity and parity, I believe there is still one area hugely overlooked – and that is atypical embodiment.

Posted by David at 2/07/2018 12:01:00 PM

Hastened by Technology, Hindered by Public Attitudes

HowlRound: Katie Sweeney tells the story of her son Dustin, a theatre-lover with perfect pitch who is autistic. He has a huge vocabulary, he’s memorized whole shows, but he doesn’t engage in conversation and never answers a question that begins with “Why?” Sweeney took her son to a Broadway show, choosing box seats off to the side, away from most of the audience. Dusty sang along with the songs. Ten minutes into the second act, an usher asked mother and son to leave, because he was disturbing the actors. As they left, Dusty, upset, kept on screaming: "Stay. Stay. Stay."

Posted by David at 2/08/2018 11:23:00 AM

The (Mostly) Deep Meanings Behind Blue Man Group’s On-Stage Food

Chicago magazine | Dining & Drinking January 2018: Over 527 shows last year, the Blue Man Group went through roughly 18,500 marshmallows, 2,100 Twinkies, 2,000 pounds of Cap’n Crunch cereal, 26,300 pounds of Jell-O, 500 bars of Toblerone, and 67,300 bunches of bananas.

Posted by David at 2/05/2018 11:49:00 AM

Worth a Look - Time's Up

And five more...

Performers And Staffers At “Sleep No More” Say Audience Members Have Sexually Assaulted Them

www.buzzfeed.com: Audience members wander through dozens of elaborately decorated rooms as dancers perform a blood-and-sex filled adaptation of Macbeth at the immersive theater production Sleep No More. The lighting ranges from dim to very dark; guests are intentionally separated from the people they arrived with. Before the performance, an actor usually declares that “fortune favors the bold,” and the 400 or so audience members are instructed to wear — and not remove — ghoulish white masks, fueling a sense of anonymity amid the production’s fantasy setting. And sometimes, former staffers said, audience members just reached out and groped them.

Posted by David at 2/06/2018 12:04:00 PM

Guest Column: Actors’ Equity’s Mary McColl on Leadership, Misconduct

Variety: A number of major regional theaters are changing artistic leaders at the moment. Over the last few months, that number has only grown as charges of sexual harassment and misconduct roil the industry. The two trends are linked — and make a call to action ever more critical.

Posted by David at 2/07/2018 11:55:00 AM

How much longer will 'auteur' filmmakers torment women for art?

www.usatoday.com: Hollywood, as we have been learning, is a mean place to work. To obscene pay inequities and outrageous sexual misconduct, now we can add abusive on-set treatment of female actors to extract the most realistic performance for the screen.

Thanks to Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino for this latest conversation about the uglier aspects of Tinseltown, where a mania for onscreen "authenticity" comes dangerously close to abuse — or even death — on set.

Is the jig finally up? One can only hope.

Posted by David at 2/07/2018 11:58:00 AM

He helped Halle Berry and Taraji Henson to stardom. Now 9 minority women are accusing him of sexual harassment.

The Washington Post: Tamika Lamison was a 27-year-old stage actress living in New York City in June 1996 when she stepped into Hollywood manager Vincent Cirrincione's hotel suite, excited by the unexpected opportunity to audition for the man behind Halle Berry's rising stardom.

Lamison said she had been introduced to Cirrincione the previous night by one of his clients at the Tony Awards dinner. Soon after her arrival at the hotel, Cirrincione's phone rang. It was Berry. He put the famous actress on speaker as Lamison listened in silently, in awe — thinking that perhaps Cirrincione could steer her own acting career to Hollywood success in an industry with few leading roles for African American actresses like her.

When the call ended, Lamison began reciting a poem she had written. Midway through her performance, she said, Cirrincione grabbed her and started kissing her, sticking his tongue in her mouth.

Posted by David at 2/05/2018 11:42:00 AM

Ava DuVernay Clip From 'Half the Picture' Documentary

The Mary Sue: It’s a special time in Hollywood right now. Women in the entertainment industry have never been so visible, or so vocal. While there’s still work to do, people are more conscious of how widespread and pervasive gender bias is in the industry. In her documentary, Half the Picture, director Amy Adrion tells the stories of other female filmmakers, like herself, who’ve had to navigate sexism at every turn in order to make any of their projects happen.

Posted by David at 2/07/2018 11:55:00 AM

Worth a Look - Time's Up

And five more:

Guthrie scene shop was hostile place, say departed workers

Minnesota Public Radio News: A formal investigation is underway at the Guthrie Theater in the wake of two staff resignations earlier this month.
The employees both worked as carpenters in the theater's scene shop. They say the shop was a hostile work environment, particularly for women, and that the Guthrie did not move quickly enough or effectively enough to deal with the situation.

Posted by David at 2/01/2018 01:43:00 PM

Medieval Times Goes Modern, Replacing Its Kings With Queens

The New York Times: It had been a pretty laid-back Sunday before Monet Lerner’s afternoon shift at Medieval Times. She poured a cup from her Mr. Coffee and watched a little “Beyond Stranger Things” on Netflix. She thought a lot about acting, and did some vocal warm-ups. Then she pulled on her shiny black rain boots, said goodbye to Hoppy Joe, her rescue bunny, and headed out.

Posted by David at 2/01/2018 01:40:00 PM

Met Opera Fires Stage Director, Citing ‘Inappropriate Behavior’

The New York Times: The Metropolitan Opera fired the veteran British stage director John Copley this week after receiving a complaint about what the company described as “inappropriate behavior in the rehearsal room.”

Posted by David at 2/01/2018 01:34:00 PM

Directors Guild Unveils Procedures for Handling Sexual Harassment

Variety: The Directors Guild of America has issued procedures for dealing with sexual harassment in a notice sent to its 17,000 members on Thursday.
The move comes three months after the the DGA announced that it had launched disciplinary proceedings to expel Harvey Weinstein as a member, two weeks after the extensive revelations of alleged sexual abuse leveled against the disgraced mogul. The DGA has a long-standing practice of not commenting on internal union matters, but decided to make an exception in this case. Weinstein resigned a month later.
The DGA said Thursday that the recent public focus on sexual harassment is long overdue.

Posted by David at 2/02/2018 12:30:00 PM

#GrammysSoMale, #MeToo, and What Happens to Women Who 'Step Up' in Music

The Atlantic: Dealing with sexual harassment by Russell Simmons “was a full-time job,” Drew Dixon, a former executive at the record company Def Jam, told The New York Times recently. Simmons, the label boss, would so frequently expose himself to Dixon, she alleged, that she gave a spare key to her office to another coworker so that they could intervene whenever Simmons entered her workspace and unzipped. “It was exhausting,” she said. “It was like making a record while swimming in rough seas.” Still, she scored a huge hit by co-producing the 1995 soundtrack for The Show. Shortly afterwards, she said, Simmons raped her.

Posted by David at 1/30/2018 12:14:00 PM

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Get Out now has its own online class about black horror

The Verge: Jordan Peele’s Oscar-nominated film Get Out now has its own webinar. It’s called “The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and Black Horror Aesthetic,” based on the UCLA course on black horror put together by Professor and author Tananarive Due and her husband, science fiction writer and lecturer Steven Barnes last year.

Posted by David at 1/29/2018 11:31:00 AM

 

How do you ruin 'Joseph'? Try setting it in Vegas

Chicago Tribune: There’s a Broadway story about “The Lion King.” Julie Taymor, the conceptualist genuis, first wanted, in Act 2, to take Simba and his crew to Las Vegas. After they picked their chins up off the floor, the Disney brass set about keeping the action in Africa, rather than on the Strip. It wasn’t that hard, they just said “No.”

Posted by David at 1/30/2018 11:39:00 AM

 

High School Production of HUNCHBACK Cancelled Following Outcry Over Casting Diversity

www.broadwayworld.com: The Ithaca High School production of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME has been cancelled following an outcry over the lack of diversity in casting.
The Ithaca Journal reports that students complained when a white actress was cast in the role of Esmerelda, a part intended to be portrayed as a Romani person living in 15th century Paris.

Posted by David at 1/30/2018 12:13:00 PM

 

Bojack Horseman Creator Finally Addresses Diversity Problem

The Mary Sue: Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the creator of Netflix’s Bojack Horseman, knows that there’s a big problem on his show. Namely, that the character of Diane, who is supposed to be Vietnamese, is voiced by Alison Brie, who is white. This issue has been brought up in fan circles plenty of times before, not only in relation to this show, but throughout animation. Yet, according to Bob-Waksberg, no one’s brought the conversation directly to him, until now.

Posted by David at 1/31/2018 12:09:00 PM

 

How Justin Timberlake’s Super Bowl Halftime Performance Will Come Together & Launch Him Into The Stratosphere

io9.gizmodo.com: Whether Justin Timberlake manages to bring divided football fans together with his Super Bowl LII Halftime Show performance remains to be seen, but the man calling the production shots says JT is precisely the superstar to play Minneapolis’ U.S. Bank Stadium Feb. 4.
“Justin’s the perfect act for this because we honestly could just put the camera on him for 12 minutes and no one would care,” Ricky Kirshner, who has executive produced the halftime show since 2007, told Pollstar. “But you know, it’s the Super Bowl so we feel like we have to make it a little bigger.”
Of course, Kirshner and his wildly talented team will do a lot more than a close-up of JT, being responsible for everything from scenery to lighting to audio to screens.

Posted by David at 2/02/2018 12:21:00 PM