Sunday, January 26, 2020

Worth a Look

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

Producers Guild Program Combating Sexual Harassment Kicks Into Gear

Variety: Producers Guild co-presidents Gail Berman and Lucy Fisher are headed to the org’s annual awards celebration Jan. 18 with a big accomplishment under their respective belts: its anti-harassment program kicked into high gear in 2019, providing free training to 350 people in six months. The Independent Production Safety Initiative (IPSI), established in late 2018, is a high priority for Berman and Fisher, along with gender parity and health care for members.
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National Endowment for the Arts Releases Latest Survey of Public Participation in the Arts

NEA: The National Endowment for the Arts today released the full results from the nation’s largest, most representative survey of adult participation in the arts. The new Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA) records the different ways that American adults (age 18 and older) engage in the arts, where that engagement takes place, and why adults participate in these activities.
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British musicals 'at risk without subsidies like other theatre'

Stage | The Guardian: British musical theatre is at risk of being left behind by America unless there is investment in original work that values underrepresented voices, according to industry figures who have called for arts subsidy to be spent on the sector.
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Filmmakers Work to Reframe the ‘Male Gaze’

Variety: In the opening shot of Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” (2003), Scarlett Johansson is lying on a bed, back to the camera, shown in partial view, wearing underpants. In Denis Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049” (2017) a banged-up Ryan Gosling stares up at a bone-thin, enormous nude projection of a woman. More recently, Jay Roach’s “Bombshell” (2019) featured Margot Robbie lifting her dress for John Lithgow as the camera takes in her legs.
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The Simpsons' Apu Will No Longer Be Voiced by Hank Azaria

The Mary Sue: Much is unclear about the fate of Simpsons character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon following the way the character was discussed in the thoughtful documentary The Problem With Apu, by Hari Kondabolu, but one thing is certain: Hank Azaria will no longer voice the character.
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Sunday, January 19, 2020

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last weeks Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Production Forum to Discuss How to Prevent Sexual Harassment on Set

Variety: When “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” star Adèle Haenel revealed that as a child actor she had been a victim of sexual harassment, the French star kicked off an industry-wide reckoning that began in November 2019 and continues to this day. As the industry continues to grapple with these necessary questions, the Paris-based Production Forum will host a one-hour conference on Friday to present the results of recent inquiries while offering durable steps forward.
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Lyn Gardner: Drama training must adapt to help shatter theatre’s class ceiling

www.thestage.co.uk: Just before Christmas, Arts Council England announced that from next year regularly funded organisations will be required to report not just on the gender, ethnicity, age and disability representation of workforces but also on the socio-economic backgrounds of employees.

This is excellent news, because the class ceiling is still very much in place in British theatre. Even to contemplate a career in the industry often requires exposure to it, and at a time when arts education and school trips to the theatre are disappearing, that means coming from a family that can afford theatre tickets.
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Time’s Up Critical Database Aims to Amplify Underrepresented Critics

Variety: On Friday morning at the Griffin Club in Los Angeles, the advocacy organization Time’s Up — formed two years ago in the wake of the post-Harvey Weinstein reckoning, amid calls for broader change in the entertainment industry — hosted an event to announce the launch of Time’s Up Critical.

Critical is a database meant to help underrepresented critics (women, people of color, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people) find a space in mainstream publications and amplify their voices.
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The Sex Scene Evolves for the #MeToo Era

The New York Times: On a Saturday afternoon in November, Chelsea Pace marched through a thickly wooded area in a park in Ossining, N.Y., toward two actors in Revolutionary War-era dress sitting in a pile of leaves. They were shooting a short film by a young director named Ethan Fuirst about soldiers who meet by chance and have a tryst in the forest. Pace is an intimacy coordinator: a professional facilitator of simulated sex and nudity in theater and film.
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Industry Editor Exclusive: Broadway 'Blackouts' and Making Theatre More Diverse

www.broadwayworld.com: The discussion about how to get more diverse audiences--in terms of age, race, pretty much everything--in the theater has been going on for decades. Recently, this has led to a movement toward dedicated nights for members of a certain race or ethnicity.
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Friday, January 10, 2020

Worth a Look

Best of the break.  Here are a few posts from the Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Hungary's government plans to tighten control over theaters

Reuters: According to draft legislation seen by Reuters on Friday, the government would set up a National Cultural Council, headed by a minister, with the task of “setting priorities and directions to be followed in Hungarian culture”.

The minister would also have a say in the appointment or sacking of theater directors at institutions that are jointly financed by the state and municipality.
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How Can We Confront Implicit Bias? The Director of Jacob's Pillow Shares Her Ideas

Dance Magazine: At Jacob's Pillow's June gala, something happened that outraged me: A patron who identifies as black/biracial felt a white man seated behind her touch her tightly coiled hair. When she ignored him, he audibly complained that her hair would block his view of the stage. At dinner, the patron was further subjected to a series of objectifying questions. "What are you?" asked the white woman sitting next to her. Not "who are you," but a dehumanizing "what." "Who was black? Was it your mother or your father? What do your children look like?"
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I Am a Black Dancer Who Was Dressed Up in Blackface to Perform in La Bayadère

Dance Magazine: On Instagram this week, Misty Copeland reposted a picture of two Russian ballerinas covered head to toe in black, exposing the Bolshoi's practice of using blackface in the classical ballet La Bayadère. The post has already received over 60,000 likes and 2,000 comments, starting a long overdue conversation.
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Why Don't More Women Wear My Dress Size on Broadway?

Theatre Development Fund – TDF: As a musical-loving teen, I spent countless hours imagining myself as my favorite Broadway heroines. But my fantasies evaporated whenever I looked in the mirror. I'd never seen a Christine in The Phantom of the Opera or a Belle in Beauty and the Beast or an Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady who was bigger than a size two, and I was hovering around a 10. As a young theatre fan, I wanted desperately to fit the picture of the strong female lead—so much so that it fed the feelings of insecurity and inadequacy that triggered my anorexia.
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'Beetlejuice' brings attention to Broadway's stop clause

Broadway News: The stop clause has been part of Broadway for more than a century.

The clause, which enables theater owners to evict a show if grosses fall below an agreed upon level for two consecutive weeks, is back in the news after “Beetlejuice” was told it needs to leave its theater in June. The musical had hit its stop clause last June and in October received formal notice of eviction, as the Winter Garden Theatre reportedly prepares to welcome “The Music Man.”
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Who Designs and Directs in LORT Theatres by Pronoun: 2019

HowlRound Theatre Commons: It’s the fifth year of this study! Are we getting closer to gender parity in design in LORT theatres?

The short answer is yes, albeit very slowly and with a good chunk of caveats. Over the six seasons, the percentage of she designers in positions increased 6.0 percent overall to 33.0 percent. Individual disciplines varied. In lighting and projection/video, the percentage of she designers in positions more than doubled. But the percentage of she designers in sound design positions only went up by 0.3 percent.
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How 200 historic Hollywood backdrops were saved from the dumpster

Los Angeles Times: On top of a hill in Valencia, where the wind blows most days, the buildings are big, new and absolutely nonforthcoming. They could house anything — a doctor’s office, a car dealership, a secret government agency. Inside one, against the back wall, lies a pile of large equally nondescript pieces of canvas. Most are long and tied up with string; some have been folded into thick squares and stacked. They could be anything — enormous window treatments or very thin floor coverings.
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Some Small Dance Companies Don't Have HR. So What Do You Do If Something Happens?

Dance Magazine: When Evan Supple joined a small but internationally renowned ballet company in 2016, he was told that it was like a family. Dancers shared ownership of the work and rehearsal process and were close with the artistic director. But when Supple reported abuse he says he witnessed at a children's rehearsal and was subsequently fired, he was forced to reckon with a much more hostile reality.
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These Immersive Moments—The 2010's in Review

No Proscenium: The Guide To Everything Immersive: Somehow, I’ve spent nearly a decade following immersive art & entertainment. It began as a tiny spark on the outskirts of Chelsea, a pinpoint of heat that fanned into bigger and bigger flames. I’ve traveled up and down the East Coast, looking for pockets of immersive. I’ve re-routed road trips through St. Louis to see City Museum and Santa Fe to see Meow Wolf. And as a critic, I’m always looking for that indescribable, otherworldly, and transcendent moment: the very thing which makes up what we sometimes call capital “I” immersive. And the pursuit — quite literally — has changed my life.
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If Culture Sector Employers Want Equality, Post Salary and Benefits With Job Descriptions

hyperallergic.com: Salary transparency isn’t always sexy. But it’s of fundamental importance to achieving greater equity in arts institutions. Now that the pay and benefits of current art and museum employees are online and easily accessible on the Salary Transparency Spreadsheet — and the cause and effects of wage suppression have been underlined by the Unpaid Internship Spreadsheet — there’s a logical next step
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