Worth a Look

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

What We Learned While Trying To Find A New Bechdel Test

FiveThirtyEight: In our recent project looking for the next Bechdel Test, we tried to find new ways to evaluate whether Hollywood was doing a good job of representing all kinds of people equitably on screen and behind the scenes. To put the new tests through their paces, nine FiveThirtyEight staffers watched the 50 top-grossing movies of 2016 and ran them through 12 new tests aimed at measuring gender inequality in Hollywood films.

Posted by David at 1/25/2018 01:14:00 PM

TV writers are sharing their salaries in a Google spreadsheet to combat pay disparity

The Verge: TV writers, producers, executives, and assistants have been anonymously sharing their salaries in a widely circulated Google spreadsheet this week as part of an effort to help people working in the entertainment industry achieve pay parity, The Hollywood Reporter reports.

Posted by David at 1/25/2018 01:11:00 PM

When Pop Culture Sells Dangerous Myths About Consent

The Atlantic: Edward Cullen. Chuck Bass. Lloyd Dobler. Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That guy from Love Actually with the sign. The lead singers of emo bands with their brooding lyrics. Many of the romantic heroes that made me swoon in my youth followed a pattern and, like a Magic Eye picture, only with a little distance did the shape of it pop out to me. All of these characters in some way crossed, or at least blurred, the lines of consent, aggressively pursuing women with little or no regard for their desires. But these characters’ actions, and those of countless other leading men across the pop-culture landscape, were more likely to be portrayed as charming than scary.

Posted by David at 1/24/2018 11:41:00 AM

Read 'Em And Weep: Celebrating 35 Years Of Opera Supertitles

NPR: In 1983, the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto tried a grand experiment. While the singers performed Elektra in German onstage, simultaneous translations in English were projected above the stage. These "supertitles," as they've come to be known, were quickly adopted at opera houses and are now an expected part of the opera-going experience.

Posted by David at 1/22/2018 12:19:00 PM

When People are the Product: Why Reliance on Young Artist Programs May Lead to Financial Ruin for Opera

medium.com: There’s no question that many regional opera houses in the US are struggling. Corporate giving to the arts has never really recovered since the dotcom crash, private philanthropy is shifting increasingly towards education, healthcare, and religious organizations, and a lack of standardized musical education means that every new operagoer has to be taught and then converted.

Posted by David at 1/24/2018 12:27:00 PM

Worth a Look - Time's Up

And five more...

Theater Where Kevin Spacey Was Artistic Director Creates New Initiative to Report Harassment

jezebel.com: London’s Old Vic theatre has established a new channel for employees to report harassment as an alternative to human resources and management.

Posted by David at 1/26/2018 11:21:00 AM

Alyssa Milano, Halsey, more stars speak at the 2018 Women's March

www.usatoday.com: From New York to Los Angeles, women are gathering for the Women's March 2018 — and celebrities are joining in.

Stars are speaking up across the nation Saturday to advocate for change, bring awareness to the #MeToo movement and more.

Posted by David at 1/22/2018 12:22:00 PM

Sexual Harassment is Pervasive Among Self-Employed Creatives

Rising Tide: Our recent research revealed that sexual harassment is pervasive in the creative economy — 54% of self-employed and freelance women reported they have been harassed at least once. This is higher than the numbers already reported in the traditional 9-to-5 workforce, where 48% of currently employed women in the United States say they have been sexually harassed. The problem is far too commonplace, but victims are speaking up, empowered by movements like #MeToo, which elevate their collective voice to share unfortunate realities.

Posted by David at 1/25/2018 01:04:00 PM

Long Wharf Theater Leader Is Accused of Sexual Misconduct

The New York Times: Ms. Rubinstein is one of four women who spoke on the record, describing unwanted sexual contact by Mr. Edelstein since his arrival in 2002 at Long Wharf, a respected nonprofit theater in New Haven that has had several productions mounted on Broadway. Six other former employees, women and men, described frequent sexually explicit remarks in the workplace by Mr. Edelstein, a prominent figure in American theater circles.

Posted by David at 1/25/2018 01:34:00 PM

Producers Guild of America Sets Anti-Sexual Harassment Guidelines

Variety: The Producers Guild of America has issued its “Anti-Sexual Harassment Guidelines” to its 8,200 members in the wake of expelling Harvey Weinstein from its ranks.

The guidelines, issued Friday on the day before the PGA’s awards show, are the initial recommendations from the PGA’s Anti-Sexual Harassment Task Force, which was created last October after the start of the massive sexual harassment scandal that engulfed Hollywood. The PGA’s board of directors ratified the guidelines unanimously this week.

Posted by David at 1/22/2018 12:19:00 PM

Worth a Look

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

‘Roseanne’ in the Trump Era

www.vulture.com: I’m not great at tweeting about politics because it takes me too long to emotionally process news before I can come up with a witty, quippy, retweetable tweet. By last summer though, I was finally able to accept the election results and get my brain functioning enough to get back to tweeting in a timely fashion. After a couple of months of unanimously positive feedback, I had a chilling realization: There was a lack of negative comments when I posted anything critical of our current administration. Trolls are abundant online, so why wasn’t anyone lashing out against me, calling me a “libtard,” a “snowflake,” or “lacking common sense”?

Posted by David at 1/17/2018 11:59:00 AM

Female Lighting Designers: Past, Present, and Future

THE INTERVAL: Women lighting designers started in the spotlight. In the last century, women were at the forefront of lighting design’s major changes, both technological and conceptual, and yet men have dominated its ranks. One would think that a profession created by women would remain in the hands of women, but for theatrical lighting design that has not been the case, and questions persist in the minds of many of today’s lighting designers: Can women hold on to their legacy? Are they disappearing from the profession?

Posted by David at 1/17/2018 11:57:00 AM

Dear NBC: Straightwashing is Not OK

The Mary Sue: There are so many important, interesting, inspiring stories within the LGBTQIA community. If only the producers and television executives telling those stories actually acknowledged where they came from. In the case of the upcoming NBC drama Rise, its protagonist, based on a real person, will be missing a key element of his identity. The person is gay, but the character will be straight.

Posted by David at 1/15/2018 02:20:00 PM

Republicans’ tax attack on actors

NY Daily News: You can call me a multitasker; I’m a working actress, an accountant and also a tax attorney. My resume may sound a little unusual, but when April 15 hits, I will fit in with tens of millions of working Americans who have been hurt by sweeping changes in the tax code.

Posted by David at 1/15/2018 02:16:00 PM

The Public Domain Starts Growing Again Next Year, and It’s About Time

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Have you ever wondered how it’s possible for there to be two Jungle Book movies to be in development at the same time? Why everything seems to be based on a work by Shakespeare? Or why it always seems like someone is telling a version of The Wizard of Oz? The answer is that these works are in the public domain, meaning that copyright law no longer prevents other artists from adapting them to create new works.

Posted by David at 1/15/2018 02:05:00 PM

Worth a Look - Time's Up

And five more...

The Larger Lessons of Mark Wahlberg's $1.5 Million Salary on 'All the Money in the World'

The Atlantic: When All the Money in the World was fast-tracked into reshoots to replace scenes featuring Kevin Spacey (who has been accused of sexual assault), Michelle Williams saw it as a powerful sign that Hollywood was changing. At the director Ridley Scott’s insistence, the studio was spending upwards of $10 million to recast Spacey with Christopher Plummer in the role of the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. As the film’s lead actress, Williams immediately signed off on the decision. “They could have my salary, they could have my holiday, whatever they wanted,” she said at the time. “Because I appreciated so much that they were making this massive effort.” To Williams, the reshoots were a statement, but to her co-star Mark Wahlberg, they were an opportunity.

Posted by David at 1/18/2018 01:33:00 PM

Women jazz musicians are using #metoo and taking a stand against sexism

theconversation.com: Every year since 1986, the Les Victoires du Jazz Awards selects France’s best jazz musicians. In 2017 all the nominees in all categories were men. Two decades ago this would not have been a story, but today it stands out and shows that there is something off and obsolete about this old boys’ club. It may have also been the case that, 20 years ago, female jazz musicians may have been reluctant to kick up a fuss. Fortunately, not anymore.

Posted by David at 1/15/2018 02:23:00 PM

Guthrie vows to investigate harassment claims

Minnesota Public Radio News: The Guthrie Theater is launching an investigation after allegations of sexual harassment by a former employee.

The female carpenter resigned earlier this week after working on the Guthrie staff for three and a half years, a position she described as a "dream job."

Posted by David at 1/19/2018 12:21:00 PM

It’s time to seriously address harassment and abuse

Protocol: DURING A RECENT City Arts and Lectures program, Tom Hanks was asked by interviewer Dave Eggers to comment on the sexual harassment and abuse cases coming to light in Hollywood. He launched into a well thought out and poignant observation about the current rash of accusations in Hollywood and elsewhere.

He pointed out that, in the workplace, those in charge assume (incorrectly) a certain privilege because of their status that they believe allows them to make the rules and to demand and expect that their requests, demands, and desires be obeyed. He admitted that this was not a new phenomena, but, while it may actually stem from some primordial male trait, it is inexcusable, not only in the workplace, but in civilization.

I have yet to meet a woman who can tell me that she has not experienced at least harassment, if not worse, at work. They get it not only from their bosses and others in positions of power, but from men they work with and strangers on the street. It is pervasive.

Posted by David at 1/16/2018 12:04:00 PM

Robert Brustein Doesn’t Understand Consent: The Dangers of the White Male “Genius”

Bitter Gertrude: As a very young woman, I haunted thrift stores, which, in those days, were chock full of amazing finds. Thrift store book sections filled my library, and I would buy anything related to theatre and devour it to supplement the reading I was doing in my theatre classes. Eventually, a slow, sinking realization started creeping in at the edges as I read book after book by theatrical “geniuses,” all white men. I remember paging through Robert Brustein’s Theatre of Revolt thinking, He does not consider women people.

Posted by David at 1/16/2018 12:06:00 PM

Ellipses...

If you're like me you would have thought "grab 'em by the pussy" would have been the bottom.  If you're like me you were wrong...  I considered recommending work buy a $50,000 printer today, then I reconsidered...  A week ago today it was 60 degrees colder.  If you don't buy into climate change you are being willfully ignorant...  We're trying a point system for potty training the boy.  I didn't anticipate needing to handle negative scores...  Sometimes these days I begin to wonder if I ought to be doing something more important.  I have no idea what that would be or how it would work...  Season 5 of The Guild was a lot more ambitious than what had come before that, and season 6 more than season 5...  The folks in Rochester have set up an appointment for me next month.  I thought that appointment was going to be here.  Guess I'll need to get to the bottom of that...  It seems like the Qdoba I like is permanently closed, at least Google thinks so.  Have to find a new lunch spot...  There's this indicator lamp on my laptop blinking to alert me to a hardware problem.  I wish I could shut it off...  Tonight the evening news was running a countdown clock to the Steelers game on Sunday.  It's a big game, but that might be a little over the top...  I'm reading a Star Wars short story book.  The last story posited that R5-D4 blew his own motivator on purpose in order to help R2.  That's pretty cool...  FIOS is running a listing on one channel that says "This channel has been removed" for weeks now.  Just a thought: how about putting new programming there?  Not thrilled paying for a blank channel...  If you've got a minute to talk to your Senator you should tell them SESTA is a bad bill.  Unfortunately my Senator is a sponsor of the bill.  It's unlikely I'd be able to turn him around...  Should you be wondering, the answer to his question is: because they're the ones the dream is most precious to...

Ellipses...

It is really cold, like I can't remember the last time it was this cold...  Yes, I know, it has been a very long time since there's been much of anything on this site.  I'm sorry...  Not for nothing, but there's no way they get an infrastructure bill that means anything after the tax plan they already passed...  There's no Steeler game this weekend, I know that's a good thing, but still...  My laptop needs a new battery.  Did I mention I just bought my laptop?  No?  Well really it was work that just bought this laptop...  Can't decide if I like the new Mythbusters...  I need an Amazon feature that lets me know if a book I am buying is already on someone else's Kindle so I don't gift them something they already have...  If the popular consensus is that the economy is doing really well then I think we are using the wrong metrics to measure the health of the economy...  The boy was 0 for 2 today...  I can't say for certain, but two nights ago I think is when it really started to fall apart...  Facebook thinks I want to relive memories from 9 years ago a lot right now.  Facebook is wrong...  I'm binge watching TableTop.  That game "Gloom" looks pretty cool...  The more I think about it them more it seems like when someone gets their party's presidential nomination all NDE's they are party to should expire...  I've got another week before classes start, but I think I will need to do the office thing a bunch before then...  Did I mention it was really cold?  It is really cold...

Worth a Look - Weinstein

And another five...

The Sexual-Abuse and Harassment Scandals Blowing Up on Broadway

thedailybeast: The young woman said she did not have stage fright. She was looking around the room to see if the alleged perpetrator of the sexual assault she had endured was there.

“I don’t say that just as a victim, but also a witness of an assault,” she said.

Posted by David at 12/05/2017 11:33:00 AM

Lee Trull Accused of Misconduct

TheaterJones: In the Dallas Theater Center’s early seasons at the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, which opened in 2009, a Southern Methodist University student who performed at the theater says that Lee Trull, then a DTC casting director and a Hal and Diane Brierley Resident Acting Company member, repeatedly harassed her. At one point he “put his hand on my butt and grabbed it hard,” said the actress, who wishes to remain anonymous. This behavior continued—and worsened.

Posted by David at 12/06/2017 03:34:00 PM

Experts: racketeering suit against Weinstein faces uphill legal battle

Business Insider: Six women on Wednesday filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and the companies associated with him, alleging that their coordinated efforts to cover up a pattern of egregious sexual misconduct amounted to racketeering.

The women accused Weinstein, The Weinstein Company, members of its board, and Miramax of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act, a law passed in 1970 that was designed to prosecute massive criminal enterprises like the Mafia.

Posted by David at 12/08/2017 02:31:00 PM

Gretchen Carlson on Sexual Harassment Reckoning

Variety: As 2017 comes to a close, the landscape of sexual harassment claims and the manner in which companies are handling them are changing at breakneck speed.

Over the past 17 months, we’ve seen more and more women all across the country mustering the courage to speak out en masse, and amazingly, they’re no longer being instantly called liars and having their stories pushed aside.

Posted by David at 12/05/2017 10:50:00 AM

Unmuffling a Culture of Silence

AMERICAN THEATRE: It begins innocently enough: A theatre artist asks another theatre artist to dinner. In an industry where ideas are discussed, and deals often made, in dimly lit restaurants, such meetings are considered essential for networking. Such was the case for a New York-based actor when the literary manager of a Tony-winning regional theatre asked her out for a post-show drink.

Posted by David at 12/08/2017 02:26:00 PM

Worth a Look

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

Denver wants artists to live, work in safe spaces and has $300,000 to make it happen

The Denver Post: Denver Arts & Venues knows there are artists living and working in unsafe buildings and has set up a $300,000 fund to spur tenants and landlords to make repairs.

Posted by David at 12/06/2017 03:38:00 PM

Black Bodies, White Writers

AMERICAN THEATRE: I felt my body tense up. A black man—rather, a mannequin of a black man—lay headless, forgotten, on the side of the stage. I wanted to leave the theatre, but as a critic I couldn’t. The show wasn’t over yet. Last month Elevator Repair Service premiered its adaptation of Measure for Measure at the Public Theater. Though the production would have otherwise been an inventive but harmlessly flawed take on one of Shakespeare’s notorious “problem plays,” whatever interesting or innovative elements the show introduced were quickly overshadowed by what struck me as its racial insensitivity.

Posted by David at 12/07/2017 11:35:00 AM

Women in Leadership: It’s About Time

AMERICAN THEATRE: “Show of hands. How many people started their own scrappy theatre company with their friends from college?” asked Hana Sharif, associate artistic director of Baltimore Center Stage, during a plenary session at the Berkshire Leadership Summit. Half the room raised their hands. “That’s my story too,” she said. I laughed in recognition, because that is also how I started, and managing that company is still how I choose to spend my free time.

Posted by David at 12/06/2017 03:31:00 PM

Appeals Court Rules 'NBA 2K' Players Lack Standing to Sue Over Face-Scanning

Hollywood Reporter: In the past few years thanks to various court decisions, it's become tougher to mount a class action lawsuit with appellate judges tightening what plaintiffs must show in order to have standing to sue. That's especially important as digital services collect all sorts of data on their users and as many worry about privacy breaches. The latest news on this front came Tuesday at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals as some of those who created personalized virtual basketball players in NBA 2K15 and NBA 2K16 got mostly bad news in their legal effort to sue video game maker Take-Two Interactive over biometric collection.In the past few years thanks to various court decisions, it's become tougher to mount a class action lawsuit with appellate judges tightening what plaintiffs must show in order to have standing to sue. That's especially important as digital services collect all sorts of data on their users and as many worry about privacy breaches. The latest news on this front came Tuesday at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals as some of those who created personalized virtual basketball players in NBA 2K15 and NBA 2K16 got mostly bad news in their legal effort to sue video game maker Take-Two Interactive over biometric collection.

Posted by David at 12/06/2017 11:07:00 AM

The oldest tech, theater, might be an antidote to the newest

San Francisco Chronicle: Think of this pitch to a room of venture capitalists: “What we’re proposing is a scalable, repeatable product that makes vital intellectual and emotional wisdom portable, communicable, and adaptable and memorable. Everyone will use it and keep using it for millennia. We call it: storytelling.”

Posted by David at 12/04/2017 01:03:00 PM

Worth a Look

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

Does the DGA Even Understand What Counts as Inclusion?

The Mary Sue: The best thing about the current “Golden Age of Television” is that there’s so much of it. Sure, to us fans and consumers of content, it can seem a bit overwhelming, but every new TV show or limited series provides hundreds of jobs to hundreds of working professionals, many of them women, men of color, or members of other marginalized groups who are typically underemployed.

Posted by David at 12/01/2017 12:14:00 PM

Why Plays About Sexual Assault Are Too Murky for Our Own Good

The New York Times: At the close of Anna Ziegler’s “Actually,” a play about an accusation of sexual misconduct on an Ivy League campus, a feather flutters down from the ceiling. That’s a feather meant to tip the scales of justice. (Scales don’t always work that way, but just go with it.) The stage goes dark before the feather lands.

Posted by David at 11/30/2017 11:25:00 AM

Finding Your Creative Voice Again After Combat

The Atlantic: When I came home from my first deployment to Iraq, readjusting was literally impossible for me. I was a 33-year-old Army combat officer and I could no longer feel or see beauty in anything. And while I didn’t know how to leave the destructive path I was on, I also couldn’t stand to crush the hearts of my wife and children anymore. So, I temporarily moved out of my home and slept on various couches, more concerned with drinking than eating. When I would sit down to write, like I had done my entire life before deploying, I’d come up with nothing but blank pages. I had lost a lot of myself on the battlefield, it turned out. Large, significant pieces of who I was had been killed off somewhere in the desert, missing in action, never to come home.

Posted by David at 11/27/2017 10:55:00 AM

Pink shoes, brown bodies: How dancers of color are fighting for representation

Salon.com: It was July 15, 2013, just two days after George Zimmerman was acquitted for the killing of teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida.
The Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, a historically and predominantly black modern dance company from Denver, was performing "Southland" at the University of Florida. It's a work created by iconic, pioneering black choreographer Katherine Dunham in 1951 about lynchings in the U.S. South.

Posted by David at 11/27/2017 10:52:00 AM

Can a transgender actor ever be just an “actor”?

Salon.com: Many accomplished artists — actors, musicians, writers — are able to transcend the attributes society attached to them that are, quite often, part of what made them famous in the first place. Beyoncé is a black musician, for certain, and proud of it. But, by now, that does not circumscribe her value. Nor does Ellen DeGeneres' queerness make her just or only a queer talk-show host.

Posted by David at 11/28/2017 11:01:00 AM

Worth A Look - Weinstein

Culled from more than a dozen this week...

“It’s Like A Petri Dish Festering”: Women In Hollywood On How To Fix Culture Of Abuse

www.fastcompany.com: As the sexual harassment scandals shake up Hollywood, most of the focus so far has been on rooting out perpetrators and establishing the scale and depth of the abuse—a process that is far from over. But increasingly, members of the entertainment industry are trying to look forward, beyond the ugly details of the scandals, to come up with solutions to, if not completely eradicate the problem of abuse, at least create a culture that will make it harder for predators to thrive.

Posted by David at 12/01/2017 12:06:00 PM

To Hell With the Witch-Hunt Debate

The Atlantic: One of the principal pleasures of Mad Men, on rich display beginning with the pilot episode, was looking at all of the crazy things people used to be able to do in offices: smoke, drink, and—if they were male—grope and corner and sexually humiliate the women, who could either put up with it or quit.

Posted by David at 11/27/2017 10:54:00 AM

What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?

www.theparisreview.org: Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, William Burroughs, Richard Wagner, Sid Vicious, V. S. Naipaul, John Galliano, Norman Mailer, Ezra Pound, Caravaggio, Floyd Mayweather, though if we start listing athletes we’ll never stop. And what about the women? The list immediately becomes much more difficult and tentative: Anne Sexton? Joan Crawford? Sylvia Plath? Does self-harm count? Okay, well, it’s back to the men I guess: Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Lead Belly, Miles Davis, Phil Spector.

Posted by David at 11/28/2017 11:12:00 AM

Want to stop sexual abuse in the workplace? Unionize.

theweek.com: Since the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke last month, torrents of women have come forward with credible charges of sexual harassment, bringing down veteran journalists, big-name directors, and powerful politicians across the country. But this necessary reckoning has also relied on newsworthiness. The headlines blare, and the offending man is forced to retreat. That model can cut down a Weinstein, but is unlikely to work against, say, a restaurant supervisor who's guilty of the same behavior.

Posted by David at 11/30/2017 11:24:00 AM

Mike Schur & Damon Lindelof on Complicity in Hollywood

The Mary Sue: When we talk about sexual harassment and assault, we often talk about the role of men in the fight against these things. What can men do besides just, you know, not harassing and assaulting women? How can they stand up for women? How can they resist being complicit cogs in the nonstop misogyny machine?

Posted by David at 11/30/2017 11:03:00 AM