Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Worth a Look

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

No More Hotel Auditions, Says Union Representing Actors

The Two-Way : NPR: SAG-AFTRA is calling for an end to auditions in private hotel rooms or residences, after a spate of sexual harassment allegations against powerful Hollywood figures. "We are committed to addressing the scenario that has allowed predators to exploit performers behind closed doors under the guise of a professional meeting," the union's president, Gabrielle Carteris, said in a statement.
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Actors' Equity votes to change the name of the Gypsy Robe

Broadway News: The Gypsy Robe is changing its name.

After hearing concerns about the insensitivity of the name, the Actors’ Equity Association has voted to rename the robe that is awarded to the chorus member with the highest number of Broadway credits on opening night of a show. The name change will be put in place next season and the more than 60-year-old tradition of the robe will continue.
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White Actor Is Voicing A Black Character In ‘Spy Kids’

New Pittsburgh Courier: The computer-animated series Spy Kids: Mission Critical is hits Netflix on Friday. The ten episodes will follow attendees at Spy Kids Academy, which is a top secret school for kid agents. The kids have to save the world against an evil force known as S.W.A.M.P. (Sinister Wrongdoers Against Mankind’s Preservation) and their leader, Golden Brain. The series including one Black male character, known as PSI, but the actor who is voicing the character, Travis Turner, is white .
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What Proposed EU 2020 Lighting Regulations Really Mean

Live Events: The UK’s Association of Lighting Designers (ALD), as part of its Save Stage Lighting Campaign that is warning of the devastating effects the proposed EU 2020 Lighting regulations would have on production lighting, has today released a clear, concise guide to those regulations.
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The monkey selfie lawsuit lives

The Verge: Just when you thought you wouldn’t hear about the monkey selfie ever again, the legal saga lives once more. Although the parties — the photographer, a self-publishing book company, and PETA, on behalf of the selfie-taking monkey — reached a settlement in September of last year, the Ninth Circuit is now refusing to dismiss the case. This means the court will be coming out with an official appellate decision about the monkey selfie.
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Sunday, April 15, 2018

Worth a Look

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

'The Simpsons' To 'The Problem With Apu': Drop Dead

Monkey See : NPR: Comedian Hari Kondabolu made a documentary in 2017 called The Problem With Apu. It's not very long — less than an hour. In it, he interrogates the legacy of Apu, the convenience store owner on The Simpsons voiced by Hank Azaria. Kondabolu talked to other actors and comics who longed for more South Asian representation, only to find that at the time, Apu was just about all there was. And Apu was not only voiced by a white actor, but he was doing what Azaria has acknowledged is a take on Peter Sellers doing an Indian accent in the movie The Party. In other words, he based his caricature of an accent on someone else's caricature of an accent. Or, as Kondabolu said on W. Kamau Bell's show Totally Biased, "a white guy doing an impression of a white guy making fun of my father."
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OHIO study shows high number of concussion-related symptoms in performing arts

www.ohio.edu: A recent study released by the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine shows a stunning number of participants not only experienced concussion-related symptoms and head impacts but also continued performing either without reporting the incident or without receiving the recommended care. These participants were not taking part in any sporting contest at the time, however. They are theater personnel.
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Equity Launches Campaign for Tony Awards Chorus + Ensemble Category

Backstage: Actors’ Equity, the nation’s union for live theater actors and stage managers, has launched a campaign petitioning the American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League to offer a new category in the Tony Awards: best chorus and best ensemble in a musical or play.
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Queer Women of DC TV: Power of Inclusive Stories at ClexaCon

The Mary Sue: “It’s all about stories,” said Chyler Leigh at the final panel of ClexaCon on Sunday, April 8th. If there’s one phrase that can sum up the impact of the myriad queer women and characters that were celebrated at the three-day con in Las Vegas, that’s it. ClexaCon was both a celebration of wonderful shows, creators, ships, and characters, and a reminder of the impact these stories have on their audiences.
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The EU's latest copyright proposal is so bad, it even outlaws Creative Commons licenses

Boing Boing: The EU is mooting a new copyright regime for the largest market in the world, and the Commissioners who are drafting the new rules are completely captured by the entertainment industry, to the extent that they have ignored their own experts and produced a farcical Big Content wishlist that includes the most extensive internet censorship regime the world has ever seen, perpetual monopolies for the biggest players, and a ban on European creators using Creative Commons licenses to share their works.
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Worth a Look - Time's Up

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Nondisclosure Agreements, Inclusion Riders + More U.K. Legal News

Backstage: After revelations about the use and abuse of nondisclosure agreements against staff at the now infamous Presidents Club fundraiser as well as their use in the silencing of allegations against Harvey Weinstein, there’s increased pressure on the government to look into the legality of NDAs and to better regulate or even ban their use. The Human Rights Commission, a U.K. rights body, released a major report and said that NDAs were being misused to sweep misconduct “under the carpet” instead of their original purpose: to protect the identity of victims.
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Molly Ringwald Revisits “The Breakfast Club” in the Age of #MeToo

The New Yorker: Earlier this year, the Criterion Collection, which is “dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world,” released a restored version of “The Breakfast Club,” a film written and directed by John Hughes that I acted in, more than three decades ago. For this edition, I participated in an interview about the movie, as did other people close to the production.
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Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Carousel,’ After #MeToo

www.vulture.com: Billy Bigelow says he does not beat his wife. “I wouldn’t beat a little thing like that — I hit her,” he explains to the Starkeeper, head man in heaven’s waiting room. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself.

Bigelow is the protagonist in Carousel, the second work by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and one that’s come to be known as a problem musical, or “the wife-beater musical.” And the problem is not that Billy hits his wife, Julie, but that Julie, seemingly, makes an excuse for him, thereby teaching their daughter Louise that abuse is a form of love.
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Why Should You Try Inclusion Riders? Because They Work — For Everyone

Variety: When Frances McDormand introduced the wider world to the phrase “inclusion rider” during the 2018 Oscars, it had an effect almost immediately. Weeks later, the production companies of Michael B. Jordan, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, and Paul Feig were among those jumping on board, saying they would adhere to the riders’ mandate to include certain percentages of employees from traditionally marginalized groups. Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel even wrote a memo supporting inclusion riders.
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Kiss Me, My Fair Carousel Woman: Now Is the Season of Our Discontent

AMERICAN THEATRE: Is this really the right time for a spate of male-authored, male-directed musicals about subservient women to come to Broadway?
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Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Worth a Look

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

"It Just Didn’t Occur to Me": Showrunner Melissa Rosenberg on Race

The Mary Sue: We have been very vocal about our disappointment about the latest season of Jessica Jones, especially in regard to the treatment of men and women of color. (Jeri was great though.) Thankfully, it hasn’t been just us and the criticism about the issue has been loud enough that it reached the ears of showrunner, Melissa Rosenberg.
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Thoughts from Mark Shanda - USITT President

sightlines.usitt.org: The mission of USITT is to connect performing arts design and technology communities to ensure vibrant dialogue among practitioners, educators, and students. Let that mission statement roll around in your head for just a minute and please keep that central to your engagement for the balance of the week. Some key words that jump out to me include community and vibrant dialogue. In this past year, our community has faced challenges that we never imagined we would face and the need for vibrant dialogue is critical.
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Tax Tips for Freelance Creatives: Debunking Common Myths

99U: Does the thought of doing your taxes make you want to cry? For many in the design industry, including myself, the answer is a resounding yes. But a solid grasp of figures and finances is the equivalent to building the strong foundation to a building. If you can shore up the money part of your business, you can spend more time doing what you really love—the creative part of the job.
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Theatre's missing accents

Exeunt Magazine: In ‘I bet Nicholas Hynter doesn’t have to do this’, a brilliantly titled chapter of Glory and the Garden (eds. Ros Merkin & Kate Dorney) , Gwenda Hughes chronicles the complaint letters she received as artistic director of The New Vic, then The Victoria Theatre in North Staffordshire. Amongst these are a series of moans directed at Northern Broadsides’ Shakespeare, including one outraged-of-Cheshire writer who felt horrified at the bard’s words being so unsuitably intoned by those with (gasp) regional accents.
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On the Representation of Disabled Women in Cinema

Chaz's Journal | Roger Ebert: Hollywood just doesn’t seem interested in telling unique disabled stories in general, and the only narrative they do regards men who become disabled. "Where the women at?," to paraphrase “Blazing Saddles.” When I saw “The Shape of Water” last year I had to smile. The movie has its flaws from a disability standpoint, but seeing a mainstream Hollywood feature about a woman with a disability from birth, who is a sexual being, who is independent, and who leads her own story, felt revolutionary.
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Monday, April 02, 2018

Worth A Look

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

Musician wins landmark ruling over ruined hearing

BBC News: A viola player who suffered a life-changing hearing injury at a rehearsal of Wagner's Die Walkure in 2012 has won a landmark High Court judgment against the Royal Opera House (ROH).

The case won by Chris Goldscheider has huge implications for the industry and the health and safety of musicians.

It is the first time a judge has scrutinised the music industry's legal obligations towards musicians' hearing.

The ROH said it was "surprised and disappointed" by the judgment.
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Pilot Season: Female Creators, Directors Break Through

Variety: The 2018 pilot season is shaping up to be a landmark year for women behind the camera.

Female creators and directors saw gains virtually across the board, as networks ramp up efforts to include more women in the pilot process. As Variety previously reported, the Time’s Up and Me Too movements have played important roles this season, with the networks all looking for ways to increase female representation.
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Disability Theater Access in 2018

Chaz's Journal | Roger Ebert: The Cinemark movie theater I frequent in Sacramento boasts four wheelchair spaces. As a movie lover with disabilities this is a process not unlike fitting in additional guests at a dinner party. You wonder how friends will sit together and have optimal access to the food on hand. A trip to my local theater to see “Black Panther” in February saw my metaphorical dinner party end with the equivalent of thrown plates and wasted food, a sad reminder of how movie theaters in America continuously fail patrons with mobility issues.
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Still on stage after 40 years: Wisconsin firm grows beyond theater lighting

news.wisc.edu: In a spotless, 10-acre factory in Mazomanie, Wisconsin, Loyal Burkhart II assembles gears for hoists that will raise screens and backdrops above a theater stage somewhere in the world.

The hoists being tested on the floor nearby are bound for a theater in Israel.
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It Takes an Army

Chaz's Journal | Roger Ebert: By now, we all know that it takes a village to raise a child. Less well-known is that it takes an army of women to raise consciousness about how Hollywood’s gender and race imbalance—both in front of the camera and behind it—is inimical to equal employment, pay, and representation.

Largely due to the efforts of activist female filmmakers including Allison Anders, Ava DuVernay and Maria Giese, agenda-driven academics such as Martha Lauzen and Stacy Smith (all five pictured above), and institutions such as The Bunche Center at UCLA, inclusion has been a critical and still unresolved factor for the past two decades in the Hollywood movie equation.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Worth a Look

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

Game developers push for unionization amid insecure positions, excessive OT

Ars Technica: Going into the Game Developers Conference this week, you could foresee some of the hot topics that would be consuming the world’s largest gathering of game makers: stuff like real-time raytraced graphics, fantastical blockchain-based business schemes, and how to design games for augmented reality. But another surprising issue has overtaken many of the discussions in the Moscone Center hallways this week: that of unionization.
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Bethel Park changes stagehand policy after parent raises issue of blackened faces

TribLIVE: Stagehands at Bethel Park's high school switched from blackened faces to black ski masks after a concerned parent contacted the district, said Vicki Flotta, spokeswoman for the Bethel Park School District.
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‘Midnight Rider’ Case: Director Randall Miller’s Ask For Leniency Denied By Judge

Deadline: Midnight Rider director Randall Miller, serving a sentence for involuntary manslaughter in the 2014 on-set death of 27-year-old crew member Sarah Jones, was denied having his supervision removed by the judge overseeing the case since its beginning.
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Music Copyright 101: Sampling, Covers, Mixtapes & Fair Use

theproaudiofiles.com: You’ve seen the words “All Rights Reserved” contained in the liner notes of a CD or in the purchasing agreement of an iTunes file. What rights do those words give the copyright holder?
You would probably be able to identify some of them: that the music and the recording are protected by copyright, that the owner of the copyright reserves the right to copy the music, distribute and sell the music, allow others to pay to use the music, and prevent others from making unsanctioned copies of the music.
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Best of Slow TV

Cool Material: Slow TV is a wildly successful phenomenon in its home country of Norway and it’s something we can totally see exploding in popularity here in the states. Essentially, Norwegian television crews strap cameras to various forms of transportation or insert them into activities and record hours-long programs. There’s no plot, cast, or season premieres and finales. Yet millions of people tune in to watch.
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Worth a Look - Time's Up

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When Will Women Lead Storytelling in Hollywood?

www.clydefitchreport.com: “Look around, ladies and gentleman,” McDormand instructed us. “Because we all have stories to tell and projects we need to have financed. Don’t talk to us about it at the parties tonight. Invite us into your office in a couple days — or you can come to ours, whichever suits you best — and we’ll tell you all about them.”
McDormand ended her speech with two words that ignited a Google search frenzy: inclusion rider. A contractual stipulation in which actors and actresses can demand that as much of 50% of the onscreen talent and off-screen crew will be comprised of women and people of color. So far, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Paul Feig and others have publicly stated that their future projects will contractually impose inclusion riders.
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Sexual assault in Hollywood: Four women share their Me Too stories

www.usatoday.com: The office was small and dingy, a two-room space with a reception area, across the freeway from Universal Studios in North Hollywood.
Toy action figures and a jumble of movie paraphernalia covered nearly every surface.
But Megan Densmore didn’t dwell on the bachelors-left-to-their-own-devices feel of the place.
When you’re trying to land your first acting job, the 22-year-old Oregon transplant thought, you don’t start in shiny corner offices of Los Angeles’ biggest talent agencies.
You start small. And you’re thankful for what you get.
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Reports Lay Bare Gender Pay and Bonus Gaps in British TV

Variety: ITV revealed Tuesday that its male employees earn, on average, 16.4% more than female employees – the latest British media and entertainment company to publicly acknowledge its gender pay gap. The BBC, Channel 4 and ITN have also reported figures showing that, across the board, men collect significantly bigger paychecks and bonuses on average than their female counterparts.
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For Women Behind The Camera, Sexual Harassment Is Part Of The Job

HuffPost: When David offered Mary a job on the set of a major feature film in 2016, it seemed like a golden opportunity. She’d moved to Vancouver the previous year to start her dream career and, at 28, found herself working 100 hours a week on various gigs across production sites. Now, David, in his 40s, an assistant location manager with a great reputation, was offering her a job she couldn’t pass up: production assistant in the location department of a big-budget production.
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#MeToo -- What should I do?

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: With a barrage of revelations in recent months about sexual harassment by high-profile men in the worlds of media and entertainment, local attorneys and advocates aimed to provide information and support to women at a panel discussion Sunday.
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Sunday, March 18, 2018

Worth a Look

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

The Bruno Mars Controversy Proves People Don’t Understand Cultural Appropriation

thegrapevine.theroot.com: The furious debate about Bruno Mars and whether or not he is a cultural appropriator has bubbled beneath the surface of his career for a while. It existed before he remade Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Uptown Funk” or Bell Biv DeVoe’s “Finesse.”
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Broadway Director Kenny Leon Talks Children of a Lesser God Revival and How Racism Reaches Broadway

www.theroot.com: When Kenny Leon’s production of Children of a Lesser God opens on Broadway next month, fans of the original production from 40 years ago will definitely notice a few changes. But according to the Tony Award-winning director, the changes in the racial and political messages will hopefully bring more people into the theater.
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Latinx Advocacy Group Threatens to Boycott Hollywood Studios

Colorlines: Ahead of the 90th Academy Awards, The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) targeted Hollywood exclusion of Latinx artists at a pair of protests. Now, the media advocacy organization sets its sights on six of the biggest entertainment studios, which it says ignore Latinx people both on- and off-camera.
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Amplifying Civic Engagement Through #TheatreActionGunControl

HowlRound: I started Protest Plays Project because I wanted to create a space for socially-minded artists to meet. As a playwright, my first step was to reach out to other playwrights. What started as a gathering place soon became a place for planning action: I wanted to activate theatres and theatremakers to put all of these passionate scripts to use.

Now here we are, a little over a year later, and Protest Plays is no less ambitious. Our current goal? To put #TheatreActionGunControl plays in theatres across the nation in support of the #Enough walk-out and #MarchForOurLives march on DC and in cities around the country.
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Westworld SXSW Park Review - Westworld's SXSW Park Was a Mindf*ck of a Social Experiment

www.esquire.com/entertainment: I was already experiencing the subversive psychological manipulation of HBO’s Westworld experience at SXSW. Typically I’m jaded, if not outright hostile, to such preposterous displays of expendable marketing wealth. Yet, out of curiosity, I boarded the bus with dozens of other target audience tourists to ride 30 minutes outside of Austin to a pop-up theme park in the style of Westworld. I was alone, of course, because no one else I knew visiting SXSW had four hours to kill going to a version of Westworld without any of the disgusting thrills depicted on the TV show.
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Worth a Look - Time's Up

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Why Hollywood's 'Inclusion Rider' Mania Could Hurt the Equality Cause

Hollywood Reporter: When Frances McDormand uttered the words "inclusion rider" in her acceptance speech at this year's Oscars, Google lit up with folks searching the term. Even the entertainment industry's savviest lawyers had to ask around for the exact meaning and derivation, although most could guess that it had something to do with ensuring diversity through contracts. Two weeks later, an increasing number of production companies are saying they will adopt inclusion riders, while WME co-CEO Ari Emanuel announced inclusion riders have become "imperative."
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Sexual Misconduct in the Music Industry Addressed at SXSW Panel

Variety: In a frank, freewheeling and intense hour-long discussion, the subject of Sexual Misconduct in the Music Industry took center stage at SXSW on March 15. The talk came on the day that panelist Andrea Domanick, west coast editor of Noisy, published a two-years-in-the-making article on the subject culled from interviews with dozens of women in the business.
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Ben Affleck and Matt Damon adopt Frances McDormand's proposed inclusion rider.

slate.com/culture: Changes are brewing in Hollywood. Movements like #OscarsSoWhite and #TimesUp have thrown down the gauntlet for broader representation in the entertainment industry, both on screen and off. Both A-listers and fans want to see the industry, which has been historically dominated by white men, employ more women and people of color. Frances McDormand voiced such a request during her Best Actress acceptance speech, which she concluded by saying, “I have two words to leave you with tonight, ladies and gentlemen: inclusion rider.”
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Paul Feig Adds Inclusion Rider in Feigco Entertainment Productions

Variety: Director-producer Paul Feig has adapted the inclusion rider as part of all the feature film and television productions at his Feigco Entertainment.
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IATSE New Mexico Boss Facing New Harassment Allegations; 2nd Woman Comes Forward

Deadline: A second woman has come forward with allegations that Jon Hendry, the boss of IATSE Local 480 in Santa Fe, NM, sexually harassed her. Hendry, who until recently was one of the most powerful labor leaders in the state, was ousted as president of the New Mexico Federation of Labor AFL-CIO on Monday after Christa Valdez, the local’s former outside public relations rep, sued him last week for sexual harassment.
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Sunday, March 11, 2018

Worth A Look

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

The Arts Contribute More Than $760 Billion to the U.S. Economy

NEA: New data released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) offers an insightful picture of the impact the arts have on the nation’s economy. The arts contribute $763.6 billion to the U.S. economy, more than agriculture, transportation, or warehousing. The arts employ 4.9 million workers across the country with earnings of more than $370 billion. Furthermore, the arts exported $20 billion more than imported, providing a positive trade balance.
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Trump budget is a death warrant for the arts

The Boston Globe: FOR THE SECOND budget cycle in a row, Donald Trump is attempting to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. This should not be surprising, from an administration that has shown disregard — even hostility — for government’s responsibility to provide essential human services as well as agencies that ensure the general welfare, for everything from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health to the Environmental Protection Agency.
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Coalition of Broadway Unions and Guilds Unanimously Elects New Leadership

www.broadwayworld.com: The Coalition of Broadway Unions and Guilds (COBUG) on Wednesday elected Laura Penn of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC) and D. Joseph Hartnett of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) to be Co-Chairs. They replace longtime Chair Anthony DePaulo of IATSE, who is retiring this week. Additionally, Lawrence Paone, President of the Treasurers & Ticketsellers Union, IATSE Local 751, was elected Secretary-Treasurer.
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UPDATE: ROCKTOPIA Responds to AEA on Arrangement for Choir's Wages

www.broadwayworld.com: While Rocktopia gets ready to take its first official Broadway bow, its producers are under fire for offering its chorus members low wages. An official statement from the Actors' Equity Association reads:

"Rocktopia" is a live performance that combines rock songs and classical music, and it's starting previews on Broadway in two weeks. Producers are advertising this as a Broadway show and charging Broadway ticket prices - but their Broadway Chorus isn't being offered an Equity contract. In fact, we've heard from members who have reported being offered as low as $215 for a week of Chorus work.
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Costume curator helps preserve Las Vegas’ showgirl past

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Karan Feder has always been fascinated by fashion.

“I was literally one of those girls who made her own Barbie doll outfits,” she notes. “I’ve totally always loved it.”

But it wasn’t until her first job — working with legendary costume designer Bob Mackie for musical star Mitzi Gaynor — that Feder realized her true love wasn’t fashion design but costume design.
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