New York Times | These '80s Artists Are More Important Than Ever New York Times The Pictures Generation has become a ubiquitous, awkward catchall term, probably abrasive to the artists themselves, for something that was less an organized movement than a heterogeneous expression of a zeitgeist. Their art was connected by an ... |
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These '80s Artists Are More Important Than Ever - New York Times
At the beginning of the Grammy Awards, Jennifer Lopez evoked the words of Beloved author Toni Morrison to stress the importance of courage in a time when art is threatened.
This is precisely the time when artists go to work, she recited. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.
The quotation was a stirring kickoff for the Grammys, where throughout the evening, many artists strove to embody thiscri de coeur. Katy Perry wore a Planned Parenthood pin and a sequined persist armband, in solidarity with the womens movement, as she was outlined by a projection of the U.S. Constitution. A Tribe Called Quest led a chant of resist! after a politically charged performance denouncing President Agent Orange. Laverne Cox, in her introduction to Lady Gaga and Metallica, educated the audience about Gavin Grimm and the fight for transgender equality.
In effect, the evening was a crescendo of resistance to political and systemic oppression. However, this crescendo was cut short when the ceremonys top honor, the Album of the Year, did not go to the artist who fulfilled the promise of Morrisons words. It went instead to Adeles 25.
This is not to say that 25 is without artistic merit. The song Hello, in particular, is a stirring power ballad of loss and heartbreak, which resonated worldwide. Commercially, it is one of the best-selling albums of all time.
Yet artistically, it does not hold a candle to Beyoncs Lemonade. Upon its release, the visual album was a revelation, which combined music, poetry, and history with themes of feminism and racial injustice. It gave voice to movements like Black Lives Matter. It was beautiful, painful, and daring. Today, when members of vulnerable communities women, immigrants, people of color, and queer people fear for their safety and rights under a Trump administration, the album seems downright clairvoyant.
In the face of this zeitgeist, The Recording Academy made the wrong decision. And Adele knew it. You could see the embarrassment and confusion swirling in her face when Lemonade was not announced as the winner. For a moment, standing onstage, it seemed like the British artist might reject the music industrys highest honor.
I cant possibly accept this award, Adele said in her acceptance speech. And Im very humbled and Im very grateful and gracious. But my artist of my life is Beyonc. And this album to me, the Lemonade album, is just so monumental. Beyonc, its so monumental. And so well thought out, and so beautiful and soul-baring and we all got to see another side to you that you dont always let us see. And we appreciate that. And all us artists here adore you. You are our light.
And the way that you make me and my friends feel, the way you make my black friends feel, is empowering. And you make them stand up for themselves. And I love you. I always have and I always will, she added.
However, Adele, for all her praise of Lemonade and its social importance, did accept the award, with the army of those who helped produce the album standing behind her. Grammys, I appreciate it. The Academy, I love you, she said.
Yet, did Adele truly love the Academy for putting her in this position, for making her yet the latest example of an unjust voting outcome? Should she have rejected the award, handed it to Beyonc, or made some other symbolic gesture to give voice to those who once again felt silenced and marginalized? Probably, yes.
Adele continued to express her conflicted feelings in the media room after the win, telling reporters, "My album of the year was Lemonade, so a piece of me did die inside, as a Beyonc fan."
But ultimately, it is not about how Adele responded to the award or feels about its deservedness. The issue is how The Recording Academy played it safe in a year when, as Morrison said, there is no room for fear. Throughout the awards ceremony, there was much talk of the importance of art and politics. Yet when push came to shove, it was the political and artful that got shoved. After all, if Beyonc can't win Album of the Year for creating music about black lives, what other artists have a chance?
In short, Lemonade was robbed. But fortunately, itdid win for Best Urban Contemporary Album, which gave Beyonc an opportunity to address the urgency and intent of her work.
My intention for the film and album was to create a body of work that would give a voice to our pain, our struggles, our darkness and our history, to confront issues that make us uncomfortable," she said.
I feel its vital that we learn from the past and recognize our tendencies to repeat our mistakes, she concluded. The Recording Academy would do well to listen.
DANIEL REYNOLDS is an editor at The Advocate. Follow him on Twitter @dnlreynolds.
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The Grammys Honored the Wrong Album, and Adele Knew It - Advocate.com
After months of discussing the Church of Englands position on same-sex marriage, its bishops will deliver their summary to the General Synod in London on February 15. As events take place around the country celebrating LGBT History Month, this could have been a good opportunity to explore a rich and positive dialogue around faith and sexuality. But the bishops have blown it. In a document published before the meeting, they reaffirmed the traditional belief that marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman, for life, for the procreation of children.
The so-called Shared Conversations, the name of the discussion process, offered a chance for the church to jive with a sexuality-savvy generation. The bishops could have made a step further towards institutional equality and shown that they mean it when they say we are all wonderfully made.
But they could not be more culturally tone deaf. What should have been a moment to bridge generations is shaping up to be a lesson in alienation par excellence. When it comes to sexuality, the bishops discussion document is not just a beat behind the cultural zeitgeist, it is an entire hymn sheet behind.
What will appear on the synod agenda on February 15 is a fumbling discussion on sexuality that never achieves eye-contact. Synod is being asked to have a take note debate which means no vote will actually take place for or against the document about same-sex marriage though no doubt campaigners on either side will seek to get their point across. A group of 14 retired bishops published an open letter ahead of the meeting, concerned that the church was not listening to gay Christians.
Todays gender and sexual parlance is conspicuously missing from these debates. The millennial and post-millennial generations are embracing a whole new, non-binary, sexual vocabulary and they are free to be genderfluid, polyamorous and pansexual.
There is more silence than discussion in the bishops document and I suspect the heavy-handed editing was required to present a reassuring unity, something which the bishops are keen not to disrupt under any circumstances. There is little sense in the report of just what was actually discussed among the bishops. They attempt to generate a sense of moving forward in thinking about diverse sexualities, but it is overstated. In fact, you could stub your toe on the inertia the church has moved not an inch.
The synod will be presented with a heavy dose of church law, mainly to restate the traditional belief that marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman, for life, for the procreation of children. The nuclear family is spiritually and morally privileged. This may generate the rolling of eyes from much of the public, since the spiritual home for all the people of England is megaphoning its belief that swathes of the population are slip-sliding along a continuum of deviancy and sin, having sex outside the sanctity of lifelong heterosexual marriage.
But at the same time, a rather oxymoronic suggestion in the report argues that the church should really work on its welcome to lesbian, gay and bisexual people, while re-affirming its moral stance against same-sex marriage at the same time.
The bishops base their deliberations on the rickety and equivocal three-legged stool of tradition, reason and scripture. My ongoing research with women clergy, however, suggests there is elasticity in belief within the church. Aware of their own journey from the margins, many of these women want the church to be far more open to diverse sexualities.
The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and clergy blogs are expressing disappointment in the bishops homage to heteronormativity. These weather vanes may indicate a shift in direction within the church and a growing resistance to its narrow doctrine.
To me, the act of relying on tradition to legitimise outmoded thinking is myopic. Lesbian, gay and bisexual clergy and lay people (trans people are invisible in the bishops discussion) are being cast as others in their own church.
What especially vexes the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement and their allies is the reinforcement of the expectation that gay and lesbian clergy should remain celibate, since they have an exemplary position, binding by church law, and are held to a higher standard of sexual conduct than churchgoers. In the movements letter to the bishops, they wrote:
It is now clear that the process has almost entirely failed to hear the cries of faithful LGBTI+ people. You are proposing to formalise Dont Ask, Dont Tell among clergy in same-sex relationships far from equalising the situation between straight and gay clergy it pushes LGBTI+ clergy back into the closet.
This letter clearly borrows from the language used during the struggle for womens ordination. The church hierarchy has resistance and protest on its hands once again.
The bishops might be able to publicly maintain collegiate unity, but it risks built-in obsolescence for the church. I would like to think that there are bishops who would distance themselves from this report if they could. Against the fast-paced change in social attitudes to sexuality, particularly among the young, the bishops Shared Conversation is just cultural white noise.
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A bleak creative vision infused with scenic dazzle gave a distinctive edge to three works by young, New York-based choreographer Jonah Bokaer on Friday in Royce Hall at UCLA.
Cold and dark, Bokaers action-plans often focused so intently on Daniel Arsham's mobile settings that dancing became replaced by task-oriented movement theater. In those pieces, Arsham's set designs danced and Bokaer's company didn't.
In the intense, danceless 2010 solo Recess, for example, Bokaer manipulated an enormous roll of white construction paper into pathways, canopies, tents and mountains, creating imposing, ever-changing landscapes but staying just as overwhelmed by pain as he was at the beginning. An oppressive soundscore by Stavros Gasparotos and the unseen presence of James McGinn animating the origami structures from within helped to make a statement about how artists transform the world without ever vanquishing their own demons.
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In the 2011 quartet Why Patterns, the cast used long transparent tubes to wall off the stage floor. Then the cast moved inside those barriers for exploratory solos. Suddenly a ping-pong ball flew in from the left, then another, and, as the dancing continued, the balls began arriving in twos and later threes. Eventually the first of two huge overhead cascades of balls blanketed the stage and the piece became about coping with them and, ultimately, rebelling by flinging them into darkness. But they inevitably returned.
Obviously, the piece can be seen as a metaphor for the obstacles that life hurls at us. Or, if you like, you can think of it as the nightmare of someone who has seen the Nutcracker snow scene far too often. Either way, Arsham and his collaborator Alex Mustonen provided the dominant experience, with the music by Morton Feldman and Alexis Georgopoulos/ARP amounting to no more than an oppressive sonic wash and the dancers increasingly serving as faceless functionaries, except perhaps for Laura Gutierrez and Szabi Pataki.
Sustained dancing did turn up in Rules of the Game (2016), along with a terrific original score by pop star Pharrell Williams. But here Arsham was in apocalyptic decline-and-fall mode, with oversized images of sculptural faces, limbs and objects repeatedly colliding and shattering in his large-scale video projections. Perfectly in sync, Boaker had his eight dancers progressively strip out of their layered pink Chris Stamp/STAMPD costumes as their choreography became progressively violent and combative.
As Western Civilization crumbled, James Koroni struggled effectively against the march towards barbarism, Pataki and Sara Procopio found love of sorts among the ruins, and McGinn and Albert Drake battled manfully.
Boaker and Arsham did offer a smidgen of hope at the very end new Adam, new Eve thoughgiven the prevailing pessimism of the program, we might have expected them to be pelted with another barrage of ping-pong balls. These collaborators dont offer much consolation or dance in their portraits of the zeitgeist.
Recorded accompaniments served all the pieces, as did resourceful lighting by Aaron Copp. Besides the dancers previously mentioned, the company also included Callie Lyonsand Betti Rollo.
Follow The Times arts team @culturemonster.
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Movement as bleak theater, with some terrific Pharrell music too - Los Angeles Times
Steps to Financial Freedom
A free seminar titled Managing Personal Finances will take place on Mondays starting Feb. 13 at Mount Bethel United Methodist Church, 3239 70th St. E., Inver Grove Heights.
Attendees will learn how to set up their own financial plan and stick to it.
The four-week seminar will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m., and use materials from Dave Ramsey, a popular national radio talk show host and author of New York Times bestsellers The Total Money Makeover, Financial Peace Revisited and More than Enough.
Facilitators will be Dan and Marsha Schauer. There is no charge, but pre-registration is required. The seminar is sponsored by New Heights Community Church and Mount Bethel United Methodist Church.
Free childcare is available during the seminar with pre-registration, although space is limited.
For more information or to register for the seminar, call 651-451-3636 or email: danschauer004@gmail.com.
Community band concert
The Inver Hills Community Band will be performing a free concert on Monday, Feb. 13, at 7:30 p.m. in the Simley High School auditorium, 2920 80th St. E., Inver Grove Heights.
The band will be performing The Flight of the Bumble Bee; a Carmen Suite; the classic Ragtime Fluffy Ruffles, and more.
Dr. Andrew Martin will be a guest soloist featured on the xylophone for a couple selections.
For location directions and other information, visit the bands web site at http://www.inverband.org.
Dance together
On Monday, Feb. 6, preschoolers will use movement to explore imagination, stories and music in a class where caregivers and children dance together.
Taking place on Monday, Feb. 13, from 6:15 to 7 p.m. at the South St. Paul Library, 106 Third Ave. N., this is presented by Young Dance and open to children age 3 and younger.
Registration is required for each child. Call 651-554-3240 for more information.
Playing it Close to Home
St. Paul-based new music ensemble Zeitgeist will bring its annual Playing it Close to Home concert to Inver Hills Community College Black Box Theater, 2500 80th St. E., Inver Grove Heights, on Thursday, Feb. 16, at 930 a.m.
The free coffee concert will feature music by award-winning local composer Mary Ellen Childs.
The program includes the world premiere of music composed by Childs for Zeitgeist, plus several other works from her catalog, including excerpts from her opera Propeller, visual percussion pieces, and music for prepared piano.
Dino Dig
On Tuesday, Feb. 14, from 1 to 2 p.m., uncover the mysteries of dinosaurs by examining fossil replicas and asking questions that will help kids ages 3 to 7 understand the life and habitats of dinosaurs before they went extinct.
Taking place at the West St. Paul Library, 199 Wentworth Ave. E., this event is presented by the Minnesota Childrens Museum.
Call 651-554-6800 for more information
British history
From Roman sacred sights to the places of destruction during the British Reformation, a British history program will look at ancient religious sites in England. Taking place on Tuesday, Feb. 14, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., this event will be at Thompson Park Activity Center, 1200 Stassen Lane, West St. Paul.
Cost is $8. Call 651-403-8300 to register.
i-Pad basics
Participants will use the iPads at the Inver Grove Heights Library, 8098 Blaine Ave. E., to learn about basic controls, settings, web browsing, apps and uses of this popular tablet.
Registration is required for this class on Wednesday, Feb. 15, from 2 to 4 p.m. Call 651-554-6840 for more information.
Frozen Pond Romp
Theres fun to be had exploring on top and underneath pond ice. On Friday, Feb. 17, preschoolers will peek through the ice to see what might be moving around down there.
Afterwards theyll slide around on kick-sleds for some slip-sliding fun. This is a sensory early childhood experience.
All children must be accompanied by an adult. The event runs from 10 to 11:15 a.m. at the Dodge Nature Center Farm Education Entrance 3, 1701 Charlton St., West St. Paul.
Cost is $7 per child. Call 651-455-4531 or visit dodgenaturecenter.org to register.
Splash Dance at the Grove Water Park
Join others at The Grove Water Park, 8055 Barbara Ave. E., on Friday, Feb. 17, from noon to 3 p.m. for some splashing and dancing fun. Dance music will be playing during the event.
Cost is $8 per person or $25 per family (four people)
For further information and to register, visit http://www.invergroveheights.org/register.
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South-West Review bulletin board February 12, 2017 - Lillie News
By Killenard based award winning garden designer Brian Burke.
Were all busy. Check. We all want a nice living environment. Check.
That nice living environment would include a garden as well as the soapstone worktop sourced in Nepal. Check.
We all want a nice garden but nobody wants to do any maintenance. Hmm, Id love a car that never needed to be serviced. Where could I get such a thing? They dont exist mate.
So, busy, busy, busy. The garden for the busy family; year-round immersion and stimulation for the kids, something to show off and throw the odd summer soire for the adults.
How do you it? How do you balance everyones requirements, incorporate the practical needs, create something unique, original and eye catching and something that is not going to consume every available weekend in drudge maintenance and upkeep? How do you do it? With great deliberation is the answer.
Anyone can design a house, anyone can design a garden. Give a six-year old a pencil and a piece of A4 paper and they will divide up the rectangular space that they see into a series of smaller spaces.
Thats the grass, thats the deck, thats the path and this triangle left over here, well, lets call that the flower bed. Anyone can do that.
As in most walks of life, its harder to do something good. So, what do you have to bear in mind, to what do you have to keep referring if you are to produce anything worthwhile?
The occupants and their schedules and priorities. The choice of materials; natural materials promote longer periods of engagement for children. Are there pets in the household?
What features can be incorporated to keep them stimulated and prevent them from eating your furniture and plants? Whats your worldview vis a vis neighbours; seclusion or inclusion?
This is Ireland so remember how the garden will look from the inside, through the inevitable glass double door, as the rain teems down 335 days of the year.
Im big on pan generational design right now, futureproofing is never a bad thing. Can you incorporate versatile elements which could be redeployed and adapted over time?
How do you feel about water? Whats the essence, the vibe, the ambience, the theme?
The garden needs to have an identity which all the elements and plants then work towards reinforcing. Is the space small enough to create a courtyard feel, is it expansive enough to embody a rural theme or is it somewhere in between?
Have you ever seen the American TV show, Extreme Makeover Home Edition? Well on that show the designers really like to zone in on a slice of a persons personality and squeeze it for all its worth.
A kid who likes Egyptology ended up with a bedroom not unlike the tomb of Tutankhamun. Being too literal will strangle everything.
Whats your planting palette? We are all about the herbaceous now. Because we know that herbaceous planting lends itself more to the evocation of mood and atmosphere and can subtly provide those suggested paths of movement and flow. Remember your theme and plant to reinforce it.
Dont forget about height and bringing the eye upwards. Often, we step into a space and our gaze never deviates from eye level, we need something to entice us upwards to consider the infinite space above.
And what about the vernacular, how much do you know about it or how interested are you in it?
The vernacular is making a comeback thanks to the auld zeitgeist and new found concerns about the provenance and footprint of materials we consume. Wheres all that Celtic Tiger Indian Sandstone gone?
Turns out we have stone every bit as good in Clare, Meath, Wicklow, Donegal and Roscommon. I will be delivering a talk on everything garden and design related at the upcycled and recycled interiors store of fellow Newbridgian Edward Donnelly, Home Street Home, on Harolds Cross Road in Dublin on April 13th at 7.30 pm. Please come if you can. There will be cake.
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Ava DuVernay has been up until 12:30 a.m. shooting A Wrinkle in Time for Disney, but the director of Selma is enthused to finally talk about the Oscar-nominated documentary 13th.
The former publicist is the first woman of color to direct a live-action film with a production budget of more than $100 million. Last fall, she premiered her first television show, the well-received Queen Sugar, which aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
So DuVernay hasnt much time to discuss her powerful documentary released in October which is up for Oscar and BAFTA awards.
13th takes its title from the amendment that outlawed slavery in 1865, though with the caveat except as a punishment for a crime.
The documentary, available on Netflix, examines how that clause has led to a mass-incarceration system that disproportionately imprisons African-American men. In many of the for-profit institutions, inmates are then used as cheap labor, employed for pennies by major companies, creating a de facto form of slavery.
A note here: DuVernay and I were phone acquaintances in her PR days, although we never met. So it was a pleasure to finally meet her in person. What follows is an edited version of our conversation about 13, and what led her to do the film, including an emotional story from when she grew up in Compton.
Q Has the film been getting the response you were hoping for?
A I have been shocked. I really didnt think it would have this much attention, and I did not think that people react to it as emotionally as they have. It is an intimate topic. It is really about the way that we think about race in this country, regardless of who you are and how we engage with each other and what our belief system is. There are some things in this doc that challenge what we believed or even thought we knew. Its a little disconcerting when we realize what we dont know. I thought it would sit on Netflix as a resource for teachers. I really didnt think it would cross into a cultural zeitgeist kind of thing.
Q Are you getting response from legislators?
A Yes, as a teaching tool like Congressman John Lewis and Sen. Cory Booker. Those people are using it as an entry point to talk to their communities and constituents. I havent heard about any pushback from the other side. Havent heard anything from anyone on the right or any conservatives. Its been oddly quiet.
Q When you made this, it was before the presidential election and reforms were being pushed; now with President Trump in the White House, the film is more relevant than ever.
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A Stock in private prisons shot up the day after his election. The executive orders that hes signing signal his intention to bolster policies and practices that favor those who profit off of the least of us. Prisons are clearly in the bulls-eye for this. The deregulation through executive is moving to a place that will undo a lot of work that has been done by a bipartisan coalition taking steps toward reform.
Q What can be done?
A Its important that people continue to assert what they believe. I believe in the power people have and the power in the protest. That isnt just pie in the sky stuff. Three years ago, the Black Lives matter movement was happening and people thought this is a moment, but there has been a concerted, concentrated effort with deliberate action that has not stopped since that day. The Civil Rights Movement at its height was over 10 years. In the two weeks of Trumps presidency, weve seen spontaneous protests at airports and huge numbers at the womens marches all around the country expressing their dissent. Its going to be more crucial now than ever to continue do that, and for artists to continue to promote that and do what we can to amplify it.
Q How did you come to the project?
A I was an African American studies major at UCLA. We were encouraged to do a deep dive into the Constitution, and it has just kind of been putting together the pieces from there understanding there is a direct correlation between that clause and the mass incarceration that were experiencing now. At first, I hadnt done the research to connect the dots, but with some 2.3 million people behind bars it seemed there was something to that. So I began tracing and tracking it and really being able to get down to the kind of granular policies legislation signed that actually perpetuated it. It was important to break down the images of the war on drugs and what was perpetuated by the media. So the assignment for myself was to focus on prison for profit, the way that many companies are profiting on punishment.
Q You reached out to conservatives in the documentary, like Newt Gingrich.
A I know what I think, but it was important to reach out to Republicans and Democrats and liberals. I wanted this to be a conversation like a master class from people of all walks of life. Sometimes we learn from people who dont think anything like us.
Q Youve been pretty busy.
A These films are my children. I dont have kids, and Im not going to have kids. So this is what Im leaving behind. But for this film, I havent had a chance to go out there and beat the drum for it.
Q It seems like everyone in the black community Ive talked to feel connected to this film because of things that happened in their lives.
A Growing up in Compton, police aggression and issues of incarceration were all around. I have a very, very small family. So theres no one in my direct family involved, but when every black man you know has a police story, a lot of the people have been directly touched by it. I tell this story on this Netflix special I did with Oprah about my father being tackled in our backyard in Compton because the police were running through peoples backyards looking for someone else. My father was in the backyard watering the grass. Hes a very dignified man a beautiful, beautiful man. He was tackled to the ground like a criminal, handcuffed in front of his family, cursed at I saw all this berated and belittled because they thought he was a criminal. They had no respect for his property a man in his own backyard and they couldnt hear his protests. These are the kinds of incidences that many people of color in this country are scarred with, and so when I watch 13th, it has a particular vibe to it for me.
Originally posted here:
Ava DuVernay's Oscar-nominated '13th' documentary aims to unlock the truth - The Pasadena Star-News
Michel Guerard, French chef of the restaurant Les Pres d'Eugenie, poses on September 26, 2013 at his restaurant at Eugenie-les-Bains, France. NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP/Getty Images
"The new gourmet law: hold the butter," reads the strapline of the European edition of TIME's Feb. 9 1976 issue, alongside a cartoon of the French culinary master Michel Gurard, then 42.
Fast forward four decades and the debate over butter and fat intake is still magazine-cover-worthy . But now it's a far more saturated conversation: evidence of links between certain fats and heart disease changes on a regular basis, as does the merit of plant-based dairy alternatives, made from almonds or coconut or walnuts. Thanks to prominent campaigns , the clean eating movement and savvy restaurateurs , healthy eating is more in the zeitgeist than ever before.
However, back in the 70s, Gurard's 'waist-not, want-not' approach was revolutionary. Considered a founding father of 'Nouvelle Cuisine' - a Japanese-inspired cooking style which emphazises freshness, lightness and flavor, Gurard eschewed the copious quantities of butter, large servings and cream-filled sauces ubiquitous with traditional French cooking while still maintaining the highest order of taste. Thanks to Gurard, reported TIME's George M. Taber in 1976, "no longer need a Frenchman dig his grave with a fork."
Gurard's main restaurant, Les Prs d'Eugnie, which specializes in low-calorie, full-flavour cooking, won the chef three Michelin stars: in 1974, 1975 and 1977. Now 83, he remains a key figure in educating and changing perceptions of healthy cuisine.
The pioneering chef celebrated the ruby anniversary of his three Michelin Stars this week. He spoke to TIME in an email interview about how the culinary industry has changed during his 69 years in the industry, clean eating and what he thinks of people's obsession with photographing their food.
TIME: How have attitudes towards healthy food changed during your career?
Michel Gurard: When I launched my slimming cuisine back in 1975, it triggered a wave of outrage within the culinary world. I will never forget my friend [chef] Paul Bocuse saying to everyone that if they go to Gurards, they should take their medical prescription with them. My attitude towards food did not make sense to chefs at the time; I was at worst an outcast and at best a crazy cook. Fortunately, I had two Michelin stars at that point, which spoke for my professionalism.
Today, health has become fashionable and it is reassuring to see that trendsetters have caught up with the idea. I was very appreciative of Michelle Obamas fight , for instance. I know that Im one of the people who have mattered the most in this realization. But I dont draw any pride in that: it was only a matter time before public health and governments were obliged to do something.
Although healthy food has been a hot topic for a while, it doesn't mean that all problems are solved. Healthy food remains something that wealthier people can enjoy; it excludes the poor and it will be a long time before they benefit from the trend.
And how is the world of haute cuisine different today?
Certainly the rise of the celebrity chef. We all got out of the kitchen and into the media. Today, you cannot take a walk without seeing chefs everywhere. The upside is that the move has meant a lot of people now choose to be a chef - when I started out, that was not the case. I understand that I contributed to this rise, but the media frenzy around cooks has become extreme and sometimes ridiculous.
Another change is that food and gastronomy have become a globalized product. I find it striking that you can eat exactly the same things in New York as you can in Paris. This was not the case 15 years ago and I dont know what to make of it. Should we fear this standardization of taste? I dont think so, but we should still remain cautious as some of our culinary heritage has been disappearing for some years. There is surely a risk that our national cuisines will one day fade to nothing.
Are there foods you think people should and shouldn't eat?
I am not a guru wholl tell you what to eat and what not to eat. As long as food comes from nature herself, I dont see why you shouldnt eat it - and just as a reminder, Dominos Pizza does not come from nature! I believe you can eat anything as long as you keep a balanced diet.
Which cuisines and ingredients excite you the most?
I am a big fan of Chinese cuisine, which is very precise with its seasonings. The Chinese have beautiful cooking, like Peking duck. When it is done the traditional way, it is like a piece of art.
I dont have a favourite food. But I like to work with ingredients that can surprise you. For instance, once I wanted to create something with oysters and I wondered for many months what taste or what other ingredient I could combine with their very particular flavor. Finally, I decided on green coffee. Served as a frothy chiboust like a cloud on an oyster, it is sumptuous and delicious.
What do you remember about your TIME interview in 1976?
I had previously done interviews with American media, but the TIME cover was a total surprise. To me, the only French people who would make a TIME cover were individuals like General de Gaulle. It was when I did the cover that I became aware of how unique what I was doing was; it made me realise that my work was important. The journalists who interviewed me had a premonition that health would become a cornerstone of cooking.
Do you think social media has changed the way people eat?
Professionally, my daughters [take photos of their food in restaurants] all the time, to feed our websites and digital accounts. It shows everyone that follows us what we do, who we are and what were working on for our guests. It entices people; its publicity.
But from a personal point of view, I have a hard time understanding what seems to have become an addiction. People are living by proxy through their phones. They want to show everyone how great their lives are, choosing carefully what they display. It makes sense in a way; its self-promotion that reflects the individualistic society we live in.
I find it a little bit sad that for some the picture has become more important than the food itself; the fact that the picture must be pretty has had a huge influence on cuisine and pastry. In most high-end restaurants, it is unthinkable to serve something that doesnt look great except what looks smart doesnt always taste nice.
Pastry has become a dog and pony show for desserts I mean cold desserts that can be made and dressed prettily in advance. Minute pastry, like souffl, is disappearing. And I think its a pity because the know-how is disappearing too. Some chefs are so attached to the way their dishes look that they refuse to change the recipe when people mention that they dislike the taste. They know it will end up on the Internet, so they want to make sure it looks the way it is supposed to.
If you were going to predict the biggest food craze in 50 years time, what would you say?
Ten years ago, we predicted a lot of funny things such as dried food like astronauts or even food tablets. But the act of eating is about much more than just filling a physiological need: it gives pleasure and its a social ritual. We will carry on eating as weve been doing for tens of thousands of years. However, Im sure healthy cooking will become even more important than it is now.
Finally, what would you choose as your last supper?
I would like this supper to be completely natural. The chef cooking it would have to have great experience, as well as a sensitivity which would allow him to play with his culinary creation freely and effortlessly. I would like to taste something that surprises me and would make me think: "How did I not come up with this this myself?".
Read this article:
Q&A: Chef Michel Gurard, a Pioneer of Low-Calorie Cuisine - TIME
Every awardshows history is riddled with controversial selections andsnubs, but the Grammyspast is especially turbulent. Its voters have repeatedly proven that they areout of touch to a staggering degree. This was the case in the 60s, when they couldn't let go of Sinatra, in the 70s, when they favored disco over Elvis Costello and Debby Booneover "Hotel California," and in the 80s, which we'll get to. By the time the 90s arrived, the Grammys lost most of its cach. Just ask Homer.
Not much has changed.
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In anticipation of Sunday's ceremony, we'vecompiled some of the most egregious flubs in Grammys history, from crowining one-hit wonders as the Next Big Thingto all butignoring entire genres of music.
Related: Beyonc, Adele lead Grammy nominations
In 1985, the competition for Album of the Year seemed to be a tight race between Princes Purple Rainand Bruce Springsteens Born In the U.S.A.So it was surprising when the award went to...Lionel Richies Cant Slow Down.Sure, it was a solid recordAll Night Long (All Night) and Hello are perfect pop songsbut the album came out in 1983.Even though ittechnically qualified for Album of the Year based on the Grammys' seemingly arbitrary rules, it was certainly not the best album of thatyear.
But also, considering how well Princesand Springsteens work has held up respective to Richies, the decision is a spectacular misstep. These are the kind of brilliant classic records that one can argue in favor of just by adding curse words to their titles:Born In the God Damn U.S.A.! Purple Fucking Rain! See? End of shitting argument. Joe Veix
In 1981, RunD.M.C. and the Beastie Boys both formed in New York. That year the Grammys were busy fawning over Christopher Cross. As hip-hop emerged as the most significant musical and social movement of the 1980s, the Recording Academy was characteristically late to the party. The Best Rap Performance category was added in 1989, but it wasnt actually included in the televised ceremony, prompting nominees Will Smith, LL Cool J and Salt-n-Pepa to lead a Grammy boycott. (Some more politically charged rap acts, like N.W.A, were ignored altogether.) During the 1990s, seminal albums like Nass Illmatic and A Tribe Called Quests The Low End Theory were overlooked. It was not until 1999 that a hip-hop album finally won Album of the Year: Lauryn Hills The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Even in the Best Rap Album category, the Academy cant seem to get it right, with Macklemore famously responding to his own win with a sheepish texted apology to Kendrick Lamar.Zach Schonfeld
Santana's meme-friendly Supernatural edging out the Backstreet Boys, TLC, the Dixie Chicks and Diana Krall in 2000 was a portentous start to a decade that thoroughly confused Grammy voters. The following year, a thoroughly forgettable Steely Dan album was honored over Beck, Radiohead and Eminem. In 2002, the award was given to a motion picture soundtrack (O Brother, Where Art Thou?) over Outkast's Stankonia. A few years later, in 2005, a posthumous Ray Charles album won. This is fine, but it illustrates the Grammysinability to tap into the zeitgeist. This brings us to the decades most egregious snub. In 2006, a Herbie Hancocks jazz tribute to Joni Mitchell won over both Amy Winehouse's Back In Black and Kanye West's Graduation. And music lovers also groaned when U2 won for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb in 2006, an album best listened to in an iPod commercial. Ryan Bort
In 1989, Jethro Tull won Best Hard Rock/Metal Performanceover Metallica. This is "Jump Start," fromCrest Of A Knave, the album Jethro Tull won for:
This is "Harvester Of Sorrow," from Metallica's ...And Justice For All:
You be the judge of what qualifies as "metal/hard rock." (Hint: it's not the one with pan flute.) Ryan Bort
The Best New Artist category is, in theory, a well-intentioned idea: Give an award to a musician fresh on the scene, who might not be able to compete in the Best Album category against bigger acts like Michael Jackson or The Rolling Stones or Milli Vanilli. The only problem is the Grammys have a really bizarre definition of new. According to rule changes implemented by the Recording Academy in 2016, artists only become ineligible for the award after releasing more than three records (or 30 singles). Also, they cant have been nominated more than three times, and must have achieved a breakthrough into the public consciousness and impacted the musical landscape during the eligibility period. So: not exactly new! A pedantic music nerd could make the case that multiple bands from the 70s could still be eligible.
Not surprisingly, this broad definition translates to some choices that are...unconventional. Just a few examples: Bon Iver won Best New Artist in 2012five years after his breakout debut For Emma, Forever Ago and two years after guesting on Kanye Wests My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Lauryn Hill won the award in 1999, even though she released two prior records with the Fugees years earlier. Going further back, the Beatles won in 1965, even though by then they werekind of a big deal. If the Grammyswere concerned about accuracy, the category should really be called Best Artist That the Recording Academys Kids Just Told Them About. Joe Veix
Its customary for the Grammys to acknowledge trailblazing weirdo geniuses decades late if at all. So when David Bowie was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006, it felt more like an apologetic shrug than a wholehearted endorsement. Speaking of lifetime achievements, Bowie released 25 albums during his life. Only one of them, 1983s Lets Dance, was nominated in the most prestigious category: Album of the Year. (It lost.) The Grammys roundly ignored Bowie during the 1970s, when he arguably reached his creative peak (Ziggy Stardust, Low, etc). And even in death, the Thin White Duke is being snubbed: Blackstar, Bowies final album, was shut out of the top category and instead was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album,proving that alternative music is about as meaningless a phrase in 2017 as fake news.Zach Schonfeld
The 60s can claim arguably the richest musical output of any decade since someone first figured out how to run electricity through a guitar. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Velvet Underground, Led Zeppelin, the Who. The list goes on. Of all of these artists, only the Beatles would take home one of the decade's Best Album Grammys when they won in 1968 for Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. In fact, the Beatles were the only pop rock artists even nominated for the award. The same can be said for Song of the Year. The Beatles won in 1967 for "Michelle." In 66, "Yesterday" lost to Tony Bennetts "The Shadow Of Your Smile." The latter is a lovely song, but its win proves that Grammy votershave always been behind the times. Ryan Bort
Tony Bennett won Album of the Yearfor "The Shadow Of Your Smile" in 1966, and then again 30 years later in 1995, for his MTV Unplugged album, which was filled with old standards like "Fly Me to the Moon" and "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." These are great and all, but shouldnt the Grammys recognize the years achievements in original music? Shouldn't the winners be in some way indicative of the current moment? Do voters not want their choices to reflect the music that had the deepest cultural impact? Apparently not, which was evinced in an even more egregious fashion two years earlier... Ryan Bort
More proof that the Grammys are perennially 20 years stuck in the past: Eric Clapton was persona non grata during his Cream/Derek and the Dominos heyday but swept the 1993 ceremony with his live Unplugged recording. (Tears in Heaven, Claptons heartfelt tribute to his late son, garnered several prizes of its own that year.) Similarly, during this same era, Nirvana did not receive a Grammy win until the band softened its sound for its own MTV Unplugged in New York album. By this point, Kurt Cobain was already dead. Nevermindarguably the most culturally significant album of 1991was denied an Album of the Year nomination, perhaps to make room for Amy Grants Christian pop sensation Heart in Motion.Zach Schonfeld
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When Professor Bernard ORourke plans the itinerary for a Business Division study-abroad experience, he takes a good hard look at the nation his students will visit. Every country has a story, he says. I determine the essence of the countrys business to get its business zeitgeist. He frames each trip so students can learn through an immersion in a nations economic and business life.
Since 2001, ORourke, associate dean of the Business Division, has led short-term trips to Belgium, Holland, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Austria, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Panama. In setting the agenda, he reaches out to government agencies, which are often eager to help with appointments that showcase a countrys economic profile and direction, and networks with business contacts.
In Costa Rica students toured a coffee plantation and a free-trade zone. In Panama they explored the iconic Panama Canal. In Austria they visited the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. In the Czech Republic they saw the workings of the Skoda auto plant, which was regenerated when the country reverted to a free-market economy after overturning the communist regime. In the Dominican Republic they walked the floor of the Baldom food manufacturing company.
ORourkes taste for international business and travel began when he was a young man in Ireland in the 1970s. He was eager to help his homeland. What spurred me was the intent to move Ireland forward, to move it out of poverty, he says. Growing up in an impoverished region of Ireland, with little beyond farm and retail work available for most school leavers, I instinctively knew that Ireland needed to move forward with the times and somehow begin a new investment revolution to provide jobs for those who did not wish to emigrate to the U.K. or the U.S. as generations before had done.
The vision for a new Ireland was provided by an aggressive investment promotion program in which Ireland scoured the world for state-of-the-art industries that could generate good-paying, export-focused jobs for the rising generation of well-educated Irish men and women. ORourke knew he had to be a part of the movement to regenerate Ireland and help create opportunities so the country might become prosperous and self-sustaining and not just a source of talented immigrants for the rest of the world. It grabbed me and a lot of young people at the time, he says.
He had received an undergraduate degree in economics with a political science minor from the biggest university in Ireland, University College Dublin, and then a law degree from Kings Inns, Irelands oldest school of law, qualifying him to go as far as pleading a case in the Irish courts. But practicing law was not his interest; he had a drive to work in international business to raise Irelands profile in the global marketplace.
ORourke grew up in Inniskeen, a small village in County Monaghan just beside the border with Northern Ireland. The town was a farming community in the traditional Irish countryside. He and his seven younger brothers and sistersone of whom drowned at the age of twowere raised by their Catholic parents, who encouraged education. ORourke and his siblings attended grammar school in a two-room schoolhouse with 60 students. His father, a miller, sold cornmeal products for farm animals, and ORourke learned on the familys small farm how to gather potatoes and cut hay, barley, oats and wheat.
It was the 1950s, and he recalls how a few families in Inniskeen still rode horse-drawn carts to church on Sunday. Television became available when he was about 9 years old, but people had to go 25 miles to the other side of the mountain to pick up the hazy signals for British programs. It was still amazing, says ORourke. In his early teens Irelands Troubles were still years away, so he would ride his bicycle across the border into Northern Ireland where we could get better and richer candies and cheaper dairy products like butter. He was exposed to the big city of Dublin since the family frequently visited his grandparents there. After sixth grade he went to Castleknock College, a boarding prep school outside Dublin run by Vincentian priests.
After receiving his undergraduate and law degrees, ORourke worked for his father in Ireland for a short period, but it was evident that times were changing in farming. He took a legal position at the Irish Development Agency, hoping to bring foreign investors to the Emerald Isle to create jobs. The position gave him a nice taste of travel, he says, including a trip to Helsinki. Eventually he was offered a post in Manhattan. I was given territory in New England and had to find any companies interested in manufacturing in Ireland, and the government agency would give them grants and tax benefits. Then he began chasing textile companies in the South.
His professional journey next took him to managing Belleek china for the Waterford Crystal company where he gained legal, marketing and operational experience, learning to deal with computer software and to keep the books. He picked up his MBA along the way at Fordham and developed investments and marketing plans for Irish companies in America. After many years in business, ORourke started teaching international business at Fairleigh Dickinson University and found he enjoyed it. Doors opened for teaching at Caldwell, and he eventually made his way into higher education full time, sharing his multifaceted business experience with students.
ORourke has been a leader in advancing Caldwells Business Division, overseeing the department when it added programs including undergraduate degrees in financial economics, health care administration and sport management and masters in accounting and in business administration.
He is excited about the significant increase in enrollment in the undergraduate programs and about the new programs, including the bachelors in health care administration, a good fit because of our other health-related programs, the bachelors in sport management and the new online MBA program. ORourke hopes that the division can take the impact of technology to the next level with enhanced programs in IT and that it can pursue more international students for the MBA program.
His experience in international business makes him value the contributions of the divisions Business Advisory Council, which provides a bridge between the business community and the university and is made up of senior executives and business owners.
The council provides networking opportunities for students and professors and forums for showcasing faculty and student research and best practices in business and mentorship. We are fortunate that our Business Advisory Council members are supportive in facilitating student internships, says ORourke.
Most rewarding for him is seeing students developthe progress they make over the semester and how they grow in understanding and relating to the worldand then watching them receive their diplomas when they are ready to go out into the world of business.
ORourke is convinced Caldwell has something bigger schools dont, citing as an example a student who was eager to leave for a big-time university but who transferred back to Caldwell after two months. There will always be a need for the Caldwell ethos.
Every country has a story. I determine the essence of the countrys business to get its business zeitgeist.
As a young man working in Manhattan, he joined the New York Athletic Club rugby teama quick way to be integrated into a good group of people, even playing in a tournament in the Cayman Islands.
He and his wife Sheila, Caldwells vice president for institutional effectiveness, have two grown daughters, one grandson, Ronan, and another grandchild on the way.
He served as president of the West Essex and Essex Fells school boards combined for nearly 16 years. I ran three weeks after becoming a citizen. It helped me understand the school system. He testified before Congress on behalf of the New Jersey School Boards Association.
Why we should visit his Ireland: As my wife says, It will always live up to your expectations. There are 40 shades of green. People really are fun to deal with and enjoy. The scenery is fantastic.
It was almost a third world country when I was growing up. In the last 30 years, based on the economic development, it has become one of the richest countries in Europe. Thats not to say it doesnt have its problems; it has many problems; it certainly suffered in the last recession.
The party time and fun timethat exists as an authentic Irish experience.
Everybody deserves to go at least once.
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Bernie O'Rourke: An Irishman's Passion for Business - Caldwell University News
Ava DuVernay has been up until 12:30 a.m. shooting A Wrinkle in Time for Disney, but the director of Selma is enthused to finally talk about the Oscar-nominated documentary 13th.
The former publicist is the first woman of color to direct a live-action film with a production budget of more than $100 million. Last fall, she premiered her first television show, the well-received Queen Sugar, which aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
So DuVernay hasnt much time to discuss her powerful documentary released in October which is up for Oscar and BAFTA awards.
13th takes its title from the amendment that outlawed slavery in 1865, though with the caveat except as a punishment for a crime.
The documentary, available on Netflix, examines how that clause has led to a mass-incarceration system that disproportionately imprisons African-American men. In many of the for-profit institutions, inmates are then used as cheap labor, employed for pennies by major companies, creating a de facto form of slavery.
A note here: DuVernay and I were phone acquaintances in her PR days, although we never met. So it was a pleasure to finally meet her in person. What follows is an edited version of our conversation about 13, and what led her to do the film, including an emotional story from when she grew up in Compton.
Q Has the film been getting the response you were hoping for?
A I have been shocked. I really didnt think it would have this much attention, and I did not think that people react to it as emotionally as they have. It is an intimate topic. It is really about the way that we think about race in this country, regardless of who you are and how we engage with each other and what our belief system is. There are some things in this doc that challenge what we believed or even thought we knew. Its a little disconcerting when we realize what we dont know. I thought it would sit on Netflix as a resource for teachers. I really didnt think it would cross into a cultural zeitgeist kind of thing.
Q Are you getting response from legislators?
A Yes, as a teaching tool like Congressman John Lewis and Sen. Cory Booker. Those people are using it as an entry point to talk to their communities and constituents. I havent heard about any pushback from the other side. Havent heard anything from anyone on the right or any conservatives. Its been oddly quiet.
Q When you made this, it was before the presidential election and reforms were being pushed; now with President Trump in the White House, the film is more relevant than ever.
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A Stock in private prisons shot up the day after his election. The executive orders that hes signing signal his intention to bolster policies and practices that favor those who profit off of the least of us. Prisons are clearly in the bulls-eye for this. The deregulation through executive is moving to a place that will undo a lot of work that has been done by a bipartisan coalition taking steps toward reform.
Q What can be done?
A Its important that people continue to assert what they believe. I believe in the power people have and the power in the protest. That isnt just pie in the sky stuff. Three years ago, the Black Lives matter movement was happening and people thought this is a moment, but there has been a concerted, concentrated effort with deliberate action that has not stopped since that day. The Civil Rights Movement at its height was over 10 years. In the two weeks of Trumps presidency, weve seen spontaneous protests at airports and huge numbers at the womens marches all around the country expressing their dissent. Its going to be more crucial now than ever to continue do that, and for artists to continue to promote that and do what we can to amplify it.
Q How did you come to the project?
A I was an African American studies major at UCLA. We were encouraged to do a deep dive into the Constitution, and it has just kind of been putting together the pieces from there understanding there is a direct correlation between that clause and the mass incarceration that were experiencing now. At first, I hadnt done the research to connect the dots, but with some 2.3 million people behind bars it seemed there was something to that. So I began tracing and tracking it and really being able to get down to the kind of granular policies legislation signed that actually perpetuated it. It was important to break down the images of the war on drugs and what was perpetuated by the media. So the assignment for myself was to focus on prison for profit, the way that many companies are profiting on punishment.
Q You reached out to conservatives in the documentary, like Newt Gingrich.
A I know what I think, but it was important to reach out to Republicans and Democrats and liberals. I wanted this to be a conversation like a master class from people of all walks of life. Sometimes we learn from people who dont think anything like us.
Q Youve been pretty busy.
A These films are my children. I dont have kids, and Im not going to have kids. So this is what Im leaving behind. But for this film, I havent had a chance to go out there and beat the drum for it.
Q It seems like everyone in the black community Ive talked to feel connected to this film because of things that happened in their lives.
A Growing up in Compton, police aggression and issues of incarceration were all around. I have a very, very small family. So theres no one in my direct family involved, but when every black man you know has a police story, a lot of the people have been directly touched by it. I tell this story on this Netflix special I did with Oprah about my father being tackled in our backyard in Compton because the police were running through peoples backyards looking for someone else. My father was in the backyard watering the grass. Hes a very dignified man a beautiful, beautiful man. He was tackled to the ground like a criminal, handcuffed in front of his family, cursed at I saw all this berated and belittled because they thought he was a criminal. They had no respect for his property a man in his own backyard and they couldnt hear his protests. These are the kinds of incidences that many people of color in this country are scarred with, and so when I watch 13th, it has a particular vibe to it for me.
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Ava DuVernay's Oscar-nominated '13th' documentary aims to unlock the truth - LA Daily News
News By Allen Fennewald | 12 hours ago
Photos by Allen Fennewald
The D.C. Youth Slam Team qualifying competitors gather at D.C. FreeStyle Center.
Washington Poetry propels young people onto stages in front of hundreds of people and in the midst of world leaders.
Slam poetry is a growing artistic platform among youth, and programs have sprouted in schools and out-of-school organizations across the nation, fostering hundreds of spoken word poetry teams who compete in national contests like Louder Than a Bomb and Brave New Voices. Explosive performances on stages travel far beyond crowded auditoriums via the internet to inspire the next generation of performers and offer insight to those in power on the state of the youth zeitgeist.
[Its about learning] that there is an explanation for the state that youre in, and that once you can see that web of causality, you can actually effect change in a positive way, said Joseph Green, poet and Split This Rock Youth Programs coordinator. Your words can get in front of people who matter, and its not good policy if its not informed by the people who are going to be affected by it.
Split This Rock Youth Programs is a part of the national socially active poets network whose members have performed for advocates like the Coalition for Juvenile Justice and for government officials at the White House. Their website unabashedly calls for youth to engage in public leadership for social justice: Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets. Youth programs offer poetry training and workshops, host open microphone events and assemble the D.C. Youth Slam Team for Louder Than a Bomb, which they won last year.
Whats unique about those spaces is that they are from young people, yet they are facilitated by adults, said Tara Dorabji, director of strategic communications for Youth Speaks, a 20-year-old nonprofit that produces youth poetry slams and festivals, including the annual Brave New Voices slam poetry competition. Our mission is to work with young people and facilitate spaces where they can really activate their voice through arts and arts experiences, and then build skills from there and apply their voices in different ways, at times, making choices and having opportunities to apply their voice and their poems in the context of larger social justice issues and movements.
Split This Rock Youth Programs coordinator Joseph Green speaks to the audience before the D.C. Youth Slam Team qualifying competition.
One of the eight team-qualifying slams for the capital city team was held on a warm fall evening in the basement space of Real Talk D.C. on Pennsylvania Avenue, about a half mile from the United States Capitol. The qualifier was part of the weekly Floetic Fridays open-microphone event, held in the safe sexual health awareness organizations headquarters, known as the FreeStyle Center.
Although adults organize these events, Dwayne Lawson-Brown, Real Talk D.C.s youth health educator for social mobilization, said the slams show how the youth take ownership of the events through the words they share.
Here in D.C., the adults who organize it recognize that this is for the youth, Lawson-Brown said over stacked boxes of donated pizza as hip-hop beat through the basement arranged with metal folding chairs and couches that faced a small triangular stage. This is their voice. During the slams and the open mics, for the most part, adults arent really involved. Youth ... or near-age youth are hosting the event.
Lawson-Brown said the only role adults play is setting the stage in a community that fostered the 2014 National Youth Poetry Slam champions. Washington has a tight poetry scene, he said, which allows poets to feel comfortable and accepted in their work. The active spoken word poet offered himself as the sacrificial goat poet, speaking the first poem of the night, which is meant to loosen up the crowd and judges before the contest begins.
Young people participate in poetry for many different reasons personal expression, therapeutic outlet and social action. Qualifying competitor Antonio Poetic Hardy, 17, said he writes poetry to keep the creativity and passion of his inner child alive, which helps his work in the graphic design business he recently started. I feel as though you should always keep that fire alive, and thats what writing and expressing myself through pen and paper means to me.
Andrew Hesbacher, 19, earned third in the qualifier. Hesbacher got addicted to bacher got addicted to spoken word when he attended the 2014 Brave New Voices contest in Philadelphia, which the D.C. Youth Slam Team won. I was hooked immediately, he said.
Youth Slam Team qualifying competitor Antonio Poetic Hardy, 17, eats donated pizza behind the front desk and PA system before the slam begins.
As he has progressed as a poet, Hesbacher said he has learned to take on social issues and promote change. For the longest time [poetry] was a way to get feelings out of myself, he said. As Ive gotten older, and Ive gotten better at dealing with my mental health, Im finding Im writing a lot more about things that I care about.
Trae Stocks, 19, took first place out of seven competitors at the qualifier with his poems Mans n Them and Tune. Mans n Them is a rendition of Rasheed Copelands work of the same name. Stocks was so inspired by Copelands piece that he asked permission to write his own version of the poem created by the 2015 second place Individual World Poetry slam winner and former D.C. Youth Slam Team member. Its about the ironies and struggles of growing up as a black man.
Stocks perceives poetry as a youth-led movement, because young people often instigate changes in poetic craft and delivery. Its youth-driven because most of the newer changes that happen come from the youth, he said. I do feel like we have our own style of poetry thats specific to my generation. I hear poems where they speak poetry for a certain amount of time, then they start rapping, then they sing, then they go back into the poem. They incorporate so many more styles into the poetry. I think a lot of the things my generation gets inspiration from is more free-flowing, the music, the fashion, theres no boundaries anymore.
Breaking down boundaries is why Anne MacNaughton created one of the first spoken word youth poetry teams in New Mexico in 1994. She was a Taos High School English teacher and cofounder of the World Heavyweight Champion Poetry Bout at the Taos Poetry Circus professional spoken word competition. When she saw students getting into trouble for cussing in the hallway during rap battles, she decided to give them a place to speak their minds without fear of punishment.
I went out and swept them into my room and closed the door, she said. I allowed them to continue to express themselves, and they really had a good time. Thats when I started [teaching them] poetry.
In the beginning, the poetry club met before and after school to learn and listen to each others work. MacNaughton said students who had problems with authority and troubled lives found an outlet that made them feel heard and appreciated.
About a year later, MacNaughton said the Taos youth poetry group hosted the first statewide youth spoken word competition in the nation. The event was based on the teachings of experienced slam poets, Juliette Torrez and Matthew John Conley. We ended up creating the first state championship poetry slam event. At that time it was all individuals. There werent teams, yet. As the state-wide event grew, we actually moved on to using teams.
Even the trash cans at Real Talk D.C.s FreeStyle Center are canvases for expression.
MacNaughton believes youth use poetry not only to speak out to adults, but also to build a generational relationship and break down boundaries between each other by sharing what theyre going through.
Its about verbal expression of internal growth that allows you to assess your situation in the world, she said. The kids are talking to each other in these poems.
As a junior in high school Yonas Araya, Split This Rock Ushindi Performance Troupe member, used the platform of poetry to talk about substance abuse at the White House, for Queen Silvia of Sweden and at the Kennedy Center.
The greatest part of the experience for the 16-year-old was seeing people in positions of power emotionally moved by a poem about his aunt who was addicted to heroin.
There were some people in the crowd that were crying, he said. At that moment it was the first time that I realized my words can have a big effect on, if nothing else, someones emotions. I think thats the core of everything, because if you can be moved emotionally by what someone says it can drive you to act on those emotions. People will forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
Lauren May, 16, also felt the powers of emotional poetry during a D.C. Slam Team trip to South Africa. The Split This Rock Ushindi Performance Troupe and former D.C. Youth Slam Team member wasnt speaking to high-ranking officials, but was still capable of promoting change. Her poem about rape culture had a large impact on a class of South African high school students.
May said rape is a serious and taboo issue in South Africa. One young woman connected with Mays poem so much that she stood before the class, thanked May for her bravery, and recited a personal poem, just written after Mays performance. Her brand new verses spoke of being shamed as a rape victim. The student received hugs from her classmates, and her poem sparked a group discussion on the rarely discussed subject.
Im like, oh my goodness, this girl in another country has the same kind of problems that I have, and that was the first time that I experienced something as huge as that, May said. What I say actually matters to people across the world. After that moment, I vowed to never stop [writing poetry].
Seeing people come together is how Green measures success at Split This Rock Youth Program. Through all of the slams he has supported, the most beneficial outcome from the youth poetry movement he witnessed was on the D.C. Metro: I ran into a group of young people that consisted of folks from D.C. and Virginia [who] I didnt know knew each other, Green said. Id worked at both of these schools. Id seen them meet each other at the Louder Than A Bomb festival, but I didnt know that theyd kept in touch to the point where they were just hanging out.
The multiracial group of students was simply spending time together the simple product of what organizations like Split This Rock hope to deliver; a movement of acceptance and community. Green reflects: That is a real-life, tangible product of allowing young people a space where they are safe, and where they can begin to create connections that will hopefully if the connection itself does not last a lifetime will teach them to take chances with people who live outside of where they come from.
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In Kenneth Woodwards fantastic new book,Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama, we are treated to an accessible, insightful, and critical examination of Christianity in the 1960s, which Woodward knows can be extended five years either way, in which his thesis is ever-so-telling and right: the secular becomes the sacred.
That is, social activism became the fundamental core of Christian faith and discipleship during this period for a large segment of American Christianity. This is a really good chapter in Woodwards book and is worth the price of the book.
He opens with the theme of hope in the secular arising in the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson.
Hope in the secular isnt just a play on semantics. Rather, it allows roomfor those aspirations that arise from within religious communities and that seek to be realized in a secular fashion. In the midSixties, that hope was embodied in the civil rights movement under the leadership of King (96).
Woodward, at the center ofNewsweeks news sources, watched up close the civil rights movement with an eye on how religion was at work. As a Catholic, Woodward had a sense of history, of liturgy, of institutional strength, of tradition and of theology. His approach to the Protestant liberals then was an outsider. Here is what he observed: a shift toward making the secular, the world, the center of what God was doing. Thus,
It was largely because of the civil rights movement, and the political response to it, that the nations liberal Protestant leadership came to embrace the secular as sacred: that is, to assume that if God is to be found anywhere, it is in the secular world, not the church (96).
Consistent with the time in which these things occurred, Woodward uses Negro throughout the book. It made me comfortable, and it reminded me of the reality of those days. His thoughts on ML King Jr?
A major question, much debated at the time, was whether the Negroes quest for civil rights was a secular or religious movement (96) That said, King always insisted that whatever else he was to othersthe list included agitator, troublemaker, and, to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, communistin his heart he remained fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher (97). In sum, Martin Luther King Jr. succeeded where other civil rights leaders fell short because he appealed to black religion more precisely, to what generations of American Negroes had made of the Christianity that was originally taught to them by white slave owners (98).
A summary that may be a bit blunt or un-nuanced, but generally helpful:
Black religion, in short, was the religion of the civil rights movement for as long as King was its prime spokesman (8).
This is where he gives some overall insights from King and what happened to the religion of Protestant liberals who had a hope in the secular:
After Selma King would call it a coalition of conscience, one that crossed old religious boundaries and created new forms of religious belief, behavior, and belonging. Thereafter, where one stood on the issue of public agitation on behalf of civil rights became for activist clergy the measure of authentic faith and commitment (102).
This last observation pierces to the heart of this approach to the Christian faith. I have friends for whom their participation in Selma, or at least their claim to have been there, became the core of their faith and was often the nostalgic touching point.
A one off that is more or less probably right on:
It seemed to me that one difference between Evangelical and mainline Protestants was this: when Evangelicals saw the churches going to hell they preached another revival, while mainliners in the same mood called for a reformation of church structures (105).
All of this emerges into nothing less than a secular theology. What happens? Clearly, the church is diminished and the world becomes central. I have been observing this, and at least fearing this, in the rise of social justice activism among so many of our young evangelical Christians. I dont see it as a slippery slope, I see it as a fundamental distortion of what the Christian faith is. Yes, what it was then is what is may well be now: hope in the secular. Heroes of the day? Harvey Cox and Bishop Pike.
In the middle Sixties, a small but influential group of Protestant thinkers sought to ratify the move from church to world by formulating various secular theologies. Matching the mood of the times, the were wildly optimistic about the world, considerably less so about the church (109).
Parsing Bonhoeffer, Cox defined secularization as the liberation of man from religious and metaphysical tutelage, the turning of his attention away from other worlds and towards this one (111).
Liberal mainline Protestants had nothing to fear from the secular city: as its prophetic avant-garde, they would still be custodians of its conscience (112).
What happens to theology? Woodward, a Catholic observer from a good perch, puts it this way:
But it wasnt just optimism about the secular world that distinguished the secular theologians from their more distinguished predecessors like Niebuhr, Barth, and Tillich. Even more pronounced was their dismissive approach to classic Christian doctrines and their blithe disregard of the historic Christian church (115).
Bishop James Albert Pike: Following his career was like watching a weathervane register every new breeze blowing from the Zeitgeist (115) In life, as in his religious views, Pike was tumbling tumbleweed, always moving on, always reinventing himself according to whats happening (116) In short, he was a church careerist without religious convictions or commitments (123). Pikes very public non-trial was the strongest signal yet that civil rights had emerged within the mainline churches as the index by which fidelity to Christs teachings was to be judged. There would be others, notably the war in Vietnam and womens liberation, and woe to those who did not properly discern what God was doing in His secular manifestations (120).
In one quick sentence Woodwards words summarize hope in the secular:
For the Presbyterians, as for the rest of the mainline churches, the problem was that the boundaries between themselves and the world in which they moved had effectively vanished (126).
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Wall Street Journal | What to Watch at the Grammys Wall Street Journal But Grammy voters have a habit of favoring traditional songcraft (Adele) over pop-music zeitgeist (Beyonc). Last year, Taylor Swift's ... At the end, a black screen reads: Freedom of movement should be this easy for all legal immigrants. Not just the ... |
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Just a day after Amazon Video Prime announced that it would unroll some of its original content, already available in other territories worldwide, Netflix has hit back with its ambitious plans to solidify itself as the worlds favourite channel.
After already debuting Santa Clarita Diet and A Series of Unfortunate Events this year, a Netflix even held in New York yesterday offered a sneak peak into whats to come over the next few months. It all amounts to more than 1,000 hours of new content across a wide variety of television genres, as Netflix looks to cultivate taste communities fond of a few hours of binging.
Here are the five big takeaways from yesterdays event...
Release dates for some of Netflixs most popular shows new seasons were announced, with Orange is the New Black set for an explosive return on June 7th. Love, starring Gillian Jacobs and Paul Rust, was renewed for a third season, before its second one even starts to stream on March 10th, and The OAs unanswered questions may get some answers as the show gets a second season.
Release dates and teaser trailers dropped for a host of new original shows, including the Britt Robertson-starring Girlboss, streaming from April 21st. The show, based on the memoirs of eBay-retailer-turned-CEO Sophia Amoruso, promises to explore entrepreneurialism and flawed female characters.
Also coming on May 12th is Anne, a reworking of the classic Canadian childrens book series Anne of Green Gables, with Irish-Canadian actress Amybeth McNulty taking on the lead as the flighty redhead. Written by the Emmy-winning screenwriter of Breaking Bad, the series promises to bring Lucy Maud Montgomerys literary heroine to a new global audience - and proves she's got a smack in her to rivalIron Fist.
According toBloomberg, Netflix is looking to cash in on the lucrative merchandising side of the entertainment business, and will look to license its content for books, comics, gaming toys, collectables, soundtrack, and apparel. Having recently conducted a successful trial with the US retailer Hot Topic selling Stranger Things merchandise,
Netflix is reportedly looking to ape Disneys model to promote our titles so they become part of the zeitgeist for longer periods of time.
Perhaps its unsurprising that in the 2017 media climate, the announcement of a Netflix show based on a pre-existing feature film has already seen calls for a boycott.
When the 34-second trailer for Dear White People, a social satire about African-American students on an Ivy League university campus debuted, the hashtag #NoNetflix started popping on Twitter, amid calls that the show is anti-white. Since being uploaded yesterday morning, the trailer has been given more than 81,000 thumbs down and just 4,000 up on YouTube, and attempts to start a protest movement of people cancelling their Netflix accounts have seen swift online retribution...
Across all genre of television, scripted and unscripted, Netflix is launching an attempted coup to provide all of the programming a family could want. From parents to kids, with plenty of stunt casting to merge the two (Julie Andrewss show Julies Greenroom will feature guests stars like Alec Baldwin, Carol Burnett, Ellie Kemper, Titus Burgess, Idina Menzel, while Bill Nye Saves the World will see the science presenter work with Karlie Kloss, Zach Braff, Donald Faison, Rachel Bloom, and Joel McHale).
Even fans of the 1980s computer game Castlevania are covered, with an animated series set to be written by British novelist Warren Ellis.
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Five things to know from Netflix's 2017 launch - Newstalk 106-108 fm
Your fridge is full of courgetti, your kitchen cupboards are stocked with almond butter and your wardrobe is kitted out with sustainable fashion.
Now, its time to turn to your attention to your bathroom shelf because while clean eating and conscious fashion were the buzz phrases of last year, its the clean beauty movement thats causing a stir.
Remember when eco-brands were a bit of a joke, derided for their New-Age formulas and clumpy hemp packaging? Today, enticingly Instagrammable and eco-conscious labels such as This Works, Vanderohe, Bjrk & Berries, Pai and Romilly Wilde which forgo synthetic ingredients in favour of naturally occuring botanical sources and not only smell divine but also come in packaging that would make Coco Chanel purr are being taken very seriously indeed.
Eat Beautiful, by Wendy Rowe (20; wendyrowe.com)
According to trend forecasters The Future Laboratory, the UK natural cosmetics market is currently worth just over 54m, and is set to reach 34bn globally by 2019. Natural beauty stores are flourishing: in the US, new chain Credo, akin to Sephora and selling brands that use safe, sustainable, and ethically sourced ingredients already has popular branches in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. Here in London, chic natural tinctures can be picked up in Content Beauty on Marylebone High Street, while Holland & Barrett around the capital is becoming the new destination to buy your tinted lip balms thanks to a trendy image makeover. Online, the Beauty Counter is a modern Avon for those after natural skincare.
And much like the makeover that healthy eating underwent thanks to the Hemsley sisters, Amelia Freer and Deliciously Ella, the clean-beauty movement has a new cast of soign ambassadors, too. Burberry make-up artist Wendy Rowe has written a guide on how to use your diet to nourish your skin called Eat Beautiful, while Londoners Elsie Rutterford and Dominika Minarovic, who mix up their own organic face oils and sell them for 35 a bottle via their website, have just published their first book, Clean Beauty.
Clean Beauty co-founders Elsie Rutterford and Dominika Minarovic
The woman buying into it is already conscious about what she eats: skincare and make-up are the natural next steps, explains New York-based make-up artist Kirsten Kjr Weis, founder of the eponymous Kjr Weis, a line of organic cosmetics housed in refillable silver trinkets. Disappointed by the lack of high-performance natural brands in her kit, she developed her own 95 per cent organic pigments (meaning the ingredients come from organic farms and are grown in organic soil untouched by chemicals for at least three years) using minerals such as the light-reflective micas group which add shine.
But this isnt just about feeling healthy and virtuous. We live in a society where we want everything, says Kathy Phillips, ex-Vogue beauty director and founder of This Works, which uses natural and organic ingredients. We want to say we are natural but also look half our age. Nothing drives sales like results and the natural ingredients used in some of these clean beauty players are as potent as many synthetics. The sustainably sourced Cacay oil that youll find in Oilixias Amazonian Oil (48; thisisbeautymart.com) for example, contains an amount of retinol (about the only clinically recognised anti-ageing ingredient that reduces wrinkles via cell renewal) comparable with any non-natural retinol product on the market.
Natural can be scientific, agrees Susie Willis, who founded plant-based brand Romilly Wilde last year. She uses so-called bio-identicals that is, lab-grown ingredients comparable to those found in the wild to make her products more sustainable. The laboratory I work with takes one cell from the plant algae, for instance and instead of stripping the seabed for more, they stimulate the environment in the lab so the cell can be reproduced again and again.
@credo-beautys Instagram
Sustainability is not just a buzzword for these new brands. You need to think about the complete360-degree footprint of your brand and try to use each choice as a potential solution to a bigger problem, says Marcia Kilgore, the founder of Soaper Duper, which launched last year using largely natural ingredients and recycled plastics and is currently stocked in Liberty. We consider the net effect of the bottle or tube on plastic landfill, the net effect of the formulation on our groundwater resources, the net effect of the product on the person using it, and of course, the net effect of the personality of the brand on overall zeitgeist. This ethical stance is not the cheapest of life choices her bath soaps come in at around 7.50 but who said clean was cheap?
As with any prominent trend, copycat and less squeaky-clean brands will jump on the bandwagon. Its impossible to tell from the label on the bottle, for example, whether your face oil contains frankincense sourced sustainably from a fair-trade farmer or whether it has been harvested by an exploited worker. And for a brand to advertise itself as natural, it only needs a tiny percentage of the formula to be natural (unlike organic).
It can be a green maze, warns Willis. The trick? Do your research visit brands websites, as well as the Soil Association website, Paulas Choice and Ecocert, where you can learn about different ingredients.
Look for third-party authentication stamps that prove how natural it is. Also look at the ingredient listing: the blanket word fragrance is often a red flag for synthetics and if there are any unrecognisable words, google them.
With the right products, you can keep your conscience as clean as your complexion.
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Designers in their Spring Resort 2017 outings fell for the unapologetic, outr glamour hook, line and sinker. Juxtaposing Rococo with Glam Rock and re-scaling it to gutsy effect they didnt shy away from the zeitgeist of daring-do. One saw the emergence of a strong feminine force. Be it Falguni and Shane Peacocks feminist stand against the attacks on women or fusionista Payal Singhals flirtation with dark romanticism or Resort Rani Monisha Jaisings Baroque bombshells the collections were an ornate orgy of sequins, sheer, fringes and beads. Peacocks Rebel line was high on incendiarily sexy beaded body suits, wrapped nonchalantly with organza trench coats like they were post-coitus sheets. Payal Singhals carnal guignol of goth lips and gold tassels added drama to her take-charge fusion looks. Why is maximalism such a turn-on for designers? Is the anti-bride the new bride? Lets speak to designers and stylists...
Designer Payal Singhal re-imagined glam rock in Indian space with line titled, Lady M. She observes that girls and young brides today wear sneakers and aviators with their lehengas and she was paying a tribute to that devil-may-care attitude. We were referencing the 30s, which was the Pre-War era of fringing and tasseling, she says. She didnt want to do fringing very literally so she toyed with long bugle beads which added a movement to the structured garments. She adds, Trends are an extension of whats going on in the world and going back to maximalism is a way to escape the current mood of depression.
Designer Falguni Peacock says that putting trenchcoats over bodysuits and minis made the line-up subtle and easy breezy. Goth trend is here to stay. Lips just popped because clothes were in lighter shades. Gold fringe has been our forte and this season weve reinvented it, says she.
Stylist Isha Bhansali sees the trend going well with the core Indian aesthetic, which has always been about shine and shimmer. The goth lips work very well on the Indian skin tone, says she.
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Salman Rushdie, the writer marked for death by the Ayatollah of Iran for writing The Satanic Verses, is working on a new novel set in contemporary America.
His new book, The Golden House, is a thriller set against the backdrop of modern-day American culture. It covers the eight-year Obama presidency and incorporates the cultural zeitgeist. It includes the rise of the conservative Tea Party movement, 2014s GamerGate hashtag campaign, social media, identity politics, and the ongoing culture war against political correctness.
In other words, its the modern world through the lens of Salman Rushdie, an author who received numerous death threats and even attempts on his life after he penned a novel critical of Islam.
Many stores refused to carry the book following its publication in 1988, and those that did were targeted by terrorists with firebombs and explosives.
The Iranian government put out a hit on Rushdie, which lasted until 1998, calling on jihadists and their allies to take the authors life.
In more recent years, Rushdie has called for the defense of freedom of speech. As the target of assassination attempts over his ideas and writing, the Booker Prize-winning author is uniquely intimate with the subject.
During the election last year, Rushdie spoke out against the furor over the pro-Trump chalk slogans in Emory University in what became known as #TheChalkening. Campuses that saw the rising incidences of chalk messages banned the calcium carbonate writing tool.
Rushdie called the dust-up silly and said there was no reason for art to be politically correct.
When people say, I believe in free speech but , then they dont believe in free speech, he said. The whole point about free speech is that it upsets people.
Its very easy to defend the right of people whom you agree with or that you are indifferent to, Rushdie said. The defense [of free speech] begins when someone says something that you dont like.
There are no safe spaces against offensive ideas, said Rushdie.
Rushdie has come to lose his confidence in the progressive leftincluding those who once defended his controversial book. Speaking in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Rushdie expressed dismay at the leftist protests that followed the PEN writers association to honor the fallen artists and writers.
Speaking to French magazine LExpress, Rushdie said that people learned the wrong lessons from the threats he faced in the 80s and 90s.
Instead of realizing that we need to oppose these attacks on freedom of expression, we thought that we need to placate them with compromise and renunciation.
Ive since had the feeling that, if the attacks against The Satanic Verses had taken place today, these people would not have defended me, and would have used the same arguments against me, accusing me of insulting an ethnic and cultural minority, said Rushdie. We are living in the darkest time I have ever known.
In Rushdies new book, the main villain is described as a ruthlessly ambitious, narcissistic, media-savvy villain sporting makeup and colored hair. Make what you will of that.
The books publishing director at Jonathan Cape, Michal Shavit, describes The Golden House as being about identity, truth, terror, and lies for a new world order of alternate truths. Its out this September.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken mediacritic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook.
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Salman Rushdie's New Novel is About Political Correctness and the Culture Wars - Heat Street
John Steinbeck wrote in Once There Was a War: The theatre is the only institution in the world which has been dying for four thousand years and has never succumbed. It requires tough and devoted people to keep it alive.
The UK has long been celebrated for its rich heritage of creative talent and a vibrant, enduring theatre scene. But where budget cuts are running deep across government spending, the arts are proving an easy target. The cost of living crisis touching many people, not just creatives, is a huge challenge for playwriting, often a lengthy and time-consuming process. And whether or not we consider the theatre a dying artform, at the very least, competition for audiences leisure time, hard-earned cash and imaginations is as intense as ever. As new playwright Liam Borrett, 25, who saw successwith'This Is Living' last year, puts it: People can watch The Crown on Netflix from bed for 8.99 a month - you have to create something interesting enough to drag them out mid-winter for three hours at a cost of 30 or 40.
Many theatres and foundations run schemes and initiatives - such as the biennial Bruntwood Prize, now open for 2017 submissions - to support as many new playwrights, in and out of London, to write and experiment as possible. Yet it remains risky for a building to put on a new play rather than a tried and tested classic, and increasingly artistic directors will shape their seasons through commissions for specific writers, rather than see what lands on their doorstep. So who are the next generation of tough and devoted, working to keep theatre alive amidst our age of austerity and ever-accessible digital entertainment? And how are they faring? I spoke to some emerging British playwrights to find out.
Katherine Soper, 25, whose play 'Wish List' is currently a hit at the Royal Court (Joel C Fildes)
One such playwright is Alex MacKeith, 25,whose debut School Play has just opened at Southwark Playhouse. For MacKeith, there ought to be a platform for young playwrights as a means of engagement with current issues or dramatically presenting characters who have not been represented on stage before, a deeply important exercise for citizens who operate in society: Increasingly we need to cultivate our sympathies for other people. Having been part of a dynamic theatrical scene at university, it was his idea for School Play - about the realities of the school system in the UK, borne of his own personal experience as a tutor in a primary school - that he kept coming back to. Describing the naturalistic piece as inventive reportage rather than pure invention, the shape-shifting beast needed many iterations to keep up-to-date with frequent changes in policy: Its not a polemic on the education system. Neither am I presenting an alternative - it simply asks questions. Which is what plays should do.
2015 Bruntwood Prize winner, Katherine Soper, 25, lauds such programmes for providing the feedback many aspiring writers, sending out work to theatres like unanswered messages in a bottle, crave. She feels a fetishisation of the young in theatre can be reductive and damaging at times, particularly if a writer gets fated for greatness on the basis of an early work when they might not have had a chance to hone their craft away from critical eyes. Yet in the current political climate, the voice of the upcoming generation - overwhelming for Bremain and opposed to Trump - does need to be heard. With Wish List, which is currently on at the Royal Court, she did not set out to create a politically charged play, only when she started developing her story about the moralisation of work did she realise it was something she felt strongly about. For Soper, entertainment should not be pejorative: less about trite comparisons or a blunt tool for political statement its about plugging into visceral things, the kinds of fears and emotions people are experiencing at a certain moment in time. When a new or canonical play engages with that, it will resonate.
Playwright Chloe Todd Fordham, 30, equally praises initiatives and schemes for championing her writing but also admits facing a reality check in how difficult it is to write once making it onto the Royal Courts writing programme. Through studying an MA and writing with Theatre 503, she developed Sound of Silence which received a Bruntwood Judges Award in 2015. A bold and ambitious play, she is still working to see it staged, highlighting the often unseen slow burn of taking a play from its first writing to production: Its a combination of being patient and staying confident in the value of what you have to say. Not giving up.
The playwright Ella Hickson, 31, scored at hit with 'Oil' which was staged at the Almeida in 2016 (Peter Hickson )
Scottish writer Stef Smith, 29, who had her London debut with Human Animals at the Royal Court last year and is developing Girl in the Machine for Scotlands new writing theatre Traverse, is loathe to use the term the regions but notes the different ecosystems surrounding making work not always visible through a pervasive London-centric lens. While the UK capital may hold more opportunities, the concentration of the theatre community in cities like Edinburgh can afford closer connections and a nurturing environment for new writers.
Liam Borrett'sThis Is Living, his drama school graduating piece about loss, appeared at Trafalgar Studios in the West End last year, after proving a hit at Edinburgh Fringe: Getting people to come and see a two hander about death at 11pm was likely not going to work. But by word of mouth, there was a buzz. Even so, he explained facing difficulties in getting it transferred, being turned down by eight theatres, often waiting a frustrating and demoralising nine to ten months for the no: You cant just programme the same stuff. You need voices that reflect and deconstruct the society were living in. For Borrett, 25,theatre should rarely be a passive experience: There are days I go and watch a cosy musical. But the majority of the time I want to feel profoundly different and changed and most of the time upset by the end of it. Thats the cathartic experience you go to the theatre for.
Ella Hickson, 31, writer of Oil, which was staged at the Almeida last year, started out self-producing but now works on commission for the likes of the RSC, the National Theatre and Almeida. She recognises both the agency and relative immediacy afforded by the former and the greater stability by the latter: The production process between having an idea and getting it staged is not insignificant. In terms of a Zeitgeist, you are looking at a reflection of a cultural moment two years previous. But Hickson, like many artists, is far more interested in ploughing energy into the ever-challenging task of writing a good play: Writing is a bit like love, when it turns up, take it, and try not to worry about it too much when it's not there.
Scottish writer Stef Smith, 29,who had her London debut with 'Human Animals' at the Royal Court last year
Lucy J Skilbeck,28, emphasises the importance of finding the right place to incubate and develop your ideas, hers being through a BBC Fellowship at Derby Theatre and later setting up her own production company Milk Presents. Concerned with fracturing ideas of masculinity and femininity, she had ambitions to make a drag king play about Joan of Arc. With Joan playing in pubs, schools and in a Hull UK City of Culture 2017 shopping centre for 2.50, Skilbeck has found a really easy light touch way you can dialogue with some mega ideas. Now preparing Bullish and directing a company of gender queer artists in Chekhovs The Bear/The Proposal, for Skilbeck, theatre is the place and now is the time to be political: Theatres should be places we grapple with things we dont understand which will then leak out into the wider world.
Other playwrights such as Andrew Maddock, 30,are exploiting new routes to stage for their writing. Starting out with his own one-man show, Junkie, he self-produces his work, drumming up a following through social media, such as for He(Art): The way I like to write is quitereactive - I want to write and get it on stage. He sees this as a growing and exciting trend, comparing it to the grassroots movement of punk rock, they reacted to something and created something, and Ithink that's what's happening in theatre right now. People are tired of waiting. He believes the fringe can raise the bar for everyone: a potential game changer.
Erin Doherty as Tamsin Carmody and Joseph Quinn as Dean Carmody in Katherine Soper's 'Wish List' at the Royal Court (Jonathan Keenan)
Alexander Zeldin, 31,who saw success with Beyond Caring last year and whose play Love is currently transferring from London to Birmingham, is pushing a new, more process-driven approach to theatre. He sees a shift toward more forms of writing and collaborative writing, involving actors heavily in developing his characters. His theatre is firmly rooted in concrete communities: Its important a play makes sense to people and is not removed in some literary bubble - that can happen in our theatre culture. He is now preparing to take Beyond Caring to Chicagos Lookingglass theatre with David Schwimmer, exploring the plays theme of zero-hour contracts with African-American and Latino workers in the US.
The threat to theatres longevity is not a new one. And perhaps the challenge is, as ever, to keep seeking new edges in old tales, bringing fresh stories to the stage and cultivating new audiences by engaging with contemporary issues and a new generation of theatre goers through schools, young people and presenting theatre as something that is not exclusive. Netflix has its attractions, as does the cinema. But there is something idiosyncratic about the collective live experience of theatre, particularly in the close quarters of fringe venues. As MacKeith says: Once made accessible and non intimidating, the form does a lot of the work in keeping people engaged as it is so unique. In fact, it's addictive.
'School Play' will be showing at Southwark Playhouse from until 25 February. The Bruntwood Prize is open for submissions until 5 June 2017.
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We spoke to the new generation of British playwrights who will dominate 2017 - The Independent
When I announced I was moving to Detroit after 15 years at a top Madison Avenue ad agency, many thought I had a momentary lapse of consciousness. The first response is generally one word (delivered with a whiff of disdain) DETROIT?! Its no wonder Detroit vs. Everybody has become a cultural movement.
Then, the unthinkable happens. Two minutes into explaining my decision, most people usually say, Can I come?
While Id like to think Im terribly persuasive, the facts speak for themselves. Detroit is not the cold, rusty, post-industrial city New Yorkers and practically all non-Detroiters imagine. The citys creative spirit is very much alive and thriving, bringing together world-class storytellers, entrepreneurs and makers that can inspire, craft and produce the next great brand building ideas. In a modern world where brand storytelling sits at the intersection of art and science, most Madison Avenue agencies are still stuck at the 150-year-old intersection of media and messaging. Detroit is anything but stuck in the past.
Today the sparks of inspiration in music, technology, art and science generally arent born in NYC although its still a pretty great place to raise capital for them. Eureka moments are constantly being hatched in Detroit, Tel Aviv, Las Vegas, London, Atlanta, Stockholm, Marina del Ray, Austin and a host of other so called second cities. And now more than ever, Middle America is having its moment.
One of the biggest challenges for New York agencies is the cost of talent, cost of living and cost of real estate makes surrounding ideas with the best people, technology and facilities increasingly difficult. At Doner, were taking a different approach by opening our agency doors around the world to start-ups, filmmakers and tinkerers hungry to partner with brands. While other agencies are buying 3D printers and claiming to have a maker cutler, weve built a real-time content engine and true maker culture with soundstages, 25 edit rooms, and inspirational collaboration studios. We even rented an apartment to create a food styling kitchen where we film 24/7 content for brands like Bushs, Nestl, Smithfield, Minute Maid and Food Lion.
Detroit isnt just considered the new Brooklyn for the facial hair. Its become a mecca to artists, designers and musicians. Downtown Detroit is rising like a Phoenix with state-of-the-art sports arenas, a restaurant and arts scene that rivals Williamsburg, and construction as far as the eye can see.
Detroit is a place where new ideas are constantly being born, brought to life and shared throughout the community, like Slow Roll bringing together 3000 cyclists to roll through different Detroit neighborhoods every Monday night, and The Empowerment Plan designing coats for those living in the streets. Its where Shinola was born from transforming an abandoned factory into a craft watch company that rivals the Swiss, and where Ponyride turned the foreclosure crisis into an inexpensive space for socially-conscious artists and creative entrepreneurs.
Even the UN has taken notice, naming Detroit North Americas only UNESCO City of Design, joining 47 cities from 33 countries. With this distinction, Detroit joins a worldwide network of cities committed to investing in creativity as a driver for sustainable urban development, social inclusion and cultural vibrancy.
But for all its magic, Detroit has yet to stake its claim as a creative hub in our industry. When people think Detroit, they think we only do automotive. When people think of where you go to build advertising career, they dont think Detroit. Thats something I want to help change.
Brands need and want the voice of Middle America more than every before, and that spirit and those values can only authentically come from a culture of people plugged into that zeitgeist.
A culture where technology leaders drive pickups, social experts are soccer moms and designers keep a hunting calendar next to their Pantone books.
Equally exciting is how the spirit of Motor City ingenuity lives in our other offices around the world. As a micro-network, were not just adding dots on a map, were adding talent hubs where technology is erasing barriers and where time zones melt away to allow us to be an always on spigot of content and ideas.
For years, I have struggled to answer my clients pleas to give them more content, and to do it better, faster and cheaper. In New York, I made excuses. In Detroit, I can make S#@! happen.
My heart kept me on Madison Avenue for half my career, and I dont regret a day of it. But today marketers and brands face unrelenting challenges and a future of incredible opportunity, and Im thrilled to help answer them from a new (and perhaps unexpected) address.
Eric Weisberg is global chief creative officer at Doner. He tweets @eweisberg
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