Watch Free Plays from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre: Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth & More

in K-12, Life, Literature, Theatre | April 28th, 2020

As depress­ing arti­cles about the upcom­ing Sum­mer of COVID-19 begin to pro­lif­er­ate, our hopes for beach days, con­cert series, and sum­mer camp begin to dim.

Here in New York City, the Pub­lic Theater’s announce­ment that it is can­celling the upcom­ing sea­son of its famed Shake­speare in the Park was met with under­stand­able sad­ness.

You don’t have to like Shake­speare to enjoy the rit­u­al of enter­ing Cen­tral Park short­ly after dawn, pre­pared to sit online for sev­er­al hours await­ing noon’s free tick­et dis­tri­b­u­tion, then return­ing to the Dela­corte lat­er that night with snacks and sweater and wine.

Per­form­ing a quick Inter­net search to brush up on the plot can enhance the expe­ri­ence, but—and I saw this as some­one whose degree includ­ed a met­ric heinieload of The Bard—it can be equal­ly sat­is­fy­ing to spend the final acts enjoy­ing an impromp­tu, al fres­co nap.

Bonus points if a rac­coon runs across the stage at some point.

Alas all this must be denied us in the sum­mer of 2020, but it’s still with­in our pow­er to repli­cate that sum­mer feel­ing in advance of the equinox, using the past pro­duc­tions that London’s Globe The­atre is screen­ing on its YouTube chan­nel as our start­ing place.

First up is Romeo & Juli­et from 2009, star­ring Ellie Kendrick and Adetomi­wa Edun, though accord­ing to the Inde­pen­dent’s Michael Coveney, the show belongs to Pen­ny Lay­den as the Nurse:

Far removed from the fuss­ing tra­di­tion of com­ic gar­ruli­ty and the Patri­cia Rout­ledge fac­tor, Lay­den plays her as a scrubbed, mid­dle-aged, sen­si­ble woman car­ry­ing a his­to­ry of sad­ness. The bawdy assault on her by Philip Cum­bus’s melan­choly Mer­cu­tio is both shock­ing and plau­si­ble, and she retains her qui­et dig­ni­ty while at the same time mourn­ing its sac­ri­fice.

Back to New York City…

Pri­or to start­ing your screen­ing, you’ll want to approx­i­mate a seat at the Dela­corte (which, like the Globe, is authen­ti­cal­ly cir­cu­lar in shape). I rec­om­mend a met­al fold­ing chair.

Sprin­kle a table­spoon or so of water onto the seat if you want to pre­tend it rained all after­noon lead­ing up to the per­for­mance.

Def­i­nite­ly have some wine to pour into a plas­tic cup.

Slather your­self in insect repel­lent.

Silence your cell phone.

If your housemate’s cell phone goes off mid-per­for­mance, feel free to tsk and sssh and roll your eyes. Hon­est­ly, how hard is it to com­ply with the famil­iar instruc­tions of the house manager’s speech?

At inter­mis­sion, stand out­side your own bath­room door for at least 15 min­utes before let­ting your­self into a “stall” to use the facil­i­ties.

Doze all you want to…. arrange for your house­mate to tsk and sssh at you from an appro­pri­ate dis­tance, should your snor­ing become audi­ble.

You have until Sun­day, May 3 to stum­ble sleep­i­ly away from the screen, and pre­tend you’re wan­der­ing to the sub­way with 1799 oth­er New York­ers.

Then make plans to wake up at 5:30 and sit on the floor with a ther­mos of cof­fee for sev­er­al hours, hop­ing that they won’t run out of tick­ets for The Two Noble Kins­men before you make it to the top of the line.

(Spoil­er alert: they won’t.)

Oth­ers in the Globe’s free series:

Mac­Beth, May 11 until UK schools reopen

The Winter’s Tale (2018), May 18 — May 31

The Mer­ry Wives of Wind­sor (2019), June 1 — June 14

A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (2013), June 15 — 28

Click­ing the red “dis­cov­er more” lozenge beneath each show’s pho­to on the Globe Watch’s land­ing page will lead you to a wealth of sup­port­ing mate­ri­als, from pre-show chats with the Globe’s Post-Doc­tor­al Research Fel­low Will Tosh to pho­tos, arti­cles, and a stu­dent chal­lenge specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to the times we find our­selves liv­ing through now.

Sub­scribe to the Globe’s YouTube chan­nel to receive reminders.

Donate to the Globe here.

Amer­i­cans can make a tax-deductible dona­tion to The Pub­lic The­ater here.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe The­atre in Lon­don

A 68 Hour Playlist of Shakespeare’s Plays Being Per­formed by Great Actors: Giel­gud, McK­ellen & More

A Free Shake­speare Col­or­ing Book: While Away the Hours Col­or­ing in Illus­tra­tions of 35 Clas­sic Plays

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Depend­ing on how long this thing goes on, she may look into giv­ing Pen­ny Lay­den a run for the mon­ey by live-stream­ing her solo show, NURSE. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Find Emotional Strength & Resilience During COVID-19: Advice from Elizabeth Gilbert, Jack Kornfield, Susan David & Other Experts

in Current Affairs, Health, Life, Psychology, TED Talks | April 23rd, 2020

There are many roads through the coro­n­avirus cri­sis. One is denial, which only makes things worse. Anoth­er is ser­vice and self-sac­ri­fice, a choice we hon­or in the med­ical pro­fes­sion­als putting their lives at risk every day. For most of us, how­ev­er, the best course of action is non-action—staying home and iso­lat­ing our­selves from oth­ers. Days bleed into weeks, weeks into months. It can seem like life has come to a com­plete halt. It hasn’t, of course. All sorts of things are hap­pen­ing inside us. We don’t know how long this will last; cur­rent cours­es of action don’t bode well. What do we do with the fear, anger, lone­li­ness, grief, and buzzing, ever-present anx­i­ety?

Maybe the first thing to do is to accept that we have those feel­ings and feel them, instead of stuff­ing them down, cov­er­ing them up, or push­ing them onto some­one else. Then we can rec­og­nize we aren’t by any means alone. That’s eas­i­er said than done in quar­an­tine, but psy­chol­o­gists and inspi­ra­tional writ­ers and speak­ers like Eliz­a­beth Gilbert have come togeth­er under the aus­pices of the TED Con­nect series, host­ed by the head of TED Chris Ander­son, to help.

TED, known for show­cas­ing “thinkers and doers [giv­ing] the talk of their lives in 18 min­utes (or less),” has wise­ly rec­og­nized the need to dig much deep­er. Ander­son and head of cura­tion Helen Wal­ters’ con­ver­sa­tion with Gilbert, above, runs a lit­tle over an hour.

As for that cease­less anx­i­ety, Gilbert sug­gests we should all give our­selves “a mea­sure of mer­cy and com­pas­sion.” We might feel like we need per­mis­sion to do so in soci­eties that demand we con­stant­ly jus­ti­fy our exis­tence. But admit­ting vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is the begin­ning of strength. Then we find con­struc­tive ways for­ward. The kind of resilience we can build in iso­la­tion is the kind that can out­last a cri­sis. Still, it is hard won. As Ander­son says above, in addi­tion to the exter­nal bat­tle we must fight with the virus and our own gov­ern­ments, “there’s this oth­er bat­tle as well, that is prob­a­bly equal­ly as con­se­quen­tial. It’s a bat­tle that’s going on right inside our minds.”

Rather than killing time wait­ing fit­ful­ly for some accept­able form of nor­mal to return, we can build what psy­chol­o­gist Susan David calls “emo­tion­al courage.” In con­ver­sa­tion with TED’s Whit­ney Pen­ning­ton Rogers, above, David reveals that she her­self has good rea­son to fear: her hus­band is a physi­cian. She also under­stands the con­se­quences of a col­lec­tive denial of suf­fer­ing and death. “The cir­cum­stance that we are in now is not some­thing that we asked for, but life is call­ing on every sin­gle one of us to move into the place of wis­dom in our­selves… into the space of wis­dom and for­ti­tude, sol­i­dar­i­ty, com­mu­ni­ty, courage.” We move into that space by rec­og­niz­ing that “life’s beau­ty is insep­a­ra­ble from its fragili­ty.”

Themes of courage and con­nec­tion come up again and again in oth­er TED Con­nects inter­views, such as that above with Rab­bi Lord Jonathan Sacks and below with author Priya Park­er. Else­where on the inter­net, you’ll find sim­i­lar kinds of advice.

On the Tim Fer­ris show, you can hear inter­views with Jack Korn­field on find­ing peace in the pan­dem­ic, Esther Per­el on nav­i­gat­ing rela­tion­ships in quar­an­tine, and Ryan Hol­i­day on using Sto­icism to choose “alive time over dead time.”

Sto­icism has gath­ered a par­tic­u­lar­ly rich store of wis­dom about how to live in cri­sis. In his own med­i­ta­tion on iso­la­tion, Michel de Mon­taigne drew on the Sto­ics in advis­ing read­ers to “reserve a back­shop, whol­ly our own and entire­ly free, where­in to set­tle our true lib­er­ty, our prin­ci­ple soli­tude and retreat…. We have a mind pli­able in itself, that will be com­pa­ny; that has where­with­al to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not then fear in this soli­tude to lan­guish under an uncom­fort­able vacu­ity.” In oth­er words, the road through iso­la­tion, though fraught with painful emo­tions and uncer­tain­ties, can be, if we choose, one of sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al and col­lec­tive growth.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

How Stress Can Change Your Brain: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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A Playlist of Songs to Get You Through Hard Times: Stream 20 Tracks from the Alan Lomax Collection

in Life, Music | April 15th, 2020

There’s an argu­ment to be made that folk music is always polit­i­cal, in a broad sense. It is music made by ordi­nary peo­ple strug­gling against over­whelm­ing forces: nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, oppres­sive gov­ern­ments, cor­rupt boss­es, job loss, the pains of mar­riage and illic­it rela­tion­ships… and epi­dem­ic infec­tious dis­eases. It’s music of con­so­la­tion and resilience. Folk music helps us navigate—as the title of a 20-song col­lec­tion of Alan Lomax’s record­ings new­ly released on Band­camp puts it—“hard times: up, over and through.”

At least,  the fact that we know of and can hear so much folk music from around the world has a good deal to do with polit­i­cal deci­sions made, for exam­ple, in the U.S., where Lomax began work­ing with his folk­lorist father John, col­lect­ing music and inter­views for the Library of Congress’s Archive of Amer­i­can Folk Song. This work was fund­ed on the premise that con­serv­ing the voice of the peo­ple had val­ue inde­pen­dent of its prof­itabil­i­ty.

But prof­itable it was: first cre­ative­ly, as Lomax’s record­ings inspired the Amer­i­can and British folk revivals of the mid-20th cen­tu­ry: then finan­cial­ly, as folk and folk-rock artists sold mil­lions of records. Giv­en the tenor of those times, it’s no won­der folk became main­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Civ­il Rights, labor, and anti-war move­ments. Yet as folk­lorists like Lomax showed, even after the Con­gres­sion­al fund­ing end­ed, folk songs from around the world have sto­ries to tell that we may nev­er have heard oth­er­wise.

A 20-track selec­tion of those songs, dat­ing between 1936 and 1982, can hard­ly be rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the mas­sive trove of record­ings Lomax col­lect­ed. It does show, a press release notes, “an enor­mous range of geo­graph­i­cal and styl­is­tic diver­si­ty across 50 years,” with artists rang­ing from “leg­ends of Amer­i­can ver­nac­u­lar music—Bessie Jones, Skip James, and Dock Bog­gs among them—to rur­al Ital­ian, Span­ish, and Scot­tish singers.” This music offers, “in these try­ing times, com­fort diver­sion, and his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive.”

Such per­spec­tive is crit­i­cal when the world seems to be falling apart. The strug­gles of “folk”—wherever they may be in the world—are inter­con­nect­ed and ongo­ing. Hear­ing how peo­ple respond­ed to dis­as­ter, both per­son­al and col­lec­tive, in decades past pro­vides a sense of con­ti­nu­ity. Things have been very bad before, and peo­ple have had rea­son to lament. To declare that “Mon­ey is King,” as a track by The Growl­ing Tiger tells us. To won­der plain­tive­ly, as Har­ry Cox does, “What will become of England/if things go on this way?”

But folk singers have also had rea­sons for joy, in the best and the bleak­est of times, and joy is also a kind of pol­i­tics, a show of strength in the face of what Rev. Pearly Brown plain­ly calls “A Mean Old World.” Stream the col­lec­tion, which includes six pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased tracks, above, and buy indi­vid­ual tracks or the full dig­i­tal album for $5 at Band­camp.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

Alan Lomax’s Mas­sive Music Archive Is Online: Fea­tures 17,000 His­toric Blues & Folk Record­ings

Hear 17,000+ Tra­di­tion­al Folk & Blues Songs Curat­ed by the Great Musi­col­o­gist Alan Lomax

Leg­endary Folk­lorist Alan Lomax: ‘The Land Where the Blues Began’

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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An Art Gallery for Gerbils: Two Quarantined Londoners Create a Mini Museum Complete with Gerbil-Themed Art

in Art, Comedy, Creativity, Life, Museums | April 10th, 2020

Lon­don-based cou­ple Fil­ip­po and Mar­i­an­na’s self-iso­la­tion project calls to mind artist (and muse­um cura­tor) Bill Scan­ga’s At the Met, exhib­it­ed near­ly 20 years ago as part of the group show Almost Warm and Fuzzy: Child­hood and Con­tem­po­rary Art at P.S.1 Con­tem­po­rary Art Cen­ter (now known as MoMA PS1).

Scan­ga’s instal­la­tion involved hang­ing mini-repli­cas of works from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um’s Amer­i­can col­lec­tion on extreme­ly long wires that trav­eled from under-ceil­ing pic­ture rail to the base­board, where a col­lec­tion of art-lov­ing taxi­der­mied mice wait­ed expec­tant­ly. One rest­ed on a famil­iar-look­ing, black vinyl uphol­stered bench, a tiny blue shop­ping bag from the Met’s gift store parked near its dain­ty, shoe­less feet.

Fil­ip­po and Marianna’s art-lov­ing rodents are ger­bils, and unlike Scanga’s art­ful­ly stuffed mod­els, theirs—9‑month-old broth­ers Pan­doro and Tiramisù—are very much alive, as Tiramisù proved when he gnawed the unseen gallery assistant’s painstak­ing­ly assem­bled card­board stool to bits under the watch­ful eye of the tiny Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring fac­sim­i­le Mar­i­an­na craft­ed for his cul­tur­al enrich­ment.

A video the cou­ple pub­lished on Red­dit, above, shows the fur­ry muse­um goers scam­per­ing under the bench­es to the tune of “The Blue Danube” and plac­ing their paws on the art­work, includ­ing an expert, ger­bil-themed forgery of Gus­tav Klimt’s gold-flecked Sym­bol­ist mas­ter­piece, The Kiss.

Not to be vul­gar, but if this muse­um has a restroom, Pan­doro and Tiramisù seem to have giv­en it a miss, an impro­pri­ety sur­pass­ing any waged by the tit­u­lar char­ac­ters of Beat­rix Potter’s Tale of Two Bad Mice.

Fil­ip­po and Mar­i­an­na accept­ed the destruc­tion of their exquis­ite­ly staged set with a cheer that sug­gests they’re not shut up for the dura­tion with a small child… just ger­bils, who can be deposit­ed back into their Habi­trail when the fun’s over.

The atten­tion to detail—the gallery tags! The lam­i­nat­ed cards in mul­ti­ple lan­guages in a wall-mount­ed holder!—captured the imag­i­na­tion of Red­dit. Users jumped Marianna’s orig­i­nal post—(Quar­an­tine, day 14. Me and my boyfriend spent the whole day set­ting up an art gallery for our ger­bil)—with sug­ges­tions of oth­er famous works to recre­ate in minia­ture and add to the col­lec­tion. Rest assured no groan-wor­thy, pun-based, ger­bil-cen­tric title was left unex­pressed.

With cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions tem­porar­i­ly shut­tered for the good of pub­lic health, many view­ers also shared their yearn­ing to get back inside favorite muse­ums. (Mar­i­an­na reports that Fil­ip­po is a muse­um work­er.)

For now, we must be patient, and live vic­ar­i­ous­ly through ger­bils ’til the long wait is over.


Via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Two Cats Keep Try­ing to Get Into a Japan­ese Art Muse­um … and Keep Get­ting Turned Away: Meet the Thwart­ed Felines, Ken-chan and Go-chan

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Like Choir! Choir! Choir!, she has been crowd­sourc­ing art in iso­la­tion, most recent­ly a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Bill Murray Explains How He Was Saved by John Prine

in Life, Music | April 7th, 2020

Judg­ing by the out­pour­ing of affec­tion in online com­ment sec­tions, Chica­go folk musi­cian John Prine (may he rest in peace) has helped a great many of his fans through tough times with his human­ist, oft-humor­ous lyrics.

Add fun­ny man Bill Mur­ray to the list.

Tap­ing a video in sup­port of The Tree of For­give­ness, Prine’s first album of new mate­r­i­al in over a decade, Mur­ray recalled a grim peri­od in which a deep funk robbed him of all enjoy­ment. Though he care­ful­ly stip­u­lates that this “bum­mer” could not be diag­nosed as clin­i­cal depres­sion, noth­ing lift­ed his spir­its, until Gonzo jour­nal­ist Dr. Hunter S. Thomp­son—whom Mur­ray embod­ied in the 1980 film, Where the Buf­fa­lo Roam—sug­gest­ed that he turn to Prine for his sense of humor.

Mur­ray took Thompson’s advice, and gave his fel­low Illi­nois­ian’s dou­ble great­est hits album, Great Days, a lis­ten.

This could have back­fired, giv­en that Great Days con­tains some of Prine’s most melancholy—and memorable—songs, from “Hel­lo in There” and “Angel from Mont­gomery” to “Sam Stone,” vot­ed the 8th sad­dest song of all time in a Rolling Stone read­ers’ poll.

But the song that left the deep­est impres­sion on Mur­ray is a sil­ly coun­try-swing num­ber “Lin­da Goes to Mars,” in which a clue­less hus­band assumes his wife’s vacant expres­sion is proof of inter­plan­e­tary trav­el rather than dis­in­ter­est.

To hear Mur­ray tell it, as he thumbs through a copy of John Prine Beyond Words, the moment was not one of gut-bust­ing hilar­i­ty, but rather one of self-aware­ness and relief, a sig­nal that the dark clouds that had been hang­ing over him would dis­perse.

A grate­ful Murray’s admi­ra­tion runs deep. As he told The Wash­ing­ton Post, when he was award­ed the Kennedy Cen­ter Mark Twain Prize for Amer­i­can Humor, he lobbied—unsuccessfully—to get Prine flown in for the cer­e­mo­ny:

I thought it would have been a nice deal because John Prine can make you laugh like no else can make you laugh.

Dit­to Prine’s dear friend, the late, great folk musi­cian, Steve Good­man, the author of “The Veg­etable Song,” “The Lin­coln Park Pirates” (about a leg­endary Chica­go tow­ing com­pa­ny), and “Go, Cubs, Go,” which Mur­ray trilled on Sat­ur­day Night Live with play­ers Dex­ter Fowler, Antho­ny Riz­zo, and David Ross short­ly before the Cub­bies won the 2016 World Series.

I just found out yes­ter­day that Lin­da goes to Mars

Every time I sit and look at pic­tures of used cars

She’ll turn on her radio and sit down in her chair

And look at me across the room as if I was­n’t there

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Some­thing, some­where, some­how took my Lin­da by the hand

And secret­ly decod­ed our sacred wed­ding band

For when the moon shines down upon our hap­py hum­ble home

Her inner space gets tor­tured by some out­er space unknown

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Now I ain’t seen no saucers ‘cept the ones upon the shelf

And if I ever seen one I’d keep it to myself

For if there’s life out there some­where beyond this life on earth

Then Lin­da must have gone out there and got her mon­ey’s worth

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I wish she would­n’t leave me here alone

Oh, my stars, my Lin­da’s gone to Mars

Well, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Yeah, I won­der if she’d bring me some­thing home

Lis­ten to a Great Days Spo­ti­fy playlist here, though nei­ther Open Cul­ture, nor Bill Mur­ray can be held account­able if you find your­self blink­ing back tears.

Bonus: Below, watch Prine and Mur­ray “swap songs and sto­ries about the ear­ly days in Chica­go cross­ing paths with the likes of John Belushi, Steve Good­man and Kris Kristof­fer­son.” Plus more.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in June 2018.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Medi­a­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Thurs­day June 28 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch the Oscar-Winning Animated Short “Hair Love”

in Animation, Life | April 7th, 2020

African-Amer­i­can hair has been mak­ing head­lines for the last few years, usu­al­ly because anoth­er black stu­dent has been deemed in vio­la­tion of the dress code for sport­ing braids, dreads, or a nat­ur­al afro.

This year’s Oscar-win­ning ani­mat­ed short, “Hair Love,” about an African-Amer­i­can dad’s attempt to stay on top of his 5‑year-old daughter’s abun­dant locks, is the sweet alter­na­tive to these upset­ting news sto­ries.

Lit­tle Zuri’s dad, Stephen, doesn’t have to bat­tle clue­less or unfair admin­is­tra­tors on his daughter’s behalf, but he does need to gain the upper hand on an adver­sary with whose ways he’s unfa­mil­iar. (His own hair is styled in tidy dread­locks.)

It’s implied that tend­ing to Zuri’s hair is not exact­ly some­thing he vol­un­teered for, and indeed we learn that the task was pre­vi­ous­ly the domain of her moth­er

In des­per­a­tion, Stephen seeks advice in the form of YouTube videos, find­ing a pletho­ra, as did film­mak­er and for­mer NFL wide receiv­er Matthew A Cher­ry, who ref­er­enced some of his actu­al inspi­ra­tions in the film, like the viral video of DJ Hines’ attempt to con­tain daugh­ter Chloe’s thick hair with a pony­tail hold­er, below.

Cher­ry raised the nec­es­sary fund­ing on Kick­starter, and com­plet­ed the film in about six weeks after post­ing a call for col­lab­o­ra­tors on Twit­ter:

Any 3D artists fol­low me? I got an Oscar wor­thy short film idea to go with this image. Get at me 

As Cher­ry points out in the trail­er for “Hair Love”’s accom­pa­ny­ing book, Zuri’s robust, kinky curls—almost a third char­ac­ter accord­ing to illus­tra­tor Vashti Har­ri­son—are a mar­velous excuse to bust stereo­types by plac­ing an involved, African-Amer­i­can dad front and cen­ter.

The tale has also won a lot of fans in the can­cer sur­vivor com­mu­ni­ty for its deft por­tray­al of the effects of Zuri’s mom’s ill­ness and recov­ery on the fam­i­ly.

Read the San Fran­cis­co Film Festival’s teach­ing guide to “Hair Love” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 66 Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed-and-Award-Win­ning Ani­mat­ed Shorts Online, Cour­tesy of the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da

Watch This Year’s Oscar-Win­ning Short The Neighbor’s Win­dow, a Sur­pris­ing Tale of Urban Voyeurism

Watch the Pio­neer­ing Films of Oscar Micheaux, America’s First Great African-Amer­i­can Film­mak­er

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join Ayun’s com­pa­ny The­ater of the Apes in New York City this month for her book-based vari­ety series, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, and the world pre­miere of Greg Kotis’ new musi­cal, I AM NOBODY. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Join Choir! Choir! Choir! for a Community Singalong in Isolation

in Creativity, Current Affairs, Life, Music | April 3rd, 2020

I love ya, and I think maybe if we sing togeth­er, well, we’d just feel a lit­tle bit bet­ter. Give it a try, okay? —Neil Dia­mond

Thus quoth singer-song­writer Neil Dia­mond on March 23, before launch­ing into his sur­pris­ing­ly stur­dy mon­ster hit, “Sweet Car­o­line,” hav­ing reworked its lyrics to pro­mote hand-wash­ing and social dis­tanc­ing to help con­trol the spread of COVID-19.

He’s not wrong about the ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fits of group singing. Dit­to the imper­a­tive to resist gath­er­ing pub­licly, or even in the homes of extend­ed fam­i­ly and close friends, until this cri­sis is in the rear view.

Choir! Choir! Choir!, an ongo­ing com­mu­ni­ty sing that’s attained glob­al renown thanks to its fre­quent tours, char­i­ta­ble work, and the sup­port of such star­ry per­son­ages as Pat­ti Smith and David Byrne, has had to put the kibosh on live group events. (Check out their 2014 sin­ga­long of Dia­mond’s “Sweet Car­o­line,” above, for a taste of the pro­ceed­ings.)

With every­one stay­ing home, founders Nobu Adil­man and Dav­eed Gold­man quick­ly imple­ment­ed a dig­i­tal work around, invit­ing fans and first-timers alike to week­ly online sing-ins.

Their next Social Dis­tan-Sing-Along is com­ing up this Sat­ur­day, April 4th at 3pm EDT, fea­tur­ing a camp­fire-themed playlist:

“The Weight”

“Blowin’ In The Wind”

“Our House”

“Leav­ing On A Jet Plane”

“Redemp­tion Song”

“Talkin Bout A Rev­o­lu­tion”

“Dust In The Wind”

“Cats In The Cra­dle”

“Wild World”

(Sad­ly, no “Titan­ic,” but per­haps that one’s more sum­mer camp than camp­fire, and these days, it’s prob­a­bly best to side­step any num­ber, no mat­ter how sil­ly, that springs from mass casu­al­ties…)

Par­tic­i­pants are instruct­ed to print a file of the song lyrics in advance and show up to the dig­i­tal camp­fire (live stream­ing on YouTube or Face­book) with a cou­ple of devices—enough to fol­low along with Adil­man and Gold­man, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly Zoom­ing in any friends you’ve pre-arranged to sing with.

(With 1000s attend­ing, one of Choir! Choir! Choir!’s usu­al joys—lift­ing one’s voice with a vast cho­rus of most­ly strangers—is a logis­ti­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ty.)

Par­tic­i­pants are also encour­aged to share footage of them­selves singing along, using the hash­tag #Nev­er­StopSing­ing—though we remind our non-per­for­mance-ori­ent­ed read­ers that this is mere­ly a sug­ges­tion.

Choir! Choir! Choir in iso­la­tion may well attract show­er Sina­tras who’d nev­er dream of open­ing their mouths at an in-per­son event.

It’s a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty for the vocal­ly shy to become part of one of the biggest choirs in his­to­ry, secure in the knowl­edge that the only peo­ple to hear them croak­ing away will be the cat, the dog, any human co-inhab­i­tants… and, oh dear, what about neigh­bors in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty?

Don’t wor­ry about the neigh­bors. In fact, prick up your ears—you may hear them singing the exact same tunes.

To get you in the mood, here are some of our favorites from Choir! Choir! Choir!’s clas­sic playlist:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ital­ians’ Night­ly Sin­ga­longs Prove That Music Soothes the Sav­age Beast of Coro­n­avirus Quar­an­tine & Self-Iso­la­tion

65,000 Fans Break Into a Sin­ga­long of Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” at a Green Day Con­cert in London’s Hyde Park

Good Med­i­cine: The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” Sung by Rob­bie Robert­son, Ringo Starr & Spe­cial Guests from Around the World

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Like Choir! Choir! Choir!, she has been crowd­sourc­ing art in iso­la­tion, most recent­ly a hasti­ly assem­bled trib­ute to the clas­sic 60s social line dance, The Madi­son. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Take a Virtual Tour of the Paris Catacombs

in History, Life, Travel | March 25th, 2020

The Paris Cat­a­combs is “one of those places,” wrote pho­tog­ra­ph­er Félix Nadar, “that every­one wants to see and no one wants to see again.” If any­one would know, Nadar would. He spent three months in and out of the under­ground city of death, with its macabre piles of skulls and cross­bones, tak­ing pho­tographs (see here) that would help turn it into an inter­na­tion­al­ly famous tourist attrac­tion. In these days of quar­an­tine, no one can see it; the site is closed until fur­ther notice. But if you’re the type of per­son who enjoys tour­ing necrop­olis­es, you can still get your fix with a vir­tu­al vis­it.

Why would any­one want to do this, espe­cial­ly dur­ing a glob­al out­break? The Cat­a­combs have attract­ed seek­ers after mor­bid curiosi­ties and spir­i­tu­al and philo­soph­i­cal truths for over two hun­dred years, through rev­o­lu­tions, mas­sacres, and plagues.

A stark, haunt­ing reminder of what Nadar called “the egal­i­tar­i­an con­fu­sion of death,” they wit­ness mute­ly, with­out euphemism, to the future we are all assured, no mat­ter our rank or posi­tion. They began as a dis­or­dered pile of bones in the late 18th cen­tu­ry, trans­ferred from over­crowd­ed ceme­ter­ies and became a place where “a Merovin­gian king remains in eter­nal silence next to those mas­sa­cred in Sep­tem­ber ‘92” dur­ing the French Rev­o­lu­tion.

Con­tem­pla­tions of death, espe­cial­ly in times of war, plague, famine, and oth­er shocks and crises, have been an inte­gral part of many cul­tur­al cop­ing mech­a­nisms, and often involve med­i­ta­tions on corpses and grave­yards. The Cat­a­combs are no dif­fer­ent, a sprawl­ing memen­to mori named after the Roman cat­a­combs, “which had fas­ci­nat­ed the pub­lic since their dis­cov­ery,” as the offi­cial site notes. Expand­ed, ren­o­vat­ed, and rebuilt dur­ing the time of Napoleon and lat­er dur­ing the exten­sive ren­o­va­tions of Paris in the mid-19th cen­tu­ry, the site was first “con­se­crat­ed as the ‘Paris Munic­i­pal Ossuary’ on April 7, 1786” and opened to the pub­lic in 1809.

It is a place that reminds us how all con­flicts end. To the “litany of roy­al and impov­er­ished dead from French his­to­ry,” writes Alli­son Meier at the Pub­lic Domain Review, Nadar added in his essay on the Cat­a­combs “the names of rev­o­lu­tion­ary vic­tims and per­pe­tra­tors like Max­im­i­lien Robe­spierre and Jean-Paul Marat.” Rumi­na­tions on the uni­ver­sal nature of death may be an odd diver­sion for some, and for oth­ers an urgent reminder to find out what mat­ters to them in life. Learn more about the fas­ci­nat­ing his­to­ry of the Paris Cat­a­combs here and begin your vir­tu­al vis­it here.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold Félix Nadar’s Pio­neer­ing Pho­tographs of the Paris Cat­a­combs (1861)

Notre Dame Cap­tured in an Ear­ly Pho­to­graph, 1838

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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