Good Morning,
The Tony awards last night said a lot about where Broadway’s head is at: more reassurance than risk. Vulture handicapped the field (Vulture) — while the argument that the season has gone soft, “serving up liberal comfort food” instead of the gut punch theater does best, gets a sharp rebuttal over at AJ’s own For What it’s Worth. The four new musicals bet the form can still turn a corner (Washington Post).
Meanwhile the institution that can’t catch a break: a judge tossed the Kennedy Center’s lawsuit against a jazz musician who declined to play its holiday show (The New York Times), even as the deeper fight over its leadership and finances grinds on (The Atlantic).
Two to mark: Anthony Stewart Head, of Buffy and Ted Lasso, at 72 (The New York Times), and MOBO founder Kanya King, remembered for remaking Black British culture on a currency of “kindness and warmth” (The Guardian).
And because someone decided it needed one: the French Open now opens with a ballet, choreographed by Benjamin Millepied (The New York Times).
Lastly, my take on the Trump Administration’s decision to deny student loans to programs “This notion that the ultimate measure of American education is economic is an impoverishing one. We measure for success. If that measure is earnings then we optimize for earnings. Social value measured on an earnings scale doesn’t just get deprioritized, it doesn’t exist. But we need that social value. So we “subsidize” it, turning it into charity that can’t exist on its own. Then the conservative mindset spins those subsidies as luxuries we can’t afford, so there’s ongoing pressure to eliminate them. What began as a values debate becomes a fiscal debate argued around a measurement scale that doesn’t measure values. If you’re in the arts, this argument should sound very familiar.” Read the rest here.
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Doug
