Monday, July 29, 2013
In 2011, the Boston Globe characterized the Lowell Folk Festival as "a celebration of diversity." This year, the floundering newspaper isn't interested in celebrating anything but itself.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:50PMWednesday, July 24, 2013
Surely the lesson of "Pygmalion" is that Eliza should never look back. She doesn't need to.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:35PM"The Missing Year of Juan Salvatierra" is a compelling celebration of art as a force of nature, a fragile yet indomitable demand for possibility despite the constraints of a torpid existence.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:06AMThursday, July 18, 2013
Efforts to ensure that arts education is a significant part of our schools is not the kind of glamorous activity that prys dollars out of the wallets of donors or drums up tourism.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:49AMTuesday, July 16, 2013
The Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's production of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" is spunky and engaging -- but the play is spun in one direction, away from its weird edginess.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:34PMMonday, July 8, 2013
Nabokov will become much more seriously playful about extinction and the nature of love in the increasingly complex fables to come. "The Tragedy of Mr. Morn" is his initial earnest fairy tal…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:08AMWednesday, June 26, 2013
Dan Kennedy could have written a book that extols the "Huffington Post," WGBH, or Patch as the future of serious community journalism. He doesn't, which means that he is on the side of the a…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:55AMWednesday, June 5, 2013
It turns out that budding arts writers are anxious to learn how to master the demanding nuts and bolts of reviewing, especially given how few examples of first-rate criticism can be found in…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:03PMWednesday, May 22, 2013
Come celebrate the music of Sun Ra: legendary jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet, theatrical ringmaster, and lyricist of the extra terrestrial.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:13AMMonday, May 20, 2013
Mayer's report deals with David Koch throwing his weight around at WNET and PBS. Unfortunately, she does not talk about whether Koch's powerful presence has influenced WGBH.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 05:02PMFriday, May 17, 2013
Deadpan sarcasm perfectly pitched, absurdity of target (and publisher) punctured with a minimum of muss and fuss.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:44AMTuesday, May 14, 2013
Any American arts critic worth his or her salt is part of a bohemian fringe, is aware of the political resonance of their reviews, and is dedicated to sparking serious dialogue about arts an…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:43PMSaturday, May 11, 2013
The Zeitgeist Stage Company provocatively lives up to its name by taking audiences into the netherworld of horrific violence via a powerful production of Simon Stephens' drama "Punk Rock."
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:25PMThursday, May 9, 2013
Something emotional (perhaps even passionate) whirls underneath the well-worn modernist pieties of "Old-Fashioned Prostitutes," though not to the point of disrupting the daffy routine.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:01PMFriday, May 3, 2013
Criticism is vital to our time because it is a form of witnessing, testimony to the possibility that the richness and joy of the arts can be articulated in ways that invite intellectual cont…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:31PMTuesday, April 30, 2013
Susanne M. Sklar's study is the best exploration of William Blake's miraculously bewildering masterpiece that I know of — thoughtful, scholarly, imaginative, and supremely sympathetic to t…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:30AMSaturday, April 27, 2013
A system in which no one takes responsibility for editorial decisions works out great for the inside gamers, like Nathaniel Rich.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 09:39AMWednesday, April 24, 2013
Nowhere do I say in the piece that The Arts Fuse is all good and everyone else is all bad.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:19PMMonday, April 22, 2013
According to our docile mainstream media, Boston enjoys a perpetual Renaissance -- the merchandise in the cultural window is always worth buying. And that predictability makes for very borin…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:43AMWednesday, April 17, 2013
Ballet program administrators in Cuba will be happy I'm telling the true story in "Secundaria," the one they're not allowed to tell themselves.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 04:02PMMonday, April 15, 2013
Recent changes in Boston's media landscape do not bode well for substantial coverage of the arts. What do those in the arts world think about what is happening?
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:36PMMr. Selfridge drives me nuts because the storyline, the rise of a mercantile empire, calls for edgy Darwinian conflict rather than paternal benevolence sprinkled with layers of powered soa…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:29AMSaturday, April 6, 2013
All is not well with the classical music scene in Boston. Boston's Church of St. John the Evangelist has pulled funding from its Wednesday Concert Series.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 12:26AMMonday, April 1, 2013
If we are not diligent in maintaining high editorial standards, arts coverage will morph into misshapen forms of infotainment and advertising. Once those monstrosities are set in profitable …
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:42PMFriday, March 29, 2013
"There is a difference between blood and guts, as celebrated in the current vogue of horror-slasher flicks, and the capacity of the darkest of the Grimms’ tales to pierce the thin skin of …
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:17AMMonday, March 25, 2013
With your help, The Arts Fuse will launch its first-ever advertising campaign atop taxi cabs this spring. We want to encourage Greater Boston's arts and cultural communities to see the artsf…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 08:20AMSunday, March 10, 2013
"Clybourne Park" was expressly written to be in conversation with Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." The former gives us a new perspective — actually new perspectives -- on the la…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 10:38AMSaturday, March 2, 2013
Both authors generate humor out of the casual inhumanity of the bourgeoise, dramatizing how the farce of middle class success distorts its victors and victims.
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 02:53PMMonday, February 18, 2013
Unlike fellow apostate (and friend) Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne didn't have the chutzpah to be a proto-existentialist -- for him, it was better to cling to questionable moral pietie…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 11:33AMWednesday, February 6, 2013
"As a white atheist male I am told it is none of my business to deal with what‘s going on in the so-called de-colonized societies enforcing their religious laws on their citizens." -- Josh…
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 06:44PMMonday, February 4, 2013
"What Sherwood Anderson knew and understood was the nature of inarticulate lives and what people do when they’re in the grip of strong feelings and words fail them."
SOURCE: The Arts Fuse at 03:13PM 
