The Verge: Sam Altman to return as CEO of OpenAI. “Sam Altman will return as CEO of OpenAI, overcoming an attempted boardroom coup that sent the company into chaos over the past several days. Former president Greg Brockman, who quit in protest of Altman’s firing, will return as well.”
New York Times: How TikTok’s Talks With Microsoft Turned Into a Soap Opera. “Pushed by President Trump, who has ordered TikTok’s U.S. operations to be sold or to cease operating, ByteDance is now discussing selling parts of TikTok’s global operations to several potential bidders. And with so many groups jumping into the talks to get a piece of any deal, all are trying to drive their own interests and agendas.”
The Stage: More than 9,000 join new Facebook group to combat racism in drama schools. “A new group has been set up to provide a safe space for drama school students and graduates to share their experiences of racism. Called Unity – Drama Schools Standing Up Against Racism, the Facebook group already has more than 9,000 members.”
The Next Web: Here’s the real tea: A primer on YouTube drama channels. “So you may have heard about a little fight going on in the YouTube community, between two beauty gurus named Tati Westbrook and James Charles. The drama tornado has engulfed aspects of the internet that aren’t even remotely related to the two, but one of the reasons may be an organized and inquisitive network of channels devoted to drama. If you’re new to the world of YouTube gossip, here’s what you need to know about these channels and what they do.”
Shakespeare’s Globe: Shakespeare’s Globe Archive: Theatres, Players & Performance Now Published Online (this link is to a PDF document). “Archives from the world-renowned Shakespeare’s Globe are now available online, as part of a collaboration with award-winning primary source publisher, Adam Matthew Digital. The archival materials in this collection offer a comprehensive insight into Sam Wanamaker’s dream reconstruction of the original 1599 Globe Theatre, as well as detailing the way in which this unique space was constructed as part of a radical theatrical experiment through which to examine the plays of William Shakespeare and others. “
University of North Carolina: Grant to Libraries Will Provide Access to Rare Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan Dramas. “The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Libraries has received a grant of $12,100 from the Pine Tree Foundation of New York. The grant will help the Library catalog and digitize a vast collection of rare Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan dramas. The collection is particularly significant because it contains approximately 2,000 ‘comedias sueltas,’ according to Elizabeth Ott, Frank Borden Hanes Curator of Rare Books at the Wilson Special Collections Library. Comedias sueltas are pamphlet-length plays printed between 1674 and 1834, Spain’s golden age of drama.”
New to me – an archive of science plays. From the About page: “The science play catalogue grew from years of being asked by colleagues for a list of my favorite science play titles. In 2007, I authored an article for Southern Theater magazine about science plays, which included a compilation of my top twenty science plays. It was at that time I began collecting science play titles in earnest. In 2015, CNU awarded me a sabbatical to support my research and cataloguing of these plays…. Current students in the Science on the Stage class have also contributed to the website by creating blog posts of individual plays as in-class assignments.”
Arizona State University: ASU Child Drama Collection extends its reach to scholars. “Arizona State University’s Child Drama Collection is the largest, most utilized and internationally renowned youth-theater repository in the world, according to university officials. It lures scholars, playwrights, performers and students from around the world to study its costumes, scripts, designs and ephemera — but the reach for one of its most prized portions has been limited to those who could journey to Hayden Library in Tempe. By the end of the year, however, a listing of the contents of the Irene Corey Collection will become accessible to everyone online.”
Los Angeles Times: Shakespeare died 401 years ago, but original scripts from his era live on in a new digital archive. “Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton and Thomas Nashe — despite the best efforts of high school and college English teachers — remain also-rans compared with William Shakespeare, whose fame keeps growing…. On Sunday, the Folger Shakespeare Library — the august institution based in Washington, D.C., that includes a research institute as well as a celebrated theater — will try again to change this. Last year, on the widely celebrated 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the library offered a digital archive of the playwright’s work. This year, on the 401st, the Folger will open a Digital Anthology of Early English Drama, which makes original scripts and visual images from 40 plays available to anyone with Internet access.” The site is live now.
A new online archive provides information on contemporary Spanish playwrights. “Contexto Teatral is a live archive of new plays by contemporary Spanish playwrights. As we expect the project to grow and include an increasing number of authors, Contexto Teatral already has over 350 plays by nearly 100 playwrights archived, most of them from Spain, but with a number of authors born abroad, mainly in Latin America.”
Wow, this is a new one on me. A retired music teacher has created a video archive of musical numbers from high school plays. “Now former Bristol students can relive their high school memories thanks to Ken Ferris, retired music teacher. Ferris has compiled an online video archive of songs from BEHS musicals from 1992 to 2002.” Obviously I don’t think you all went to Bristol, but I’m including it here because it’s so unusual. This would be a wonderful project for high school students taking classes on video production – archiving is important!
Underway: a project to digitize Orson Welles’ old radio shows. “An [Indiana University]-led preservation and digitization project, titled ‘Orson Welles on the Air,’ will reveal the truth: Original lacquer discs containing 14 of the broadcasts, as well as other supposedly lost recordings, had been secured by Indiana University Libraries’ Lilly Library, one of the nation’s premier rare book and special collection libraries.”
The Slovenian Theatre Institute has launched a digital library of Slovenian plays. The link above is just a snippet; it’s pay access.
Teachers, you might love this: The Iliad, read in its entirety, by 66 actors. “Scottish film and stage star Brian Cox is one of the readers, along with Simon Russell Beale, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Mariah Gale, and others, all British theater-trained actors who deliver stirring, often thrilling, readings of the Robert Fagles translation, the report concludes.” It’s 68 separate videos. It’ll be available until September 21, 2016.
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