If angels are good and devils are evil, the theatre and film director remembers learning, then the djinn is something in between. As a child, she asked her grandmother what that really meant. It means, she was told, that bad things happen to good people.
What the book does is capture an irrepressible intimacy that often goes unseen in the retelling of rave culture. Vinca's photographs of Big Nick reading to the kids, Harry cooking dinner or Carol trying to sort out the living room are perhaps her most radical. They describe the reparative gestures that went on behind the scenes that cultivated a sense of unity, interdependence and belonging within the group.
This week's episode, "Our History," a flashback to 1702 and Sarah Westcott Warren's arrival in Widow's Bay, provides some clarity. It seems obvious now that the man with the long hair at the beginning of "What to Expect on Your Trip" is Richard Warren, portrayed by Hamish Linklater, and that what we witnessed was his arrival on the island and his discovery of the funnest fungi in fungi history.
“I love attention,” he says of going on tour. “I love going on stage and I love people applauding, love people laughing.” But reading out loud isn't just about adoration. Sedaris says he's always listening for reactions from the crowd and tweaking his work in response. “The audience is my first editor,” he says. “When they cough, they tell me that I need to cut whatever it is that I'm reading. Of course, when they laugh, that's fantastic. But I don't mind a groan. A collective groan is fine with me.”
Poetry may not be the best response to aerial bombardment, but for many Palestinians it has become a line of defence amid the rubble and ongoing killings in Gaza. Poetry keeps hope alive. Even in the darkest moments, Palestinian poetry continues to imagine a future, Nazmi al-Masri, professor of languages at the Islamic University of Gaza, says at an online poetry event held by his students. Poetry gives people a language to express collective grief, he says.
Poetry therapy is often used nowadays in mental health settings for healing and growth. Patients read and write poetry to find new ways of being mindful or relaxed. Poetry can point to the work they can do on themselves. Poetry can open them to new ways of coping. A poem can lead safely into realms of the unconscious that might be frightening ordinarily. Poems open the imagination to see alternatives to the status quo or to chronic suffering. In fact, every poem takes us into a parallel universe.
Even in my begrudging tenure, I couldn't discount the distinct sense of community wrought by summer camp: the belonging that comes from being outside, unplugged, semi-unregulated, among perfect strangers. A handful of Hudson Valley properties are now selling that same feeling with one significant upgrade: You don't have to share a bunk.
Derek Jacobi is chatting to the photographer in the living room. His voice is unmistakeable rich, buttered, every sentence beautifully parsed and phrased. I'm in the kitchen with his husband, Richard Clifford, who is making coffee. He tells me they have been together 47 years. We met when I was 22 and he was 39. I'm a child snatcher, guffaws Jacobi from the lounge.
Naturalistic acting is a must in the tiny Southeast Portland space, where the 30-plus audience members sit so close to the stage that one false, blatantly theatrical note could spoil the whole show. Instead, director Jonathan Hoonhout and his actors hold us close to this emotional story set in Pine City, Minnesota, where a 20-year high school reunion is taking place at the 100-year-old lakeside pavilion.
“Hey mate, what's your name? What are you here to study? Cool, cool. Fancy a drink?” Ben was an archetype. He was an artsy, romantic sort who wore loose knitwear and an Alibaba scarf he'd bought from a souk in Morocco. Authentically Bedouin, handmad e.
Last year, at the age of 35, I decided it was time to grow up and get my driver's licence. I had considered it before, but it had never stuck. As a teenager, I thought driving was scary and significantly less cool than sitting on the bus, listening to the same eight songs on my MP3 player. As a news reporter in my 20s, not driving was inconvenient to both me and my editors, but so was spending days off learning how to parallel park.
Nearby were manuscripts of nine symphonies that Mozart wrote within two years, in his late teens. Bettany snapped photos. "My son's a composer"-Stellan Connelly Bettany, his older child with the actress Jennifer Connelly, is at the Royal College of Music-"and he's only written one symphony this year!"
What's the best gift you ever received? Honestly, probably a Chucky doll. It was an authentic Chucky doll from Child's Play 2. My girlfriend at the time gave it to me for Christmas or my birthday, like two years ago? I always wanted one of those stupid things, and I got it. I don't know how she found it. I saw those films in the 90s. I probably shouldn't have, but my mom was a horror fan and she likes weird movies, so she always freaked me out when I was a kid.
It was the first time Pinto was enthralled by a mushroom — the American yellow fly agaric, a poisonous fungus that is relatively common where Pinto lives in Massachusetts. It forced me down on my knees to examine it further, because it didn't look real, Pinto, a naturalist and writer, said. It looked like it was from another dimension. On that day in 2013, she captured the mushroom from dozens of angles on her phone.
The earth's cool breath is the first thing that hits me. Scented with clove and cinnamon, it catches my senses by surprise in the dim, while a vast soil sculpture emerges around me as if from a dream, just as the artist intended. I'm contained within its mammoth, terraced walls of reddish soil and struck by the silence, the peace felt in being held by nothing but earth.
When Lauren Elkin was a child, she took lessons with a voice teacher in Northport, Long Island, who would get her to perform in front of a mirror. Singing songs from the Italian classical repertoire, Elkin who was a soprano was required to smile and lift up her eyebrows as she sang since it helps with placement. She was told her breathing should come not from the chest but the diaphragm, and that she must smooth over the vocal break, which is where the chest voice changes into the head voice.
“There's been a common misconception that I just gave up my child, when that couldn't be farther from the truth,” she told Jay Shetty on his podcast, On Purpose With Jay Shetty. “I hope it's a little clearer.” While battling postpartum depression and addiction, Panettiere gave full custody of daughter Kaya to her father, Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko. But Paniettiere has always been a presence in Kaya's life. “I have an incredible relationship with her,” she said. “I travel [to see her] as much as I can. We have a really intense, incredible bond, and I'm very grateful for that.”
In March 2023, she noted in her diary that potential acting jobs were few and far between, if at all really. She rarely heard from her agent, and she didn't want to get in touch with him just to hear how different the business has become, how they just aren't looking for a woman my age, with my stereotyped abilities. As an actor, and one who had been particularly typecast, she was used to rejection, she wrote, but this is getting a little scary.
On the train to Shibuya, the woman next to me reached into her bag to find her phone and knocked a palm-sized, red heart-shaped gadget onto the floor. She picked it up hastily, and I saw that it was a hairbrush. So, I did the unthinkable in a society where people generally don't speak to each other on the train, and asked when it was. She showed me with a few quick strokes through her lengths and fringe, and I watched as, instantly, her hair snapped back into place and smoothed out.
Shireen's killing was meant to scare Palestinians into silence. Instead, it has inspired many young Palestinians to speak up. I can't remember a time in my childhood when I didn't hear Shireen Abu Akleh's voice. She was one of the few constants in our ever-shifting landscape, an icon that anchored the Palestinian cause firmly in the Arab conscience.
He co-founded, with Michael Bogdanov, the English Shakespeare Company. He toured the world with one-man shows on Shakespeare and Chekhov. He directed here and abroad and wrote 10 books full of practical wisdom. On top of all that, he was witty and delightful company. His acting career falls into distinctive phases. He spent much of the 1960s and 70s with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where many performances stand out.
