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Turkey's PM threatens theatres after actor 'humiliates' daughter
Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemns 'despotic arrogance' of intellectuals and says he will cut state funding: Report by Fiachra Gibbons, Istanbul, May 17, 2012.
Scheme for the award of fellowships to outstanding persons in the field of culture
Ministry of Culture announces its junior and senior research fellowships. The fellowships are awarded for undertaking research oriented projects. The applicant should provide evidence of his/her capabilities in undertaking the project.The Fellowships are not intended for providing training, conducting workshops, seminars or documenting memoirs/or writing autobiographies, fiction, etc
Shakespeare: Staging the World, exhibition at the British Museum, London
The British Museum is staging a major exhibition on the world of Shakespeare, in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company; opens on 19 July in London.
To see the opening video log on to http://www.britishmuseum.org/whats_on/exhibitions/shakespeare_staging_the_world.aspx
The exhibition provides a unique insight into the emerging role of London as a world city, seen through the innovative perspective of Shakespeare's plays. It also explores the pivotal role of the playhouse as a window to the world outside London, and the playwright's importance in shaping a new sense of national identity.
London as it was around 400 years ago is brought to life through contemporary performance and amazing objects drawn from the Museum's collection and across Europe. Maps, prints, drawings and paintings, arms and armour, coins, medals and other intriguing objects are all examined through the lens of Shakespeare's plays.
One of the key innovations of the period was the birth of the modern professional theatre: purpose-built playhouses and professional playwrights were a new phenomenon, with the most successful company being the Chamberlain's/King's Men at the Globe who worked alongside their house dramatist, William Shakespeare. The exhibition shows how the playhouse informed, persuaded and provoked thought on the issues of the day; how it shaped national identity, first English, then British; and how the theatre opened a window on the wider world, from Italy to Africa to America, as London's global contacts were expanding through international trade, colonisation and diplomacy.
The exhibition creates a unique dialogue between an extraordinary array of objects – from great paintings and rare manuscripts to modest, everyday items of the time – and the plays and characters that have had a richer cultural legacy than any other in the western world. Among the objects linked to Shakespeare and his works is the Ides of March coin, the gold aureus commissioned by Brutus shortly after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC; a plot in which he was a key figure and the subject of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The striking portrait of Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moroccan Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I, depicts the head of a delegation of soldiers from Barbary who came to London in 1600 on a state visit. The presence of these men had a great impact on London at the time. They were a source of fascination and of fear. El-Ouahed and his men were in the city for six months and would certainly have been known to Shakespeare: they may well have informed the character of Othello, the soldier and 'noble moor'.
The exhibition also explores the theatre-going experience at the time, which was very different to that of today. The newly built playhouses were situated in the suburbs: Bankside was an area with a dangerous and notorious reputation. The theatres needed to attract large numbers of playgoers and so performances had to appeal to a wide spectrum of society, from groundlings to courtiers. Objects excavated from the sites of the Globe and Rose theatres, such as a sucket fork for sweetmeats and the skull of a bear, illustrates the Southwark of Shakespeare's day, the cultural world inhabited by the playhouse, which rubbed shoulders with bear-baiting arenas as well as brothels and pubs.
The British Museum has collaborated with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the creative approach to the design and content of the exhibition, accentuating the connections between the objects, Shakespeare's text and performance. The Royal Shakespeare Company will produce a series of new digital interventions which will appear throughout the exhibition, allowing visitors to encounter Shakespeare's words and characters alongside the objects on display. The arrival of the Games to London in 2012 provides the opportunity to reflect on how the world came to London four centuries ago, and how Londoners perceived the world when global exchange and other aspects of modernity originated.
