The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui: a study in unnecessary subversion
Being funny is harder than most people think. Being funny on stage is even harder. And being funny in the way that German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s work often demands of his actors— in a way that uses humour first as a tool of distraction, and then to force the audience to reckon with their ow
Musings from a courtroom
They say that jurors fall into two camps; those who thrive from the start, and those who enjoy themselves eventually. There is, however, a third camp they don’t talk about. Those who don’t—and continue to not—want to be there. I fell into this third camp. A jury summons letter isn’t what m
IOTW: Calliope, Oxford’s eldest daughter
Art historian John Rolfe was walking down an eerily quiet Broad Street in 2020 when he looked up and saw something peculiar: a crumbling Muse, or rather the ghost of one, teetering atop the Clarendon Building at the corner of Broad and Catte Street. The Clarendon is one of those Oxford buildi
Do not miss A View From the Bridge
When historians, whether AI-generated or human, look back on our time, what will be the singular issue they pick out as having defined this particular era? Perhaps such attempts at a grand theory will be viewed as even more futile then than they already are today. Grand theories may be futile in his
The problem with a democratic system of culture
Decentralisation has long been an ally of democracy, divesting powerful elites and institutions to confer autonomy and opportunity to the common man. In the UK, we have never been freer, never more decentralised. We often think about this in terms of economic or political power. However, technologic
Letter to the Editor: Part of the solution
To the Editor, How refreshing to be seen! Many-a-time I have been accused of performative reading. Occasionally, I carry a novel in my back-pocket. This seems to provoke especially vehement allegations of performativity…but isn’t that the point of a paperback? One day stands out in partic
Letter to the Editor: Performance as survival
To the Editor, Ms Hagen is right: men should read without ridicule, resist anti-intellectualism, schlep tote bags stuffed with feminist literature while listening to Clairo. I agree, in the face of a rise in conservative views about gender roles, it is crucial to bridge the gap between
Icon of the Week: Ruby Duncan
For Ruby Duncan, art is not just a reflection of the world but a means of interrogating it. She speaks about curation as a place where the act of being seen is never neutral. In Ruby’s hands, exhibitions are not simply collections of work but acts of revision exposing what official histories omit.
TW: Genocide
In times of conflict, the images that reach us don’t just inform us, but play a vital role in deciding who, and what, the world chooses to remember. During the Vietnam War, widespread access to television sets brought the scenes of violence into American living rooms, eroding support for the c