Free Republic

Jill Rorem, like many Americans, had made some special plans for the holidays. The Chicago native, whose legal work often brings her to Washington, D.C., was finally going to get to see the nation's capital with her arts-obsessed kids. "I have very nerdy daughters, and they're super cool. Like, my oldest kid was Andy Warhol for Halloween," Rorem says. So they'd planned a grand tour of the Smithsonian museums, from the National Gallery of Art to the National Portrait Gallery, maybe even the zoo if she could convince her husband. "They would have soaked it up. I always love watching...

Some students at Fort Hays State University (FHSU) in Kansas say a school-sponsored operetta production is not only “racist,” but also rife with “cultural appropriation.” FHSU Music and Theatre describes its production of The Mikado as “a fun burlesque romp about the whimsy of love” on its Facebook page. According to the operetta’s description, the play takes place “in a mythical Japan,” where the main character “has been appointed Lord High Executioner and must find someone to execute before the arrival of the ruling Mikado.”

<p>The left has been at war against America for decades. The right represents those of us who favor individual freedom and capitalism — and the left are those who want government controls and socialism.</p> <p>Political violence became an essential and successful means of leftist warfare in the 60’s, the decade of destruction. The success of the violent “student rebellion” in 1964 and the so-called Free Speech Movement has set the table for the left’s warmongering and treason. It was clear from the outset that the “student revolution” violently ushered in at Berkeley in the mid-sixties would come to this. The left is evil, and they mean to destroy our way of life, our freedom and us. It took decades to norm their anti-Americanism, their hatred of freedom and individual rights but they have reached their tipping point. And the long beaten and battered among us have had it.</p>

Please join me and contacting "The Public Theater" of NYC and voicing our opinions of their latest disgraceful, treasonous play. This modern day adaptation substitutes President of the United States Donald Trump for Julius Caesar. The distinguished POTUS is then knifed down on stage to cheers from the brainwashed maniacs who actually pay to see these sodomites frolic around like fairies. Here are the contacts from their website: https://www.publictheater.org/Contact-Us/ By Phone General Info: 212.539.8500 Members and Summer Supporters: 212.967.7555 Partners: 212.539.8734 Taub Box Office: 212.967.7555 (10:00 AM to 7:00 PM Mon. - Sat., 12:00 PM to 6:00 PM Sun.) *The...

Donald Trump has an idea about how to make art great again – by tapping ‘Rocky’ to head the National Endowment for the Arts. DailyMail.com is reporting that Stallone is the first name Trump has floated for the top arts position. Sylvester Stallone, known for his roles as Rocky Balboa and Rambo, is reportedly excited by the idea, though the job has not been formally offered to him yet.

Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award-winning Broadway musical, has faced criticism for an open casting call seeking only “non-white” actors. The hip-hop musical, which has been praised by Michelle Obama and which won a Grammy, features a diverse cast that reimagines the origin story of founding father Alexander Hamilton. The majority of the cast is multiethnic as well: African Americans play Aaron Burr, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, while a Chinese American portrays Hamilton’s wife, Eliza. Miranda, the show’s creator, is of Puerto Rican ancestry.

Four weeks ago, Big Hollywood posted audio of a conference call in which Obama administration officials asked "grant recipients to plug Barack Obama’s domestic agenda." At least six federal laws and regulations were violated when then–NEA communications director Yosi Sergant and White House Office of Public Engagement deputy director Buffy Wicks tried twisting the arms of artists and arts groups interested in getting federal arts grants to produce government propaganda. To protect the scandal from expanding further, the White House threw Sergant under the bus, denied that they were involved issued new guidelines for the NEA and promised that it...

Considering the Freedom Center’s aggressive political work, poetry may not be something one would expect to find as part of its intellectual arsenal. But as many conservative writers such as Andrew Klavan and myself have noted for years, reclaiming America means reclaiming the culture, and that means engaging in the arts. As Finch writes in his introduction, “[I]f as a people, and a nation, we can return to something lost, recovering something from our culture that has been torn, then it can only happen through art.” The art of Finding Home is Michael Finch’s deeply personal contribution to the culture...

As I’ve said before, I love Detroit. Born and raised there to parents who were born and raised there, and went to college at Wayne State. It’s an amazing place. I passionately want to see Detroit revitalized. But part of loving something means being honest about it, and Detroit is a mess. To save the city, to really save it and get it out of the mess it’s currently it means making sacrifices. That's why the recently announced $330 deal to "save Detroit's art" and fund pensions is so disappointing. It has nothing to do with Detroit's long-term viability and...

I went to a lecture recently presented by the Smithsonian. The subject of the talk was Jack Kerouac’s Francophone roots, and I was expecting lots of intellectual wanna-be Beatniks. Instead I was surrounded by a roomful of typical old lib academics. It felt as though I were living inside of NPR. You know the type: the women are skeletal from not eating meat and from biking too much and have salt and pepper hair which they cut when they decided they hated men and also decided to look like one. They prefer the unkempt, “natural” look to actually bothering to...

CAREFREE, Ariz. – Some parents of students at Cactus Shadows High School are outraged over a play that has students acting out sexual encounters with a goat, and using vulgar sexual expressions. Other parents of students in teacher Andrew Cupo’s advanced drama class believe the concerns are overblown, and resent parents who questioned their children about the sexually explicit play without their permission. Parents attended the governing board meeting for the Cave Creek Unified School District Tuesday and shared about two hours of public comment on the play “The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?” by Edward Albee, which revolves around...

WASHINGTON, September 24 – Gay rights protestors who raised their voices and disrupted the start of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s Russia-centric opening night gala on Monday were singing victory on Tuesday, and planning new ways to pressure high-profile Russian performers to speak out against their country’s controversial legislation on homosexuality. “As we continue to press Russian artists who come to the US, and as we continue to pressure Russian public figures who come to the US, I think we will begin to see folks in Russia begin to question the wisdom of this law they have passed,” said Duncan...

Do you remember the most Homeric of world trade negotiations, called the Uruguay round, which took place between 1986 and 1994? I was a teenager then and I remember that round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) vividly. I had taken to reading the austere Le Monde every day and remember the uncouth Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association in Hollywood, who particularly despised European film directors for pleading with their governments to exclude cinema, and the arts in general, from the negotiations. Valenti roared back: "Culture is like chewing-gum, a product like any other."...

<p>NEW YORK The seemingly unstoppable hit "The Book of Mormon" has broken another record — this time on the other side of the Atlantic.</p> <p>The quirky, profane musical opened Thursday night to some critical bashing, but the next day earned the highest one-day gross in London theater history.</p>

Here is a thing it is difficult to remember in the midst of its box office tidal wave: Les Misérables owes its birth to a debate over public arts funding. We think of blockbusters as antithetical to the high arts that public funding might typically support, but in Les Miz’s case at least, the relationship was symbiotic. Some might say parasitic, of course, but the story reveals that we don’t quite know who was leeching off of who. Les Misérables was originally staged, in 1985, under the auspices of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a large portion of whose budget was...

Immediately after President Obama took office, his Hollywood benefactors clamored for the creation of a "Secretary of Culture." Tinseltown was disappointed with the administration's crony arts czar choice (Chicago lawyer Kareem Dale), but left-wing artists and entertainers have now been mollified. Instead of one government-supported arts czar, the White House has designated an entire herd of them. On Tuesday, as part of Obama's "Winning the Future" initiative, the president designated members of the liberal activist group Creative Coalition as official "America's Champions of Change for the Arts." This is the latest in a series of "public engagement" efforts overseen by...

The profane and hysterical "The Book of Mormon" took home nine Tony Awards on Sunday including the prize for best musical, a considerable achievement for a pair of first-time Broadway playwrights known more for their raunchy cartoons featuring potty-mouthed kids. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of the Emmy Award-winning "South Park," found a kindred soul in Robert Lopez, who co-wrote the Tony-winning "Avenue Q," and all three found themselves with plenty of awards when they collaborated to gently mock Mormons and send-up Broadway itself. Collecting the best musical prize, a subdued Parker, who tied Josh Logan of "South Pacific"...

Iraq has officially become like Iran and Saudi Arabia. It is now a country that bans music, theater and alcohol, a country that I can call the New Islamic Republic of Iraq. What a tragedy! Why don’t they call it “banning life”? Is that art?! Last week, the Iraqi government shut down social clubs that serve alcohol in Baghdad, enraging the educated class who demonstrated against the extreme Islamic-inspired order. Today, Iraqis woke up to hear a far worse order; the Iraqi Ministry of Education has banned theater and music classes in Baghdad's Fine Arts Institute, and ordered the removal...

FULL TITLE: Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts The federally funded National Portrait Gallery, one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution, is currently showing an exhibition that features images of an ant-covered Jesus, male genitals, naked brothers kissing, men in chains, Ellen DeGeneres grabbing her breasts, and a painting the Smithsonian itself describes in the show's catalog as "homoerotic." “This is an exhibition that displays masterpieces of American portraiture and we wanted to illustrate how questions of biography and identity went into the making of images that are canonical,”...

And, the play is off again. We really shouldn't be surprised at this point, but a controversial play that depicts Jesus Christ as a gay man is once again canceled. We reported Thursday that the play, Corpus Christi, was back on and was going to be held on a Fort Worth stage. The play had originally been scheduled to play at Stephenville's Tarleton State University, where student director John Jordan Otte attends school. The school later rescheduled and then canceled the play over safety concerns. On Thursday, Adam Adolfo, executive director of the Rose Marine Theater, offered the theater free...