Moreintelligentlife.com is the website of Intelligent Life magazine. Articles about Arts, Lifestyle, Travels, and Ideas

On February 6th, Queen Elizabeth II reaches her diamond jubilee – 60 years in the same job. Charles Nevin tracks down six others who have lasted as long ...  read more »

Even the sassiest of London theatregoers may not have heard of the Ovalhouse. Running since the late 1950s from its South London location, the theatre has kept a low profile. Instead of courting a mainstream audience, it has dedicated itself to working with the dramatically under-represented—with those that, in the West End, have little or no voice at all.

Yet the Ovalhouse’s two new artistic directors, the 28-year-old Rachel Briscoe and 29-year-old Rebecca Atkinson-Lord, are at pains to draw more attention to a theatre that has long been consigned to the margins. “People think of the Ovalhouse as the black theatre or the gay theatre or the women’s theatre,” says Atkinson-Lord. “But surely good theatre appeals to anyone.”

So it is somewhat amusing that these joint “Director of Theatre” found themselves inundated with questions about their sex when they assumed their new roles last year. It is unusual to have two female artistic directors in London, and particularly for them to be under 30. Many wondered whether the theatre would turn more dogmatically feminist. “We found ourselves justifying who we were, what we were doing, and why we wanted to work together,” says Atkinson-Lord. “But my gender has absolutely no bearing on my work. Being female is intrinsically part of who we are but it is not all we talk about.”

The theatre’s new season, entitled “Lady-Led”, wryly takes on such questions. The programme is full of plays written and directed by women. But the hope is that these productions will reach a large audience, despite the gendered conceit. These plays are crafted to speak to “feminists and people who’ve never heard of feminism,” says Briscoe.   read more »

Marie Curie, a Polish-French scientist and a pioneer in the study of radioactivity, was born 144 years ago today. She died in 1934, having succumbed to a bone-marrow disease earned after years of handling radioactive samples without protection. To celebrate the life and achievements of this rare woman, we revisit an interview we conducted with Lauren Redniss, author of "Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout" (It Books/HarperCollins, 2010). This odd and beautiful graphic biography of the two Curies—their love and scientific discoveries—was made using an archaic printing process and a typeface designed specially for the project. Historical details about their work on radioactivity are set among dreamy illustrations on luminous pages. Redniss is also a Pulitzer prize-nominated illustrator for the New York Times and a professor at the Parsons School of Design.

When did you first feel the desire to make a book about the Curies?  read more »

Mark Rylance is a god. That’s not meant in some slobbery, fan-speak sense, but more literally. In the final scene of “Jerusalem”, Jez Butterworth’s violent, comic modern pastoral that recently came home to London after a returns-only run on Broadway, Mr Rylance undergoes an extraordinary physical transformation: in the final seconds, what you see under the green arboreal light, bloodied, sweating, eyes bulging white from his sockets, is not an actor, but Pan, the god of misrule himself.
 
Usually theatre achieves its magic through trickery—misdirection, trapdoors, smoke and mirrors. But occasionally there’s something more arcane at work. In “The Way of the Actor”—a must-read for drama students since the late 1980s—a British professor of psychology called Brian Bates drew parallels between tribal shamans and the most compelling contemporary actors. With the help of hallucinogenics such as peyote, plus long sessions of repetitive drumming, stamping or clapping, these men and women would appear to change. They might “become” animal totems, ancestor spirits, gods, whatever. But it would always be something greater-than-human, something fiercely compelling that would bind together the group watching.
   read more »

In our September/October issue, a panel of Economist writers set about answering the first of our Big Questions: what is the capital of the world today? The Economist's globalisation editor, John Parker, awarded the gong to London. Others spoke up for New York, Beijing, Delhi, Singapore and Washington, DC. On our website, we launched a readers' poll. What followed was a heated discussion and impassioned defence of many cities, from the obvious to the obscure.  read more »

Africa has made a phenomenal leap in the last decade. Its economy is growing faster than that of any other continent. Foreign investment is at an all-time high; Senegal has lower borrowing costs than Ireland. The idea of a black African billionaire—once outlandish except for kleptocratic dictators—is commonplace now. At the same time an expanding African middle class (similar in size to those in India and China) is sucking in consumer goods. Poverty, famine and disease are still a problem but less so than in the late 20th century, not least thanks to advances in combating HIV and malaria.

Africa’s mood is more optimistic than at any time since the independence era of the 1960s. This appears to be a real turning point for the continent. About a third of its growth is due to the (probably temporary) rise in commodity prices. Some countries have been clever enough to use profits to build new infrastructure. The arrival of China on the scene—as investor and a low-cost builder—has accelerated this trend. Other Asian economies are following its lead, from Korea to Turkey.  

Yet factors unconnected to resources have been equally or even more important. Africans are taking a greater interest in each other. Regional economic cooperation has improved markedly—borders are easier to cross now, especially in the east. Technology helps too. Africa has 400m mobile-phone users—more than America. Such tools boost local economies, especially through mobile banking and the distribution of agricultural information.   read more »

Lust, anguish, betrayal and murder should make for a fiery night at the theatre. But sparks don’t fly until the final moments of the Metropolitan Opera’s tepid new production of “Don Giovanni”, when a burst of real flames shoot up as the philandering Don descends to hell.
 
This is the Met debut of Michael Grandage, the Tony-award-winning artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in London. His aim is to reveal the  complexities in Mozart’s dark “comic opera”, rendering the title character more than just a jovial serial seducer. But the work’s potent emotions are tamed, not stirred, in this detached, unimaginative staging.
 
Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, has invited several theatre directors to stage new productions, encouraging clear storytelling that he hopes will satisfy opera buffs while enticing newcomers. But the results have been mixed, ranging from Mary Zimmerman’s unwieldy “Sonnambula” and David McVicar’s dreary “Anna Bolena” to Bartlett Sher’s engaging productions of “Barber of Seville” and “Tales of Hoffmann.”
   read more »

Say you’ve just spent a fair bit of money on a good-looking, well-designed object that you’re rather proud of. Why would you spend even more money hiding it?

Yet for anyone who takes their iPad or iPad 2 out of the house, a case is an unfortunate necessity. Naked, this technology is alarmingly vulnerable. Although it is a mobile device that moves around a lot—on planes, on trains, passed between desks or friends—if you drop an iPad on its corner, it will probably break; scratch it, and its owner bleeds. Apple sells basic protective covers for both, which double (literally—they bend back) as screen stands. But the black rubber folio-style case for the iPad gets grubby easily and looks boringly bureaucratic; the flap-over metal “Smart Cover” for the iPad 2 is less pedestrian, but folding it up to make a stand can be like attempting bad origami. Plus it won’t save your iPad if you drop it. Which you will.

None of the alternatives is ideal, or particularly original. While prices range from £20 for a one-off, home-made case from Etsy, to £1,360 for a turquoise ostrich-leather case by Zagliani, nearly all come in one of just two designs.

The first plays variations on the theme of the pouch. Simple, slip-in, slip-out constructions, these provide basic protection and easy access. Some, like the mustard-yellow envelope-style sold by the leather specialist Thomas Lyte (£195, above), are handsome enough to double as over-size clutches. But others are just glorified washbags. And, once out of any of them, your iPad is on its own.  read more »

The coming year is a big one for Lucinda Childs, an American choreographer. The 1976 opera that cemented her career—“Einstein on the Beach”, by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson—will be going on a world tour that includes its Britain premiere as part of the London 2012 Festival. And “DANCE”, an hour-long 1979 performance of Ms Childs’s choreography, is now on at the Barbican, remastered for a digital age.

Now 71, Ms Childs recalls the “controversial” premiere of “DANCE”, a collaboration with Sol Le Witt, an artist, and Mr Glass. Many chafed at its minimalist style, viewing it as “possibly something children could do”. People walked out, unaccustomed to Mr Glass’s occasionally unforgiving music or to Ms Childs’s unconventional understanding of movement. 

But the experimental, forward-looking nature of “DANCE” has meant that it has aged fairly well (though Mr LeWitt’s black-and-white projections can feel slightly dated). The three-part performance is composed of few elements—a gauze screen at the front of the stage for Mr LeWitt’s projections and a troupe of dancers clad in white just behind. But the overall effect is dream-like, hallucinogenic, full of repeating moves and sounds. There is no narrative, something Ms Child attributes to her training under Merce Cunningham, who broke new ground in dance by stripping away the “emotional, narrative-based structure” that had previously dominated choreography.    read more »

Since the announcement in 2005 that London would host the Olympic games, the event has been greeted with a mixture of excitement, ambivalence and dread. Given the low profile of the Cultural Olympiad, an affiliated programme that began in 2008, it is easy to feel sceptical about the lasting impact of the games, culturally and architecturally. 

So the recent launch of “Winning Words” at the Globe Academy in Southwark made for a nice surprise. Sponsored by Bloomberg, with help from Arts Council England and various other donors and groups, “Winning Words” is a new poetry venture from the Forward Arts Foundation (the folks behind the Forward prize, reviewed here). An ambitious project, it includes a permanent installation in the Olympic Park, and is designed to encourage Londoners to study and create poetry. Selected works will soon be seen on electricity pylons in the East End and also, more conventionally, online, where 150 selected poems will be available for use in schools and by youth groups.

But the more tangible, and far more exciting, aspect of the project are the poetic works that have been commissioned to be permanently plastered around the Olympic Park. Five poets—Carol Ann Duffy, the poet laureate, along with Lemn Sissay, Jo Shapcott, Caroline Bird and John Burnside, who just won the Forward prize—have all responded with poems that respond to the often rocky heritage of East London.   read more »