#the west end

[brainwormcity]

This headline popped up on my phone and I just...

[merp-blerp]

So Claudia Cacace recently posted her last Be More Chill animatic and said in the pinned comment that she had wanted to stop a long time ago when people gave her bad attention; it made me think about how animatic creators at the height of the musical theater fandom were treated horribly, despite being the backbone of that fandom for the longest time. For example, I remember people used to give Mushroomie/Mushie r crap about how they were “copying” Szin’s art style, which is literally impossible. A lot of people in the fandom were clearly inspired my Szin’s artwork because she was one of the most popular artists in the fandom at the time and her art was indeed really good. You can’t “copy” an art style. And when Szin announced that she wasn’t going to make Hamilton animatics anymore “fans” were calling her a liar among other awful things because she had said in a now private (or maybe deleted) Q&A video that she had wanted to do all the songs, despite that fact that she also said in that same video that she was going to keep making Hamilton animatics as long as they were fun for her, which they has ceased to be by the time she had finished Act 1 and a bit of Act 2. It had been years, disinterest naturally happens and that’s okay. There were a lot of animatic creators who stopped for the same reason; animatic creating had stopped being fun for these artist and began to be more like a job rather than the hobby it started out as. Remember most of these creators were making these animatics alone and possibly without much if any pay from YouTube. And on top of that a lot of these creators were minors at the time! They likely had other obligations in life like school and family, not able to have time for a job, let alone a very time consuming, demanding, solo job. Not to mention all the other things these creators had to deal with, like making content in a timely manner so the algorithm didn’t abandon them, or YouTube’s shitty fair use system constantly threatening to copyright claim or strike videos and even entire channels in some cases like Mushroomie. If you were in the musical theater fandom around 2016-2019 you know how important animatics were. Pro-shots were even more rarely made than they are now (like pretty much never), and bootlegs of then-currently running shows stayed up online for only a few days or weeks if you were lucky, so a lot of fans had no way of legally seeing the show(s), and sometimes not even illegally. A lot of people who loved these musicals would love a show for it’s music, but had no clue what the full plot was out of a lack of being able to access the show in an affordable way, affordability still being an issue with Broadway today. So animatics were very vital to people getting at least an idea of how these shows visually looked and an opportunity for artist to do something they loved. This was how people got to see their favorite show in away that YouTube couldn’t (fairly) take down. Quite noticeably, when these animatic creators almost collectively stopped making animatics for these musicals or slowed down around 2019, the fandom fizzled out as well, or at least changed. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t dead like some believe in my opinion, but it’s definitely different. In one way, now that a lot of the most popular shows from this time and others have some kind of pro-shot or shitty movie adaptation, and YouTube being a lot more lose with bootlegs then they used to be, animatics aren’t as vital, but their importance shouldn’t be something to sneeze at and it blows that these animatic creators weren’t treated with the utmost respect they deserved at the height of their popularity. I know I’m pulling an old issue out of the grave and this issue is essential gone, with animatics being made at a less frequent rate than they were at the time, but I’ve never seen this talked about in length. If any animatic creators, currently active or not, are reading this, I hope you continue to enjoy you creations and that people respect you as they should.

[quadruple-a]

I don’t care what excuses he gave you, you did not outlive THE FREAKING PHANTOM OF THE FREAKING OPERA to be treated like this

Dump. Him.

[totallyhussein-blog]

A Jewish family story speaks about a lesser-known Iraq

The Mother of Kamal opens in Highgate, London, after a sell-out run last year! The Mother of Kamal is being performed at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate from 19 – 28 January. Are you going to see it?

It's 1948 in the slums of Baghdad. A working-class Jewish mother finds her two sons arrested by the Secret Police. Inexplicably, one is imprisoned while the other is set free. Um-Kamal is reluctantly drawn into the orbit of the Communist Party, risking all to save her teenage sons and hold her rapidly fragmenting family together.

The play was not written to suggest easy solutions to complex issues. But it does tell, almost allegorically, the story of an Iraq that many people will not have known existed. Prior to 1935, the different ethnicities and religions that made up Baghdad had coexisted without significant conflict, though by the 1940s things had begun to shift.

As Um-Kamal and her sons struggle to navigate rising oppression, it is the diverse community around them which comes together to oppose the threats of fascist mobs and arbitrary bureaucratic injustices. And when government thugs looking for trouble come, it is their Muslim friends who shield Um-Kamal and her family.

[drrav3nb]

So I just found out that Lloyd Owen played Frank Farmer in The Bodyguard Musical at the West End in 2012 and now I’m obsessed😍 Like if anyone knows if they filmed this for DVD or streaming please let me know because I’d love to watch this😭

[songbirdieart]

I know that the musical theater fandom has kinda moved on at this point, but personally have not moved on from Bad Cinderella and the fact that it had GENUINE POTENTIAL no, no listen, look at me, don’t run away—

[haxanbroker]

No 9. Soho, London, March 2013.

[himbos-hotline]

What date is your Bonnie and Clyde audio from?

If I remeber correctly it was the 3 of may of this year

[witchywitchy]

Keep talking about Palestine!

[hack-saw2004]

TWO HOURS AGO: an incredible photo taken by a ut austin student capturing something deeply poetic in my opinion, a line of state troopers eagerly waiting to arrest student protesters standing just behind a sign that reads "what starts here changes the world. its starts with you and what you do each day."

[sayruq]

Palestinians in the West Bank tearing down the apartheid wall.

Credit to @caniscathexis for showing me this

[deulalune]

Bethlehem, Palestine.

Usually there is a festive parade to celebrate Christmas.

But today it is a silent march for the lives lost in Gaza.

20,000K+ dead. Countless under the rubble and so many more injured.

[mightydyke]

I love when fiction makes the audience feel guilty about their role as the audience. When something fucked up is treated as a joke but later it's recognised how fucked up it was and the audience feels guilty for finding it funny. When a character breaks the fourth wall to plead for help, and you can't do anything so you just watch. And you know that the characters pain isn't real, but they're begging for help and you're not helping because their suffering is entertainment for you

[because--palestine]

"what does international law mean for Palestinian children in Gaza today? It has protected neither them nor their parents. It has not protected their families or communities, it has not protected their lives or limbs, it has not protected their hopes or homes. We are a proud and resilient people that has endured more than its share of agony.

It is so painful to be Palestinian today. "

Today at the international court of justice hearing on Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories, Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, held back tears as he appealed to the judges to uphold international law in the Palestinian territories and help secure a two-state solution 'in which the two-states live side by side in peace and security'.

[intersectionalpraxis]

Not just thousands of Palestinian children, but tens of thousands of Palestinian youths, men, women, and the elderly. 5% of Gaza's population has been either severely disabled/injured, has gone missing, or has been genocided. From destroying orchards and farms, to the destruction of Gaza Infrastructure to the point where it has collapsed in many spaces -especially their medical complexes, to the complete lack of access to fresh and clean water. Israhell is also still starving Palestinians -is still committing war crimes, and now this? The zionists are continuing their illegal settler-colonial project full steam ahead apparently, and it's beyond horrific.

[anxiouslytrekking]

I saw so much theatre in London ! The shows were all amazing in their own ways. Standouts were Comedy of Errors and A Little Life

Photo 1: A Midsummer's Night Dream (The Globe)

Photos 2 & 3: A Comedy of Errors (The Globe)

Photo 4: The Tempest (Regents Park Open Air Theatre)

Photo 5: Moulin Rouge (Picadilly Theatre)

Photos 6 & 7: A Little Life (The Savoy Theatre) -- I'm definitely sad we didn't wait to see if any of the actors would come out to do signings/chat. We were told they wouldn't come out between the matinee and the evening show, so my friend and I left. I also had a solid headache (there are some strong strobe lights in the show!!) and just couldn't face waiting.