Met Opera Taps Louisa Proske for Macbeth as Arts Council England Reports Low Child Cultural Engagement

Louisa Proske, co-founder of Heartbeat Opera in New York, will direct a new Met Opera production of Macbeth opening Tuesday, after the original director withdrew less than a year before the season began. New Met productions typically require two or more years of planning. Meanwhile, Arts Council England's new chair Dawn Airey, a former Channel 5 chief, released the council's first survey of children's cultural life, finding that in the past year 52% had visited a museum, 26% a gallery, 22% a live music event, and 32% cited cost as a barrier. Airey described the ACE office as 'quiet, a little bit subdued' and wants it to 'be loud.' In publishing, YouTuber MrBeast (515 million subscribers) and author James Patterson (425 million books sold) released a co-written novel that sold 22,646 copies in its first week, compared to Patterson's previous co-written book with Viola Davis, which sold 57,454. Separately, theatre writer Jared Harbour obtained capitalization documents for Second Stage's The Fantasticks showing investors' $1 million is booked as a 'non-recourse loan' to the nonprofit, with a 25.6% profit share equal to $1 million divided by the $3.91 million budget, raising questions about nonprofit theatre's business model. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, over 100 children auditioned for José Mateo Ballet Theatre's 38th Nutcracker, with one 7-year-old aspiring to play a rat because 'it makes you laugh a lot.'