#i can testify that it's ad free and offline and great!

[newyorktheater]

Mica Hastings as Flavia, the teacher who spouts dictator propaganda in her classroom

the cast waiting to begin performance

Charlie Wood as a member of the secret police

Phil Carroll as the Vampire

Yibin (Bill) Wang as Granny

Andrew Omar Crisol as a corrupt angel

Charlie Wood as a compromised priest

a doctor and a ghost embrace, although the actors are many miles apart

the wedding brawl

one of the scene titles

One of reportedly 125 custom-designed Zoom backgrounds used in the Mad Forest production

an example of when the show suddenly went offline, and we were instructed to refresh

Bard’s splendidly glitchy production of “Mad Forest,” Caryl Churchill’s fascinating avant-garde drama about the 1989 Romanian Revolution, is the first live play I’ve seen since the shutdown that attempts a full staging via Zoom. Rather than just reading the stage directions, the twelve actors enact them – a mother slaps her son; friends share a piece of chocolate; a couple hug one another; the members of a wedding party get into a massive group brawl — although each of the actors, all undergraduates at Bard, are performing  remotely from locations across the country where they are sheltering. Presented live and free last night through Theatre for a New Audience in collaboration with Fisher Center at Bard (with two more live performances scheduled for Sunday at 5, and Wednesday at 3), the show was a revelation, and something of a revolution itself, suggesting new paths forward for online theater. This is not to say everything went smoothly; quite the opposite. The interactions were often awkward, the picture grainy, and the transmission twitchy; indeed, several times the picture froze, and, following instructions from TFANA in the chat room off to the right of the screen, I had to refresh my computer just to get the show back underway. But this “Mad Forest” worked – and not despite these imperfections, but in some measure because of them. The reliance on undergraduates feels inspired, because it’s so fitting. The playwright herself, along with original director Mark Wing-Davey, enlisted a group of students from the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, to accompany them on a fact-finding mission with students from Romania,  just months after the uprising in December, 1989, which toppled the country’s long-time dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. “Emotions in Bucharest were still raw,” Churchill has written, “and the Romanian students and the other people we met helped us to understand what Romania had been like under Ceaușescu, as well as what happened in December and what was happening while we were there. We learned far more in a short time than anyone could have done alone, and the company’s intense involvement made it possible to write the play.” The London students put on the first production of the play at their school in June, 1990. It was produced in New York by the New York Theatre Workshop in 1991 (with a cast that included future familiar actors Calista Flockhart, Tim Nelson and Jake Weber), which transferred to Manhattan Theatre Club the following year. Named after a forest in Bucharest that was notoriously impenetrable to foreigners, “Mad Forest” is divided into three acts – the stifled, upside-down life in Romania under Ceaușescu; the violent, confusing uprising of December, 1989 which resulted in the dictator’s execution; celebratory, anxious, uncertain life in the weeks afterward. The key to understanding Churchill’s approach – as well as that of Ashley Tata, who directs the current production – may be in a joke that the character Ianoș (Lily Goldman) tells about Ceaușescu, although never mentioning the dictator’s name; she just says “he” (and everybody knows who she means; there is no other “he” during Ceaușescu’s reign.) He dies and goes to Heaven, where God goes to him and says “I hear you think you’re better than me.” “Yes I am.” He asks him who made the earth and the stars and the people and the trees. One by one, he answers “You did.” ‘Then how can you possibly be greater than me?’ And he says, ‘All these things, what did you make them from?’ And God said, ‘Chaos, I made it all out of Chaos.’ ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I made chaos.’” “Mad Forest” helps us feel what it was like to live under such a man in an impressive range of scenes. In Act I, while the main characters, members of two different families, come into focus, the scenes are slow-moving and often largely silent, as if people are afraid to speak or even to move.  Those who do speak the most are tools of the regime. Flavia Antonescu, a teacher (Mica Hastings), drones on in her classroom about how “this great son of the nation” is “everything in the country that is most durable and harmonious.” In the next scene, her son Radu Antonescu (Tim Halvorsen), while waiting in a long line to buy food, whispers “Down with Ceaușescu.” (What we see on screen are multiple images just of people’s feet on the line, as if even the camera were afraid to show anybody’s face.)  In one chilling scene, a member of the Securitate, the secret police, (Charlie Wood) interrogates electrician Bogdan Vladu (Phil Carroll) because his daughter Lucia (Ali Kane) is planning to marry an American.

Act II, by contrast, is a dizzying succession of quick-hit, intercut documentary-like accounts — by a doctor and a student and a driver of a bulldozer and a member of Securitate — about what they saw during the days of the uprising, and what they did or didn’t do. But throughout “Mad Forest,” there are also fanciful scenes  —  between a compromised priest and an even more compromised angel, between a doctor and a dead patient, and between a needy dog and a bored vampire.

The actors, who portray up to seven characters each, certainly meet the demands of their roles, which, given the circumstances, go beyond what’s usually expected. They were each reportedly mailed the props, costumes, earbuds, lighting equipment, and green screens and worked to coordinate their lines of vision to help create the illusion of characters sharing a space.  But this is the director’s show, and it’s trailblazing.

This is not to say I agree with every choice the director makes;  I felt there too much artsy movement and loud music in Act II, which distracted from the details of the accounts, and detracted from their power.

But Tata’s direction, in conjunction with the technical innovations, doesn’t just show what Zoom theater is capable of.  It enhances Churchill’s play in unexpected ways. The grainy dull transmission reproduces the effects of a bad television broadcast — just the sort of TV that we can imagine the Romanians had to put up with. And, in case our imagination doesn’t reach that far back in time and place, there is a note from the director in the program to help it along: “….television and the amateur camcorder fundamentally shaped the message of the Romanian Revolution. State-run, regularly televised addresses provide the platform of choice for dictators, including the Ceausescu. Churchill’s play narrates the revolutionaries’ early action of occupying the television station. They opened the doors so citizens — victims of the regime — could testify against a government whose policies had silenced them for decades. For days ordinary Romanians delivered extemporaneous monologues in a kind of ad hoc truth and reconciliation commission. Technology was foregrounded as a tool to unify and amplify the shared experiences of these individuals…”

Each twitch of Zoom felt deliberate, even when it clearly wasn’t. The accompanying chat room helped make this play. At one point, two of my fellow audience members had this exchange about the need to refresh:

First theatergoer: I’ve left and come back at least 6 times and still have problems

Second theatergoer: I’ve had relationships like that

That response was a joke, but to me it speaks to our relationship as well with “Mad Forest.” Every time I had to refresh, I felt Zoom was a tool that unified and amplified the shared experiences of the community. Two communities — the people in Romania three decades ago, and the many of us stuck home now, relying on screens for our theater.

Mad Forest: A Play from Romania Written by Caryl Churchill Directed by Ashley Tata Scenic Design by Afsoon Pajoufar, costume design by Ásta Bennie Hostetter, lighting design by Abigail Hoke-Brady, compositions and sound Design by Paul Pinto, movement direction by Dan Safer, video design by Eamonn Farrel, production stage manager Vanessa C. Hart Cast: Phil Carroll as Bogdan/Translator/Vampire Andrew Omar Crisol as Grandfather (Bogdan’s)/Angel/Boy Student 2 Lily Goldman as Ianoș/Painter/Old Aunt Tim Halvorsen as Radu/Boy Student 1 Mica Hastings as Flavia/House Painter Azalea Hudson as Grandmother (Bogdan’s)/Scribe/Someone With a Sore Throat Ali Kane as Lucia/Girl Student Gavin McKenzie as Mihai/Doctor/Wayne/Soldier/Patient/Ghost/ Soldier 2 (of Rodica’s Nightmare) Taty Rozetta as Irina/Rodica/Waiter Violet Savage as Florina/Student Doctor Yibin (Bill) Wang as Gabriel/Grandmother (Flavia’s)/Toma/Bulldozer Driver Charlie Wood as Priest/Securitate Officer/Soldier 1 (of Rodica’s Nightmare) Running time: one hour 45 minutes with no intermission. Free online. RSVP to get the link

Mad Forest Review: Caryl Churchill’s play about revolution creates a new one on Zoom Bard’s splendidly glitchy production of “Mad Forest,” Caryl Churchill’s fascinating avant-garde drama about the 1989 Romanian Revolution, is the first live play I’ve seen since the shutdown that attempts a full staging via Zoom.

[constructionaccounting]

0246: Business Systems: Your Guide to 9 Small Business Trends

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0246, And It Will Be About Business Systems: Your Guide To Nine Small Business Trends

Today's Podcast Is Based On A Guest Article From Betty Moore

Great can be the Level of our returns when we are informed on various trends needed to structurally run any business size. From the biggest commodity to the smallest, biggest service providers to the smallest. Every successful entrepreneur can testify that these trends are inevitable tools for a constant and successful business growth. So, here are nine small business trends which you may want to apply to your business. Building your own construction company easily. Learn from experts!

Building your customer base: This is very important for any small scale business to grow. This can be achieved through various advertising means. Find out what it takes to get your product out there and, known to the targeted audience. Then, the next is managing your customers. This includes getting a tool which will merge both offline and online customers to maximize profit. Social media is a very good idea. Most small businesses want to get on internet advertising. Not Just internet sources but, rather telephone sources can also be merged. Distance Or Remote Workers: A force in business which has been so effective in today’s world is the creation and the flexibility of remote workers. This is in relation to the fact that flexible environment of work create an increase in productivity. Young talented employees can be sorted to work from home or online position for the division of labor and enhancement of productivity, this help in the delivery services or product to the public. Personnel Training As manager of a small business venture, It is more productive to build your team. Until the team becomes an expert, training should not be under looked. This is a smart investment to starting your team, teaching them, educating them. It’s smart to start investing on training programs, in training your young talents today. Millennial team members want to develop. As a small business, development is crucial. We cannot afford not to grow. Training promising talents is the company’s future. This means that a budget should be made on this aspect as regards personnel training. Digital Stores Creating a wonderful website with all accessible products and services of the company should be put in place to meet demand of the consumers. Of course, business with rich website content always attracts buyers. This is an important tool for every small business that need to increase its sales, a functioning website, fully operated and controlled by the service team. Also, it should include an efficient payment method to allow customers pay for goods and services without stress. 24/7 Customer Care With an increasing demand on goods and services, small businesses should be able to cater for customer’s need. It will maintain the company’s customer base if customers are treated with value, support, and attention.

Little businesses seeking to grow into multi-national giant must keep up with customer service. This is should be reachable at all time. Continuous Research A continuous Product research is ideal for quantitative and qualitative delivery of goods or service. Every upcoming business must create or set out a budget for better research team workers. With our research team, we are able to reduce cost and increase productivity. Location Marketing: Location marketing is a type of marketing system that uses phone location to reach out to the available customers. Sends information on available services and goods in a given location. This is unique in product advertisement. Customers become aware of your product simply be mobile phone SMS services. As people become aware, your product or service is brought to their notice. Small businesses should take opportunity of this trend, buy into it and use it efficiently.

Big companies use this medium of advertisement to tap into stream of customers without no effort at all. All small businesses as well must use the strategy as well if top sales and profit must be reached. Nevertheless, there must be adequate budget towards it.

Computer Engineering Data management, applications, program, website creation all these and much more are related to computer engineering. A lot of software development is done overseas these days, but the need for high-level computer experts able to tie systems together is still strong. We are looking for Software services which are cheap and efficient to run our businesses. In finance and investing, for instance, high-speed computing is increasingly a prime competitive advantage. And most big companies will need networks that are faster, more seamless, and more secure. This will help them to be ahead of their competitors. To grow a business, tools like internet marketing and promotion are needed, the backbone for all of this is computer engineering.

CONCLUSION:

These trends are inevitable if success is the truly the aim in business. We need not to only implement these trends but also maximize its potentials. Can we truly maximize sales with these? Can we fully implement these trends with low income budget? What advantages can we have over other business if we fully implement?  Leave a comment on what you think..

About The Author:

Betty Moore is a content writer and Gp tutor for students. She specializes in topics about education, writing, blogging and likes to share knowledge and ideas with people in her publications. Connect with her on Facebook or Twitter.

Message From The Editor

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There Is A Good Chance We Can Help You!

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There Is A Good Chance We Can Help You!

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                                                                                                                              Contractors_Success_MAP, Contractors_Success_Marketing_Accounting_Production, Contractor_Bookkeeping_Services, QuickBooks_For_Contractors, QuickBooks_For_Contractors,Contractors_Success_Map_Business_Systems_Your_Guide_to_9_Small_Business_Trends

Check out this episode about Contractors Marketing - Accounting - Production (M.A.P.)!

[orbemnews]

Facebook, Google and Twitter C.E.O.s to Face Lawmakers Again: Live Updates Here’s what you need to know: Jack Dorsey, left, the chief executive of Twitter; Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google; and Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, will appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 25.Credit…Lm Otero Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press The chief executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter will face skeptical lawmakers again next month when a congressional committee questions them about the ways disinformation spreads across their platforms. The House Energy and Commerce Committee said Thursday that it would hold a hearing on March 25 with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sundar Pichai of Google and Jack Dorsey of Twitter. The committee has been examining the future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that shields the platforms from lawsuits over much of the content posted by their users. The attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, which included participants with ties to QAnon and other conspiracy theories that have spread widely online, has renewed concerns that the law allows the platforms to take a hands-off approach to extremist content. “For far too long, Big Tech has failed to acknowledge the role they’ve played in fomenting and elevating blatantly false information to its online audiences,” a group of the committee’s top Democrats said in a statement. “Industry self-regulation has failed.” Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook, said the company “believes it’s time to update the rules of the internet, and this hearing should be another important step in the process.” The House Judiciary Committee announced its own set of hearings on the tech industry on Thursday. It said it would hold multiple hearings on how to update antitrust laws to address the power of the tech giants. The committee questioned chief executives before concluding a lengthy investigation into the companies last year. The Judiciary Committee’s first hearing will take place on Wednesday. An all-electric Renault Zoe. Renault’s chief executive, Luca de Meo, last month presented a plan to return the automaker to profitability.Credit…Samuel Zeller for The New York Times Renault, the French carmaker, reported a loss of 8 billion euros, or $9.7 billion, in 2020 as the pandemic gutted sales, but the company said that was profitable in the later part of the year. Most of the annual loss stemmed from Renault’s stake in its troubled partner, Nissan. Losses at the Japanese carmaker drained €5 billion from the bottom line, Renault said. In addition, Renault car sales plunged 20 percent for the year, to just short of three million vehicles. “After a first half impacted by Covid-19, the group has significantly turned around its performance in the second half,” Luca de Meo, Renault’s chief executive, said in a statement, without giving a figure. He said that 2021 was “set to be difficult given the unknowns regarding the health crisis as well as electronic components supply shortages.” In 2021, shortages of semiconductors, a problem for almost all carmakers, could cut production by as much as 100,000 vehicles, Renault said. Mr. de Meo, who became Renault’s chief executive in July, last month announced a plan to return to profitability that includes cuts in production capacity, sales of fewer models and increased parts sharing among vehicles to simplify manufacturing. Manessa Grady and her sons Zechariah, 8, left, and Noah, 9, were among the millions of Texas residents who lost power this week.Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times In California, wildfires and heat waves in recent years forced utilities to shut off power to millions of homes and businesses. Now, Texas is learning that deadly winter storms and intense cold can do the same. Bill Magness, the president and chief executive of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator, said on Thursday that Texas was “seconds and minutes” from a catastrophic blackout this week as rotating outages were used to control the flow of electricity. The country’s two largest states have taken very different approaches to managing their energy needs — Texas deregulated aggressively, letting the free market flourish, while California embraced environmental regulations. Yet the two states are confronting the same ominous reality: They may be woefully unprepared for the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters caused by climate change. Blackouts in Texas and California have revealed that power plants can be strained and knocked offline by the kind of extreme cold and hot weather that climate scientists have said will become more common as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere. The problems in Texas and California highlight the challenge the Biden administration will face in modernizing the electricity system to run entirely on wind turbines, solar panels, batteries and other zero-emission technologies by 2035 — a goal that President Biden set during the 2020 campaign. The federal government and energy businesses may have to spend trillions of dollars to harden electricity grids against the threat posed by climate change and to move away from the fossil fuels responsible for the warming of the planet in the first place. These are not new ideas. Scholars have long warned that American electricity grids, which are run regionally, will come under increasing strain and needed major upgrades. “We really need to change our paradigm, particularly utilities, because they are becoming much more vulnerable to disaster,” Najmedin Meshkati, an engineering professor at the University of Southern California, said about blackouts in Texas and California. “They need to always think about literally the worst-case scenario because the worst-case scenario is going to happen.” Video transcript Back transcript Congressman Calls Robinhood’s Help Line and Gets Voicemail After telling the House Financial Services Committee about the suicide of Robinhood user Alex Kearns, who died believing he had lost $730,000 on the brokerage app, Representative Sean Casten called its help line. June 2020, Alex Kearns, who was 20 years old at the time, from Naperville, Illinois, killed himself, largely thanks to a bug in the Robinhood system. The bug was that he turned on the app, it said he owed $730,000 that he did not have, because of options positions that he thought canceled out but didn’t appear to. He called the help line. The help line, of course, was not manned, as we’ve discussed. He sent several panicked emails — three, to be precise — did not receive a response. Ultimately there was a response from the emails saying that, in fact, his positions were covered. But by that point, it was too late, because he had taken his own life. The — this is a gentleman who is 20 years old. Under Illinois law, he was not allowed to buy a beer, but he was allowed to take on $730,000 in positions and exposure that he did not have the liquidity to cover. Your mission, Mr. Tenev, is to democratize finance. But the history of financial regulation is to protect people like Alex Kearns from the system. As the old joke goes, if you’re playing poker and you can’t figure out who the fish is at the table, you should leave the table because you’re probably the fish. And there is an innate tension in your business model between democratizing finance, which is a noble calling, and being a conduit to feed fish to sharks. So I’m nervous. I think I got an exposure. And I call your help line now. Let’s call and let’s listen in the time we have remaining to what I’m going to hear on the other end of the phone. Voicemail: “Thank you for calling Robinhood. Please visit us at robinhood.com or on our app for support. If you have an urgent trading need, please make sure to include details of it when reaching out. Thanks have a great day.” After telling the House Financial Services Committee about the suicide of Robinhood user Alex Kearns, who died believing he had lost $730,000 on the brokerage app, Representative Sean Casten called its help line.CreditCredit…via C-Span The chief executives of Robinhood, Reddit, Citadel and Melvin Capital Management were among the witnesses at a hearing on the GameStop trading frenzy held by the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday. Vlad Tenev, the chief executive of Robinhood, was the target for both Democrats and Republicans, fielding more than half of the lawmakers’ questions. “I love your company because it does, when correctly managed, provide investment opportunities for individuals who are currently frozen out of the markets for one reason or another,” said Representative Anthony Gonzalez, Republican of Ohio. He added: “At the same time, though, I believe a vulnerability was clearly exposed in your business model.” Representative Sean Casten, an Illinois Democrat, capped his sharp questioning of Mr. Tenev, in which he relayed the story of a 20-year-old college student who killed himself last summer believing that he’d lost more than $700,000, by dialing the Robinhood help line and letting everyone listen in as a short message was played and the call was terminated. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said Robinhood’s decisions had “harmed customers,” and accused it of passing on hidden costs to its customers. Keith Gill — known on YouTube as Roaring Kitty — testified that his interest in the company was based on his belief that the market was underestimating the brick-and-mortar retailer’s value. His testimony included winking references — such as dangling what appeared to be his oft-worn red headband off a picture of a kitten visible over his shoulder and the statement “I am not a cat” — to internet meme culture. Several harsh questions were directed at Kenneth C. Griffin, the chief of Citadel. Members of Congress asked skeptical questions about Citadel’s practice of paying to trade against customers at online brokers like Robinhood. Mr. Griffin tried to explain the intricacies of the business but was often cut off. “Our folks are tired of bailing you all out when you screw up and gamble with the retirement fund. And that’s exactly what happens every single moment,” Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan, said to him. Source link Orbem News #CEOs #Face #Facebook #Google #lawmakers #Live #Twitter #Updates