First Draft - Arts and Entertainment

April 19, 2021
By Dhani Adomaitis, Libby Neidenbach, and Douane Waples

In four videos, we chart the evolution if New Orleans brass bands from their Civil War–era origins up to the modern day.




April 6, 2021
By Margit Longbrake, senior editor

In a series of new videos, New Orleans poets craft 21st-century responses to 19th-century poems.




February 24, 2021
By Eric Seiferth, curator/historian

After the Civil War, benevolent associations flourished in New Orleans's Black community, and so did their impact on life in the city.




February 9, 2021
By Melissa Carrier, Eli A. Haddow, and Keely Merritt

COVID-19 may have canceled parades for 2021, but it couldn't erase Mardi Gras entirely. Creativity flourished around the Crescent City in the form of a new tradition: house floats.




December 11, 2020
By Dave Walker, communication specialist

We spoke with Lance Nichols, whose role in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, launched his acting career in major Hollywood films.




October 14, 2020
Margit Longbrake, senior editor

Amid the American Civil War, a new civil rights movement was forming in New Orleans—in French.




September 18, 2020
By Dhani Adomaitis, Madeline Drace, Michelle Harrison, and Cecilia Hock

For years, cinephiles have lamented a lack of originality coming out of Hollywood studios. However, there’s no shortage of stories waiting to be told onscreen, and that’s where we can be of use to studio bosses.




September 18, 2020
By Dave Walker, communication specialist

To help us celebrate one of the triumphs of recent Hollywood South creativity, Benh Zeitlin—who directed, co-wrote, and co-scored Beasts of the Southern Wild—answered a few of our questions.




September 10, 2020
By Judith Bonner, senior curator and curator of art

Over the course of the two years after Hurricane Katrina, Rolland Golden roamed the city’s flooded areas, sketching and painting a series of 26 scenes representing the turmoil and devastation of the city during the flood and the stark desolation after the waters receded.




August 21, 2020
By Robert Bray and R. Barton Palmer

To set the stage (as it were) for the August 24 #NolaMovieNight group screening of the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire, First Draft reached out to two Tennessee Williams Annual Review principals for insight into the publication and some thoughts on the film’s cultural impact.






 

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