Important artists take risks, and Peter Smeal is always willing to chance a needle piercing his lower lip or a matte-cutting blade slicing his fingers. “There’s not a single show I’ve done here where I haven’t left a bit of my blood onstage,” he says of his work at Children’s Theatre of Charlotte. “I’ve burned [...]

Patrick WestLanguage courses always come with baggage, like the BBC one that teaches you to talk about climate change in Italian. There are many good reasons to learn a foreign language: for business purposes or holidaymaking, to keep mentally active, to satisfy linguistic curiosity, or merely to have a diverting pastime. There is also the [...]