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About Last Night

TT: Coast to coast to coast (II)

TT: Almanac
"What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; ..."

Bitter Lemons

LA Weekly Redefining the Terms
Charles McNulty over at LA Times has a fitting “epitaph” if you will on Steven Leigh Morris’s “firing” over at the LA Weekly. But the funny this is; Steven hasn’t been fired. According to my sources (that’s right, I got sources too, folks!), the position of Theatre Editor was simply expunged, and Steven has been [...]

They’re Dropping Like Flies
LA Times just let go of Jim Farber, longtime Arts Critic. Read about it here. I know I am over critical of the Critics sometimes, but this is ridiculous. What happens next? Is this the age of the “User Critic”? The “Consumer Critic”? Are the professional and often-times academically-trained scholars of Theatre Criticism [...]

The Conversation
Steven Leigh Morris sounds the trumpet call over at his Stage Raw blog and makes - as usual - excellent points. If these longtime pillars of validation and dialogue (LA Weekly, LA Times, Backstage) continue to crumble, where does the LA Theatre Community turn to continue to the conversation? Here’s Steven: Final point: We all need [...]

The Clyde Fitch Report

Tom Horgan, 1926-2009

The Critical Condition

Trailer Scaler: State of Play

The Fortress of Jason Grote

This Friday: Darwin's Challenge in the First Light Festival at EST

The Globe and Mail - Theatre

Let's try something different...
..on the ol' theatre blog today. If you were going to interview David Hare, playwright and screenwriter, what would you most want to ask him? I'm speaking to him on Wednesday and, if I get enough time, I'll ask some of your questions and post the answers here. (But no, no questions about Kate Winslet ...

The Hub Review

More chronicle of a death foretold
A friend of mine has pointed out an interesting irony to the Globe's upcoming financial crisis - what could its sale, or radical reduction (or even disappearance) mean for the Herald? Could we be headed toward a situation in which the Herald is the ...

'kül

Under the Radar - "County of Kings: the beautiful struggle"
Life is full of trade-offs: In the Heights sacrificed some of its realism for the sake of light hip-hop entertainment; ...

Under the Radar - "LIGA, 50% reward & 50% punishment"
Kids will be kids, but it's quite another thing when adults can be kids. Especially when it's done believably so. LIGA, 50% reward & 50% punishment ought to be retitled "100% risk & 100% reward," ...

Infinite Jestation: A Blogthrough (Pages 68-87)

the nytheatre i

Melvillapalooza: Not Just a Theatre Festival
I just came home from opening night at Metropolitan Playhouse's Melvillapalooza (where I saw two very different one-act plays--one based on Billy Budd, the other a fanciful comedy about the genesis of Moby Dick; my review will be on nytheatre.com soon).

99seats

Finding Joy
Apropos of really nothing, I'm thinking about why we go through all of this, why we deal with moribund theatres, crazy people, indifferent audiences, a hostile culture, all of that. I find myself yelling in bars at the top of my lungs about this stuff...

Parabasis

More on the New New Deal and the Arts
Courtesy of Arlene Goldbard (h/t Artssake, btw, thanks for calling me "delicious"!). In the post she talks about some things artists could be paid to do under a new WPA style employment program and more. Here's her list: ..

The Playgoer

Celebrity Casting Update

The Rob Kozlowski Chicago Theater and Vintage Film Medicine Show

Horse Feathers (1932)
Hulu has added one of the best Marx Brothers movies, Horse Feathers, the fourth of their five movies produced by Paramount Pictures. It is the touching story of Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, portrayed ...

Steve On Broadway

Patti's Turn: Lettin' Loose

Theatreforte

Harvey Pekar jazz-opera at Oberlin
On Jan. 31, Harvey's opera, "Leave Me Alone" makes its world debut at Oberlin College, just a 45-minute drive from Cleveland, Ohio. And as Pekar...

The Wicked Stage

"Shaw" Thing
I don't have a lot of time at the moment for a lengthy or considered post on Gina Gionfriddo's excellent new play Becky Shaw except to say that, well, I think it's excellent, one of the best I've seen in a good while.