Harry Potter’s pubic goes public and a white guy in Chicago is angry about it, although we are not sure why. But the media frenzy suggests he is not alone. Elsewhere Tboy is asking for the girl’s name for the boy’s name of that which is unnamable on a 17-year-old. Daniel Radcliffe will shed his child actor image with his clothes for his West End stage debut. Sixty people from the audience will actually be seated on stage when the…
The dramaturgs have, for the most part, remained stumped in their search for an appropriate male companion piece for The Vagina Monologues. One ‘turg did recall the title of a student’s performance piece “Mangina Monologue,” but as yet no actual script or excerpt from a play has been procured. However, the whole search for an appropriate companion piece might be a moot pursuit. The application process for the V-Day 2007 Worldwide Campaign demands that organizers consent to the following mandate:…
Over the past year, the members of the LMDA List Serv have compiled on average almost one play list per week. Although most lists are never actually listed on the official Play Lists reference page, the dramaturgs and other theatre people on the list obviously relish this particular task. There have been some seemingly obscure lists such as “Plays about Rural Gay/Lesbian/Transgendered People” and highly opinionative lists “Most important (best?) contemporary American and British plays since 1990 (hey! what about…
In the ’90s the narratives of the teenagers’ adventures were broken up by short breaks in which Beavis and Butt-Head watched music videos and made fun of them. Today, post-pubescents are at YouTube watching the bootleg video of Saddam’s hanging. This is the first real snuff film Beavis and Butt-Head have been “authorized†to view so we shouldn’t expect much from their critique. Butt-Head: “Whoa! Those dudes with black hoods are cool!†Beavis: “Yeah, eh heh heh, they’re those Ku…
James Brown, President Gerald Ford, President Saddam Hussein. Individual legacies added/subtracted becoming collective history. Or Motown. Legacy of a city, but also legacy of a certain time in America that is no more. Cars and music. Once defining our individuality and freedom. Teenagers at lover’s lane. Get on up, like a sex machine. But now the SUV, especially the Hummer (No mere metaphor. Here it’s an SUV; over there it’s a war vehicle). Cars as emblem of our conspicuous consumption…
Some friends, including the chef, for our Thanksgiving dinner tonight are vegetarian. Rocky: Listen, I don’t want no turkey anyway, ya know. Adrian: But it was Thanksgiving. Rocky: It was what? Adrian: It was Thanksgiving. Rocky: Yeah, to you, but to me, it’s Thursday, right?
I have never voted in my life so today is a day where I need to stay away from many of my friends. The sentiment and non-action known as “Get out the vote” annoys me but maybe it’s a sign of my maturity that I no longer pick fights with my friends over it. Unlike me, many of the theatre bloggers seem to be voting today. Angry White Guy’s message is short but sweet “No fucking around. Find the time…
I keep the Kierkegaard anthology bookmarked at Fear and Trembling where he explains the “man of faith.” When Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia on the command from the Delphi Oracle, and for the good of the nation, he is acting on a high moral plane, but he’s not a man of faith. That’s because all of Greece listens to the same such words from on high. Agamemnon is not alone; he has the whole nation agreeing his sacrifice is righteous….
What I remember most about the Soho loft where I interviewed Richard Foreman was its vast library. Racks upon racks of books dominate the living space. I cannot think of another contemporary playwright who better exemplifies what it means to live “a life of the mind,†so his living loft library seemed the perfect complement to Foreman’s work home at his theatre space in the East Village. In this 2003 interview he was despondent over the value of his theatre…
Lucky for the students at Juilliard that Christopher Durang and Marsha Norman are teaching playwriting and not investigative journalism. This is second time in as many months they have been perpetrators in playwright boycotts and attacks against individuals innocent of the crimes of which they were accused. First Hedy Weiss and now the O’Neill Playwrights Conference. Durang and Norman have co-chaired the Playwriting Program at Juilliard since 1994 and their recent letter to their former students begins with “Dear Julliard…