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Month: September 2006

Rain Dog Dance

Rain Dog Dance

Much of Artaud’s theory on theatre can be classified as the dramaturgy of the actor. It’s easy to see why Butoh originator Hijikata found a shared sensibility and stratagem for performance in Artaud’s writings. One of his prized possessions was the recorded copy of Artaud’s radio broadcast. This tape of To Have Done With The Judgement Of God was played when Hijikata choreographed Min Tanaka in a performance entitled Ren-ai Butoh-ha Teiso (Foundation of the Dance of Love). To work…

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To Have Done with the Judgments on Artaud

To Have Done with the Judgments on Artaud

Alison Croggon at theatre notes has obviously read more criticisms on Artaud than actual writings by Artaud. She parrots the negative critiques that have always been attached to this singularly important theatre theorist. So nothing new in her attempt to marginalize Artaudian theatre by classifying it to the experience of the lunatic asylum, war zone and concentration camp. However, Alison extends this old criticism to new a level by outrageously and unconscionably comparing Artaud to violent terrorist killers Osama bin…

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Artaud’s Granddaughter

Artaud’s Granddaughter

Twenty years ago, I drove a 450cc Honda motorcycle into the Sierra Madre Mountains in search of Antonin Artaud’s granddaughter. My forehead became blistered with sunburn during the long trip from Chicago so I tore up a white pillowcase I had taken from an El Paso motel room, using it as a protective and medicinal bandanna. The 3 gallon motorcycle gas tank caused constant adventure because of the distance between petrol stations in Mexico. So eventually I found myself out…

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Open Letters to Purple Haze

Open Letters to Purple Haze

McSweeney’s has more than a hundred entries at its fiction section titled OPEN LETTERS TO PEOPLE OR ENTITIES UNLIKELY TO RESPOND The writer of the open letter to Vice President Cheney first offers condolences for the loss of Scooter Libby, then applies for the open Chief of Staff job. The applicant begins his list of qualifications with 1. I am pure evil. I can provide letters of reference from former girlfriends, as well as from my previous landlord, to attest…

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Criticism versus Reviews

Criticism versus Reviews

The distinction between reviews and criticism, reviewer and critic, should be made. Reviewers have both space and time pressures imposed upon them. The reviewer has a “job” job. More often than not the subject/work is an assignment not a choice. The job also entails that something needs to be written even when nothing warrants it. The critic is not on assignment but begins with the subject/work that intrigues and excites, “something that needs to be written about.” The critic is…

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Artist/Critic Controversy circa 1996

Artist/Critic Controversy circa 1996

AMERICAN THEATRE presents Weigh In on Cultural Power The August Wilson/Robert Brustein Debate Moderated by Anna Deavere Smith ************************************************** John Weidman and the Guild should have taken lessons from August Wilson and TCG before they tried to pick a fight with a critic. In a very methodical manner, TCG along with its magazine American Theatre, engendered and nurtured the smoldering feud between the playwright and the critic into a convoluted but interesting cultural polemic. The apotheosis was a public debate…

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The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men

We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar And the Hedy Weiss spectacle in Chicago ends in the way it began. Not with a bang but a whimper. Its only accomplishment was the denigration of both theatre and criticism. Theatre as an art form is…

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The Dramatists Apologize

The Dramatists Apologize

The Dramatists Guild’s president John Weidman apologizes to Hedy Weiss in a Sun-Times’ Letter to the Editor. Well, not really. As we predicted, the public inquisition of the critic proceeds in the words of The Guild’s executive director Ralph Sevush “without pause and without apology.” So who is the “reliable source” that presented El Presidente with the faulty intelligence that instigated this whole letter writing campaign?   Before writing the letter, I confirmed with what I believed to be an…

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Pound the Critic

Pound the Critic

Ezra Pound had the reputation of being the most well-read in literature amongst all his contemporaries. Remarkably, he once said “You don’t need to read an entire book in order to speak intelligently about it.” I am not sure if that “confession” made me think more or less of Pound as an arbitrator of literature. No doubt that Jeremy and Melissa have picked Ms Weiss’ winning offense. A perfect example of the hubris of the Critic, not to see the…

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The Editor’s Axe

The Editor’s Axe

Thoughts and ideas can become dangerous so I always begin writing to the great metaphysical abyss with the salutation “Dear Editor.” It keeps me on my toes. The greatest fiction writer of the 20th century was of course Vladimir Lenin. The Editor especially enjoyed his pamphlet State and Revolution. In 1940 Leon Trotsky was in the study of his heavily guarded house near Mexico City writing the History of the Russian Revolution when The Editor embedded an alpine climbing axe…

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