How to turn the bloody truths of the Iraq war into mass entertainment is a problem that has repeatedly bedeviled Hollywood executives. Even “The Hurt Locker,” which won the Academy Award for best picture last year, earned only $17 million domestically. Now Broadway, where the price of a ticket can be 10 times as much as at the multiplex, is taking its first major look at Iraq eight years after the invasion, with a play that starts with a behanding, descends into brutality and murder, and features no less than Uday Hussein clutching the severed head of his brother, Qusay.
Tags >> New York
May
23
Blogging playwrights pile on
Posted by: Glover |Tagged in: Theater , Suzan-Lori Parks , scripts , postmodern , playwrighting , plays , play , Performance Art , performance , one-act , one acts , New York , musicals , linguistics , language , interdisciplinary , Equity , editing , drama , criticism , critic , artist , acting
Brouhaha of the week: Blogging playwrights pile on
Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth is a playwright incensed over varying gradations of privilege! Some seriously tart exchanges on ye olde Internet this week were touched off by this, Mat Smart's HowlRound post, in which the playwright brought the tough love to his fellow emerging playwrights. Smart challenged what he sees as the defeatism of emerging playwrights, asserting that: "In the end, our approach to our own work is the only thing we can control—and I believe that you have to love the doing. You also have to love the chase, love the absence of any resemblance of fairness, justice, or due course. And as long as it doesn’t make you too desperate or crazy—there is a nobility in this endurance, in this brand of foolishness. There must be a sense that 'I am going down with the ship.' And frankly, it is a commitment that I don’t see many emerging playwrights make."
This comes in the middle of a long essay on playwright laziness, which, despite its inflammatory wording, is written from the perspective of someone who wants to hammer home the importance of a work ethic. It should be a familiar refrain—we've heard it from every other writer who has ever told us ass-in-chair time is the secret to success.
May
23
Kill your facebook account
Posted by: Glover |Tagged in: postmodern , Performance Art , New York , Live Art , language , Interview , interdisciplinary , Facebook , criticism , critic , contemprary , community , audience , artist , art
Facebook is pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. It has wormed it's little coding into our collective unconsciousness and made us feel that we are doing something proactive to be less lonely, miserable, depressed and isolated than we really are. Facebook is a digital simulation; mimesis of the Hyper-Real, faux communication which passes as "friendship," there is no "real" reason to maintain any presence on Facebook or any other digital social network. So I suppose I can't really give you any reason not to delete your account. It has certainly crossed my mind on a regular basis over the last few years. On the other hand you could jump in the car and come over to NYC where we could hang out and have a few "real" experiences which we can then promote on Facebook. Proving to others that we have "real" friends in the "real world."
Mar
31
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Robin William's Broadway War show.
Posted by: Glover |Tagged in: writing , war , theatrical allusion , theatre , Theater , story , Robin Williams , reviewing , playwrighting , plays , play , New York , ideology , broadway , audience , acting
Star Power Meets War’s Firepower
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: March 23, 2011
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Robin Williams in Rajiv Joseph's “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.” More Photos »
Aug
18
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The Lost Films of New York Underground Theater Legend Charles Ludlam Resurface
Posted by: Glover |Between the airtight virtue of The Kids Are All Right and the fact that George W. Bush’s former solicitor general is now defending the right to same-sex marriage (never mind the fact that the national folk hero Steven Slater just so happens to be gay), it’s difficult to remember that our pop culture used to be a good deal less straight-up, as it were, about queerness. Amid all of this, the recent discovery of lost (and truly odd) films by the late Ridiculous Theatrical Company founder Charles Ludlam — which will be shown in a retrospective of the artist’s work at New York’s Anthology Film Archives from August 19 through 22 — are a refreshing breath of escapism, from an era when it was necessary.
WHOLE ARTICLE HERE