Sunday, October 21, 2012
To discuss what American drama has become in the years after 9/11, one must examine how American theatres are run in the years after 9/11 — it goes straight to the question of what kin…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 10:24AMThursday, October 18, 2012
Australian and German theatres are not having the best of luck with American playwrights this week — a theme that takes up the first two items of this week’s theatre news roundup…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:32AMWednesday, October 17, 2012
The “doomsday clock” was created in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, an organization of University of Chicago scientists who participated in the Manhattan Project that …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:10AMTuesday, October 16, 2012
In an essay entitled “Sound and Fury” in the 27 May issue of the Economist, Christopher Shinn writes about the role of madness in artistic creation: When I write a play, I try to…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 04:46PMThe atomic and hydrogen bombs were not ultimately the inventions of Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, the Manhattan Project, or even the Second World War itself. As Jonathan Schell notes in th…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:15AMMonday, October 15, 2012
Some future David Riesman or Theodor Adorno will one day try to assess why a trilogy of lite-BDSM erotic novels enjoyed such popularity at this moment in American history. They have been fir…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:08AMSunday, October 14, 2012
I’ve decided to take up again a project that looks at American drama since 9/11, which I first wrote about a few years ago, but in order to do so systematically I will need to establis…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:33AMSaturday, October 13, 2012
He wasn’t speaking about the production process for new American drama, but T.S. Eliot may have described it well when he wrote that “Between the idea / And the reality / Between…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:49AMFriday, October 12, 2012
It is a delight to report that Cafe Katja‘s reopening at 79 Orchard Street this past Wednesday was such a wonderful pleasure. Owners Erwin Schröttner and Andrew Chase have doubled the…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 10:18AMFaced with covering non-arts-related South Jersey news for the first time in a 42-year career as an arts and culture writer, Philadelphia Inquirer theatre critic Howard Shapiro has decided i…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:51AMThursday, October 11, 2012
A cheerful Howard Barker talks to Mark Lawson about his relationship with Britain’s subsidized theatres, his status as an “afternoon painter” and his own practices in the r…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 01:34PMLondon’s critical darling at the moment is Howard Barker’s Scenes from an Execution, directed by Tom Cairns and featuring Fiona Shaw as Galactia, at the National Theatre. (A new …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:56AMFriday, October 5, 2012
Speaking of Philadelphia, maybe the best movie ever made in that city was the 1976 Mikey and Nicky, written and directed by Elaine May (born and raised in Philadelphia; she appeared on the s…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:00AMThursday, October 4, 2012
When I was a part of the Philadelphia theatre community in the mid-1980s as a playwright and the managing producer of the now-defunct Theatre Center Philadelphia, the city was just emerging …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:23AMWednesday, October 3, 2012
If Maddy Costa’s interview with Howard Barker in the Guardian the other day seemed a bit brief, and Barker more pugnacious than usual, “The Curious Romance of Howard Barker,̶…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 03:37PMNo English-language plays so exemplify the assumptions underlying radical elegance than those of Howard Barker. As Beckett said of Joyce (and perhaps of his own work), in Barker’s play…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:05AMTuesday, October 2, 2012
It appears that Howard Barker has not lost his ability to divide audiences — not even with a play like Scenes from an Execution, first written for radio in 1985 and now appearing on th…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:32AMSaturday, September 29, 2012
The traditional symbol for a ninth anniversary is “pottery,” the modern symbol “leather,” I’ve learned from conducting some not-too-intensive research on the In…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 01:05PMFriday, September 28, 2012
Among the most famous of the sketches that appeared on Monty Python’s Flying Circus was the “Dead Parrot” sketch, which matched Michael Palin and John Cleese in a battle of…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:38AMThursday, September 27, 2012
I am skeptical about the American two-party system, but not cynical enough (not yet) to refrain from participating in elections. There’s one coming up in six weeks, and though I voted …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:00AMMonday, September 24, 2012
In celebration of the opening this week at the National Theatre of Howard Barker’s Scenes from an Execution, I republish below my 2009 review of two books about the dramatist by David …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 07:07AMFriday, September 21, 2012
Today’s video is a rare 1958 television interview with Georges Bataille, nine minutes in length, discussing his book Literature and Evil. It appears after the notes on Bataille below, …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:35AMThursday, September 20, 2012
Elegance consists of a thoughtful, critical attitude towards the self and an organization of expression in a world which consists of a series of formless experiences. It imposes this organiz…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:33AMTuesday, September 18, 2012
If there’s a theme that runs through what I admire about Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants, Howard Barker’s plays, Marilyn Nonken’s music, it is something that might be sub…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:24AMMonday, September 17, 2012
Defenders of theatre as a form of entertainment in whatever its definition will receive a bit of a workout over the next few months, thanks to two downtown theatre companies across the stree…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:29AMSunday, September 16, 2012
Surprisingly, the New York Times today offers a few most readable articles, this time about feminism (or, perhaps more accurately, “feminisms”), conveniently published at the sam…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:28AMFriday, September 14, 2012
In 1987, ABC aired Basements, productions of two early Harold Pinter plays directed by Robert Altman; The Room is below. Linda Hunt plays Rose; Donald Pleasance is Mr. Kidd; the rest of the …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:30AMThursday, September 13, 2012
Arthur Schopenhauer never characterized his philosophy or himself as “pessimistic,” though he never rejected the characterization when it was applied to him. He uses the word onl…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:26AMWednesday, September 12, 2012
Apropos of yesterday’s post, Jonathan Kalb’s Hot Review recently posted the entirety of an 12 October 2001 interview with Richard Foreman, portions of which first ran in a 2002 i…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 03:29PMTuesday, September 11, 2012
In February 2011 I embarked on one of those grandiose projects to which I am occasionally susceptible, a survey of the effect that 9/11 had on American drama. I was unable to sustain the ded…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:44AMMonday, September 10, 2012
Due for availability later this month, my lovely wife Marilyn Nonken‘s new CD from Métier, Voix Voilées, is an informal sequel to her best-selling double-CD set of Tristan MurailR…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:54AM 
