Thursday, June 14, 2012
Howard Sherman considers — then rejects — the idea of a US national theatre, not least because we already have one, he says. “Despite protestations to the contrary, America…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:17AMWednesday, June 13, 2012
In the Guardian yesterday, British dramatist Howard Brenton urged readers to “stand up for the West Bank’s Freedom Theatre.” Brenton wrote: The Freedom Theatre began as a c…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 02:26PMTuesday, June 12, 2012
Perhaps because their European origins give them outsider status, Werner Herzog and Nick Broomfield are the most incisive, intriguing filmmakers producing documentaries about American life t…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:11AMMonday, June 11, 2012
While the biographies by the Gelbs and Louis Sheaffer are standard references in regard to the dramatist, I am spending some time of late paging through Travis Bogard and Jackson R. Bryer…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:41AMSunday, June 10, 2012
Written 1918; first produced 3 February 1920 at the Morosco Theatre on Broadway; closed May 1920 after 111 performances. Directed by Homer Saint-Gaudens; produced by John D. Williams. With R…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 12:13PMFriday, June 8, 2012
In my only nod to this Sunday’s Tony awards, I pass along this quote from Jan Maxwell, who this year is nominated as lead actress in a musical for her performance in Follies. In this a…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 02:29PM“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit,” William Faulkner said …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:31AMThursday, June 7, 2012
I should note here, because I’ve been writing more than usual about political theatre recently, that in many parts of the world theatre can be dangerous indeed — even children…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 11:16AMFrom other shores … Howard Sherman is requesting your assistance in compiling a list — or, really, a list-of-lists — of the “Ten Most Important Contemporary Plays,…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:02AMWednesday, June 6, 2012
The salesman has been a central character of post-war American drama from Death of a Salesman to Glengarry Glen Ross. He has been treated somewhat impertinently, of course: deluded and desti…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:50AMTuesday, June 5, 2012
I must say I never expected the names of the self-described feminist critic Jill Dolan of The Feminist Spectator and Howard Barker, often accused of misogyny, to be mentioned in the same bre…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 12:08PMLater this month the arts center Chapter in Cardiff, Wales, will present a mini-season of recent Howard Barker plays from both established and new independent companies. Opening on Tuesday 1…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:25AMMonday, June 4, 2012
Probably 1590–1. Text: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, edited by Roger Warren. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. The power of erotic desire to transform the self and undermi…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:12AMFriday, June 1, 2012
Speaking of older playwrights, I’m not sure how NPR celebrates significant birthdays of American dramatists, though it may do so to the extent that American television, cable or broadc…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 12:36PMThe theatre is increasingly kind to the young, writes Michael Billington in a recent essay at the Guardian about young dramatists. Casting a cheerful and positive eye over the twenty-somethi…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 06:25AMThursday, May 31, 2012
The National Theatre in London has just announced further details about their upcoming production of Howard Barker’s Scenes from an Execution, which will open on 27 September in the NT…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 05:36AMFriday, May 25, 2012
Originally filed in August 2011. In regard to the last paragraph, Mark Nixon’s excellent monograph Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries 1936–1937 was recently published by Continuum…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:27AMWednesday, May 23, 2012
Fewer than half of my readers reside in the United States, say my statistics; most of them appear to be from Europe, first the UK followed by France, then Germany, then the lovely towns and …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 12:05PMTuesday, May 22, 2012
The ladies and gentlemen of the United States Postal Service dropped the new issue of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art in my mailbox yesterday, and Bonnie Marranca curates a fine collec…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:48AMMonday, May 21, 2012
A friendly correspondent writes me to take issue with my flippant, blanket dismissal of the Occupy movement at the bottom of a rather lengthier post yesterday. Unfortunately it’s Monda…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:50AMSunday, May 20, 2012
Good news comes along too rarely to let it go without comment, so here’s a bit. Last 31 December, President Barack Obama signed a piece of legislation to warm Home Secretary Orbison…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 12:57PMFriday, May 18, 2012
This morning brings news of the death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who would have been 87 in just ten days. The Guardian has an obituary here; below, a YouTube video of the great lieder mast…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 11:55AMIf you can manage it, you should take the hike out to Brooklyn’s Brick next month for Matthew Freeman‘s new show, Confess Your Bubble, a monologue written for the Brick’s s…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:01AMThursday, May 17, 2012
First published on 7 April 2011. From Ben Brantley’s “The Joys of Feel-Bad Drama,” in today’s New York Times: Still, more than three decades after it was written, [Wa…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 03:25PMIt’s always a pleasure to welcome the annual summer visits of the Potomac Theatre Project to New York. This year, the company will offer Neal Bell’s Monster, an adaptation of the…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:26AMWednesday, May 16, 2012
Lyn Gardner pointed the way to Dennis Kelly’s speech “Why political theatre is a complete fucking waste of time” the other day, and despite that sensational title the speec…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:16AMTuesday, May 15, 2012
British playwright Dennis Kelly, whose musical adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel Matilda is scheduled to land on Broadway next year following a triumphant run at the the Royal Shakespeare C…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 12:31PMMonday, May 14, 2012
There are now 15 hours left in the LuckyAnt fundraising drive to save the Living Theatre. The campaign seeks to raise $24,000, which would permit the group “to pay its rent, bring in a…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:47AMFriday, May 11, 2012
Howard Barker’s 1970 play No One Was Saved formed the basis of Made, a 1972 film directed by John Mackenzie and starring Roy Harper and Carol White; Barker himself wrote the screenplay…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:24AMThursday, May 10, 2012
Television play in 25 scenes. Unproduced in that medium; first performed in the season “Plays Television Would Not Do” at the RSC Warehouse Theatre, 21 February 1979. Directed by…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 12:44PMWednesday, May 9, 2012
Two of the most critically and commercially successful theatre productions in the United States currently are the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and the Goodma…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:54AM 
