Monday, March 4, 2013
I am rarely tempted to offer suggestions as to the improvement of drama criticism and reviews in the mainstream media. As some of the responses to John Lahr’s recent essay suggest, how…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 11:09AMSunday, March 3, 2013
On his public Twitter page yesterday, Los Angeles Times theatre critic Charles McNulty took issue with “The Illumination Business: Why drama critics must look at and look after the the…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:32AMSaturday, March 2, 2013
Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides. Adapted and directed by Edward Einhorn; music by Aldo Perez; choreography by Patrice Miller; art by Eric Shanower; sets and masks by Jane Stein; costumes by …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:23AMWednesday, February 27, 2013
Originally published here 23 March 2011. If I had known about the Frankfurt School in time, I would have been saved a great deal of work. I would not have said a certain amount of nonsense a…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 02:44PMMonday, February 25, 2013
In the introduction to his 1980 study of Egon Schiele, Simon Wilson offers a cogent, concise definition of painterly Expressionism of the early 20th century: Expressionist art at its highest…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:48AMSaturday, February 23, 2013
For those who may believe that the United Kingdom has a healthier new play sector than the United States, Fin Kennedy has bad news for you. Yesterday he and Helen Campbell Pickford, an Oxfor…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:14AMFriday, February 22, 2013
Philosopher Simon Critchley and actress Fiona Shaw wag their jaws for a few minutes at a Rubin Museum of Art event, “Talk About Nothing.” For theatre critics and practitioners, s…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:26AMThursday, February 21, 2013
Once in a while it’s a good idea to cast a cold eye on one’s resume; and I am not particularly good at marketing myself (apparently Terry Teachout enjoys it, but perhaps he has a…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:32AMTuesday, February 19, 2013
If George and Martha weren’t enough for you, meet Edgar and Alice, the witty, tormented married couple at the center of August Strindberg’s 1900 play The Dance of Death. The Red …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:41AMMonday, February 18, 2013
Originally published here on 25 August 2011. The role of the elegy is to describe a closed system: the closed system of the dead individual, now bereft of possibility and imagination. It is …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 11:02AMFriday, February 15, 2013
Ronan Christopher Louis, the son of Emily Rapp and her husband Rick Louis, passed away peacefully this morning at 3.30am in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the victim of Tay-Sachs disease. I have been…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 11:37AMFrom Rhys Tranter of A Piece of Monologue comes a pointer to this essay by Jonathan Bignell about Samuel Beckett‘s television plays. As might be expected, Bignell writes, these were no…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:24AMThursday, February 14, 2013
Oberon Books continues the publication of its elegant uniform series of Howard Barker’s plays with the release of Plays Seven, now available at amazon.com. In this volume, according to…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:25AMWednesday, February 13, 2013
It hasn’t been long since Iphigenia in Aulis has been seen on a New York stage. Euripides’ tragedy about the events leading up to the Trojan Wars and the extraordinary saga of th…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:36AMTuesday, February 12, 2013
I have written before of my difficulties with Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, but obviously this doesn’t mitigate against its importance for any study of Greek drama and theatre. N…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:36AMSunday, February 10, 2013
I’ve spent some of this weekend thinking about what draws me as an artist, critic, writer, and unabashed enthusiast — not to mention as all of these wrapped up, along with everyt…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:34AMFriday, February 8, 2013
You may be forgiven for mistaking the next meeting of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle for a maternity ward; this week brought a slew of contenders tripping over their Kleenex boxes …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:42AMThursday, February 7, 2013
Originally published here on 4 February 2010. A revised version of this post appears as a passage in Word Made Flesh. The active contemplation for which the art of tragedy aims rehearses a c…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:37AMWednesday, February 6, 2013
Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht; translation by John Willett. Directed by Lear deBessonet; dramaturgy by Anne Erbe; choreography by Danny Mefford; lighting by Tyler Micoleau; costu…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:35AMTuesday, February 5, 2013
On Friday 1 March, NoPassport and NYU School for Individualized Study will present the 7th annual NoPassport Theatre Conference, Dreaming the Americas: Staging New Theaters/Challenging Hiera…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:40AMMonday, February 4, 2013
Karen Malpede’s Another Life will open at the Theater for the New City in late March as part of Theatre Three Collaborative‘s Festival of Conscience, two plays and a series of co…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:57AMSaturday, February 2, 2013
Recently reading Jonathan Kalb’s Great Lengths, his book about marathon theatre productions, I began to muse about the idea of excess. In recent years it has been not only excessive le…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 10:20AMFriday, February 1, 2013
The work of a composer is to create Time. There is nothing more difficult than creating time, because it isn’t natural for man. But if you want to compose, you have to reposition yourself …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:28AMThursday, January 31, 2013
Like it or not, for most Americans Broadway is America’s center of theatre and drama. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars are invested in Broadway shows every year, catering …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:19AMWednesday, January 30, 2013
I’m delighted to announce that a few days ago I joined the editorial board of “Backpages,” the back-of-the-book section of Routledge’s Contemporary Theatre Review dev…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:43AMTuesday, January 29, 2013
First published here in January 2010. Maurice Benn’s study of the work of Georg Büchner suggests that Büchner may have been familiar with Schopenhauer’s philosophy (The World a…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:59AMMonday, January 28, 2013
Despite the provisional obituaries that continue to be written about the Modernist project, some publishers and editors keep the flame alight. The newest among them is Contra Mundum Press, e…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:45AMFriday, January 25, 2013
The Fever by Wallace Shawn. Directed by Lars Norén; adaptation by Norén and Simona Maicanescu; lighting by Jean Poisson; costume by Chatoon; sound by Sophie Buisson; artistic collaboration…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:17AMThursday, January 24, 2013
I’ll be bundling up later for the first of my two visits to La MaMa ETC over the next few weeks: tonight, for Simona Maicanescu in Lars Norén’s new production of Wallace Shawn&#…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 12:50PMFriday, January 18, 2013
Richard Foreman has a busy spring ahead. Along with the opening of his new play Old-Fashioned Prostitutes at the Public Theater this April, his film Once Every Day will begin a short run at …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:43AMThursday, January 17, 2013
Time, space, and money being finite quantities in this world, the books that a person chooses to surround oneself with become a fascinating glimpse into the life of that mind. Far more than …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:37AM 
