Wednesday, December 14, 2011
A few upcoming events to consider for your calendar: Next Monday, 19 December, the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center offers an all-day symposium called “The Legacy of Reza Abdoh,” t…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:42AMTuesday, December 13, 2011
Society has an institutional investment in the eradication of pain and the elimination of tragedy from the sphere of art. Tragedy is inherently irrational, it affirms the limits of social ac…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 03:28PMAfter the Three Dialogues, Samuel Beckett tended to embed his aesthetic statements within his drama and fiction themselves, and central to his postwar aesthetic was the “revelationR…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:02AMMonday, December 12, 2011
Back in 1983, when I was fresh out of college and you could do such things while retaining a shred of hope that they might be effective, I sent an unsolicited cover letter and resume to Perf…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:58AMFriday, December 9, 2011
The worst is not So long as we can say “This is the worst.” King Lear (IV.1) During a long sad cold train ride yesterday I had the opportunity to read once again[1] Anne AtikR…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:05AMWednesday, December 7, 2011
One of the paths from Romanticism to Modernism, which I identified as a facet of a reconceived Theatre of Revolt, is a new form of an urban making-strange. It leads to a post-catastrophic wo…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:02AMTuesday, December 6, 2011
Best wishes to the cast and crew of Howard Barker’s The Forty, directed by David Ian Rabey, which opens tonight (that is, Wednesday night; damn these time zones) at the Theatr y Castel…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 04:26PMWhile John Hurt continues his run at BAM in the Gate Theatre’s production of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, those who lack the wherewithal to attend this production (t…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 01:56PMFriday, December 2, 2011
A few years ago (in 2008 to be precise) I wrote the below essay after seeing Dieter Dorn’s production of Tristan und Isolde at the Met. A much shorter version of this essay appeared on…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:27AMThursday, December 1, 2011
Now available from NoPassport Press, Popular Forms for a Radical Theatre, edited by Caridad Svich and Sarah Ruhl, reprints several essays that first appeared in an August 2006 special issue …
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:49AMWednesday, November 30, 2011
Earlier this week, Sweden’s Sveriges Radio broadcast an hour-long interview by Birgitta Tollan with pianists Marilyn Nonken (my much, much better half) and Sarah Rothenberg, which is e…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:48AMTuesday, November 29, 2011
Originally posted on 22 November 2010 and slightly revised. The end of the experiential and moral speculation in the art of theatre is knowledge. Because the aim of the art of theatre is not…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:28AMMonday, November 28, 2011
Though she did not seem to flourish particularly well at university, Sarah Kane said that her performance in a University of Bristol production of Howard Barker’s Victory was “an…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 11:13AMSunday, November 27, 2011
My readers in the United Kingdom will be interested to hear that the world premiere of Howard Barker’s 2006 play The Forty, directed by David Ian Rabey, will take place at the Theatr y…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:32AMSaturday, November 26, 2011
I did not originally link to Michael Kaiser’s “The Death of Criticism or Everyone Is a Critic,” which ran in the 14 November Huffington Post, because … well, why link…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 10:37AMWednesday, November 23, 2011
Howard Sherman’s post “Clear” at his blog yesterday re-examines transparency in the arts and arts administration in the wake of the recent Arena Stage convening which was c…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:26AMTuesday, November 22, 2011
Why would a dramatist who is the parent of two healthy young children write a play like The Elf King, which follows two parents as they raise a child who will die before reaching her third b…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 11:52AMContemporary Theatre Review‘s uniformed delivery boy was at my door at six this morning, bearing with him the new issue 21.4; my review of this summer’s Alexander McQueen exhibit…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:22AMMonday, November 21, 2011
Last Saturday The Washington Post‘s Peter Marks and arts administrator Howard Sherman sat down with American Theatre‘s editor-in-chief Jim O’Quinn to discuss “Theater…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 01:15PMSunday, November 20, 2011
Given some of the comments on last Friday’s post, it appears that, to those of us of A Certain Age, Trevor Griffiths’ 1975 play Comedians affected quite a few young men and women…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 10:40AMFriday, November 18, 2011
While The New York Times seems to be giving some of its theatre space over to comedy now (to ameliorate some of the heavier drama criticism to be found in its pages and its Web site, no doub…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:48AMThursday, November 17, 2011
The Public Theater production of King Lear, with Sam Waterston, Michael McKean, and Bill Irwin and directed by James Macdonald, closes this weekend after a run which received lackluster revi…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 12:17PMWednesday, November 16, 2011
Yesterday brought the second installment of dramatist Steve Waters‘ series “Secret Diary of a Playwright” at the Guardian, a pointed reminder that, more than the creation o…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 02:08PMMonday, November 14, 2011
Does anybody read George Bernard Shaw’s The Quintessence of Ibsenism any more? I doubt it, even though what one great twentieth-century dramatist had to say about one great nineteenth-…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:36AMFriday, November 11, 2011
In the collection of John Whiting‘s essays At Ease in a Bright Red Tie: Writings on Theatre from Oberon Books, there is an undated note called “Statement for a Play,” which…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:47AMThursday, November 10, 2011
On the other hand, when writing a play, I find it important to stay quite clear of some other plays and writings that have addressed the same issues. Given the themes of The Elf King, I am k…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:32AMWednesday, November 9, 2011
While The Elf King is not an erotic tragedy as I’ve explored that idea over the past several years, its theme does partake somewhat of the metaphysical qualities of sexuality and human…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:28AMTuesday, November 8, 2011
I’m not sure that there’s much to be concerned about the closed-session Arena Stage event this past weekend focusing on the development of new American plays, as reported (perhap…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 09:24AMThe poem “Erlkönig” by Goethe has been set to music several times (you can find Sir Walter Scott’s translation of the poem at this earlier post). Below, in a performance i…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:12AMMonday, November 7, 2011
After completing the first third (30+ pages) of The Elf King this weekend, I take a short breather so that speed does not overwhelm craft. This is always a challenge, this balancing act: one…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 08:42AMSunday, November 6, 2011
And then of course there are still commonplace entries in the Elf King notebook of good old text. Below two excerpts from Beckett, particularly germane to the circumstances of the play: Oh I…
SOURCE: Superfluities Redux at 03:55PM 
