Friday, April 15, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal I report from Chicago on the premiere of Tracy Letts’ new play, Mary Page Marlowe. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Tracy Letts is a poet of the ordinary, a play…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMThe Everly Brothers sing “Wake Up, Little Susie” and “Bye Bye Love” on The Perry Como Show, accompanied by Mitchell Ayers and His Orchestra. This episode was originally telecast on N…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Profundity must smile.” Thomas Mann, Lotte in Weimar: The Beloved Returns
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, April 14, 2016
Paul Moravec and I are headed down to Florida this weekend for our latest premiere: John Sinclair and the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park are giving the first performance of our latest …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM“I have always been an admirer. I regard the gift of admiration as indispensable if one is to amount to something; I don’t know where I would be without it.” Letter, 1950, quoted in Ma…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, April 13, 2016
Jean Renoir talks about La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) in an introduction to the film’s 1959 re-release. He speaks in French with English subtitles. The film, originally released…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.” Thomas Mann, Essay on Freud
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, April 12, 2016
From 2006: It’s been a long time since I paid an overnight visit to suburbia, and I happily admit to having found it pleasant. I sat on a patio yesterday morning, sipping a drink, basking …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“The important thing for me, then, is not the ‘work,’ but my life. Life is not the means for the achievement of an esthetic ideal of perfection; on the contrary, the work is an ethical…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, April 11, 2016
Van Cliburn plays and conducts a performance of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, Op. 26, with the State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Moscow. This concert was originally telecast on Sovi…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“We are most likely to get angry and excited in our opposition to some idea when we ourselves are not quite certain of our own position, and are inwardly tempted to take the other side.”…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, April 8, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two important out-of-town revivals, Writers Theatre’s Arcadia and Repstage’s Hunting and Gathering. Here’s an excerpt. * * * The …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMDave Dudley sings “Six Days on the Road” on TV in 1970: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool.” William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, April 7, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I look at a major American art museum that appears to be headed down the road to populist pandering. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Where …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMMerle Haggard and the Strangers perform “That’s The Way Love Goes,” by Lefty Frizzell and Sanger D. Shafer, on The Ralph Emery Show in 1995. The pianist is Iris Dement:
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:25AM“Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, April 6, 2016
Neil Young sings “I Am a Child” in concert in 1978: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AMIMOGEN Oh, do not make me laugh. Laughter dissolves too many just resentments Pardons too many sins. IACHIMO And saves the world A many thousand murders. George Bernard Shaw, Cymbeline Refin…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, April 5, 2016
Mrs. T has a longstanding weakness for James Bond films, so we watched Thunderball, which I hadn’t seen, the other night. Midway through the film I said to her, “If this damn score doesn…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMFrom 2006: But the new kind of spin that enrages me is a different proposition altogether. It’s not unconscious: it’s wholly knowing, a deliberate attempt to use speech not for the purpo…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“They want to be excited, and upset, and made miserable, to have their flesh set creeping, to gloat and quake over scenes of misfortune, injustice, violence, and cruelty, with the discomfi…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, April 4, 2016
Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, is going to be performed by several regional theater companies during the 2016-17 season. The first of them, the Mosaic Theater Company of Washington, …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:30AMGeorge Bernard Shaw talks about the filming of Pygmalion in a 1939 British Movietone newsreel: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, W…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:15AM“You and I are worse than characters: we are character-actors.” George Bernard Shaw, letter to T.E. Lawrence, March 7, 1927
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMFriday, April 1, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review an off-Broadway premiere, Aaron Posner’s Stupid Fu**kng Bird, and the new Broadway revival of The Crucible. Here’s an excerpt. * * * It’s beco…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMBooker T. and the MGs perform “Time Is Tight” in concert in 1970. The members of Creedence Clearwater Revival are seen watching the performance from backstage: (This is the latest in a s…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, March 31, 2016
“Here’s the thing about black and white. It’s why I was so sad to say goodbye to it. It’s not literal—it is a metaphor, automatically. And my orientation is that that’s the point…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, March 30, 2016
George Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux,” danced by Patricia McBride and Mikhail Baryshnikov. The score was originally composed by Tchaikovsky for Swan Lake but was not published …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Why, you simple creatures, the weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.” Mark Twain, “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg”
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AM 
