Monday, March 3, 2014
I've been thinking all day about Ellen DeGeneres's hosting of last night's Academy Awards show broadcast, which seems to have drawn mixed reviews. I was personally delighted by her low-k…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:59PM[SHARE]Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Peggy Shaw's latest solo show, Ruff, explores with brutal honesty and frank clarity the physical and emotional costs of surviving a stroke. Shaw says her 2011 stroke felt as thou…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 10:55PM[SHARE]Friday, January 10, 2014
There's a bit of a firestorm on Twitter and on line these past few days about criticism (again), prompted in part by Polly Carl's HowlRound post, “A New Year’s Diet for the Th…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:05PM[SHARE]Wednesday, January 1, 2014
I often begin writing blogs that for one reason or another don't get finished. I'm taking this New Year's Day 2014 opportunity to spend a few words (well, more like 5,000 words!) mention…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:09PM[SHARE]I grew up on the music of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, often whether I knew it or not, singing along to scat-like sounds of Dionne Warwick in "Do You Know the Way to San José?" and la-la-l…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:18AM[SHARE]Monday, December 30, 2013
Unlike Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks, Oscar Isaac plays an unlikeable character who never quite redeems himself. The Coen brothers' latest film is shorter on the quirky outlandishnes…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 12:12PM[SHARE]In a World, actor Lake Bell's debut as an indy writer/director, is a wonderful, witty, madcap exploration of voice-over talent inscribed with a feminist message. "In a world . . ." refer…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 11:19AM[SHARE]Mary Poppins was the first movie I ever saw. The moment warranted dressing up to go downtown (in Pittsburgh) to see it at a swanky theatre with my parents and my then very little sister.…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:25AM[SHARE]Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Being acknowledged by your peers for a career’s worth of work is a wonderful thing. Â On November 9, at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) conference in Dallas, I was h…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 12:50PM[SHARE]Wednesday, October 30, 2013
It used to be that lesbian films"that peculiar underground brand made by and about and for lesbians, though not necessarily starring them"were sordid affairs. The subcultural economy for…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 02:56PM[SHARE]Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Two weeks ago, Slate ran a short piece called "Fun Home:Â Is America Ready for a Musical about a Butch Lesbian?"Â The article quotes collaborators Jeanine Tesori [...]
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 03:46PM[SHARE]Thursday, October 17, 2013
And now, for a little cross-posting . . . The good folks at Imagining America have begun a new journal called Public: Â Arts, Design, Humanities. It’ll be another terrific online for…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 04:00PM[SHARE]Monday, October 14, 2013
Classic Stage's production of Shakespeare's love story competes with the high visibility of Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad performing on Broadway in a rendering that got respectful though …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 12:23PM[SHARE]Sunday, September 29, 2013
John Tiffany's brilliant production of Williams's classic boasts acting so precise and full and rich I sometimes found myself raised above the play, marveling at the skill and talent instead…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 12:05PM[SHARE]Monday, September 23, 2013
The 2013 Emmy Awards deserve only brief mention here. Â What a tone-deaf show! Â What a shame that of several of the evening’s surprising upsets, Kerry Washington didn’t take…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 06:43AM[SHARE]Monday, September 16, 2013
Anne Washburn's terrific new play, in an elegant, understated production directed by Steve Cosson at Playwrights Horizons, addresses a near-future dystopia in which American civilization has…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 04:12PM[SHARE]Thursday, September 12, 2013
What's irksome about this play by filmmaker Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men) at the Atlantic Theatre Company is that it's so clearly a rough draft. While most American playwrig…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 07:02AM[SHARE]Friday, August 30, 2013
Neill Blomkamps' commitment to the plight of the global 99% seems radical for a filmmaker given a block-buster budget and a chance to work with superstar Matt Damon. The South African fi…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:29AM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Blanche DuBois is an iconic character of the white male American imaginary, a damaged, even pathological figure, whose sexual and emotional pathos drives Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Nam…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:09AM[SHARE]Friday, August 9, 2013
Teaching my course on gender, sexuality, and pop culture last spring, I encountered some of the progressive, queer-friendly narratives of the ABC Family network’s line up for th…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 01:24PM[SHARE]Wednesday, August 7, 2013
The Killing‘s third season proved a terrific corrective to the flabby, rainy, interminable, "Who killed Rosie Larson?" affair of its first two.  With a taut story-line and ever-d…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:36PM[SHARE]Thursday, July 25, 2013
City Center's new summer "Encores! Off-Center" series was inaugurated this month with Jeanine Tesori as Artistic Director. The program is an off-shoot of the wildly popular Encores! seri…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 06:47PM[SHARE]. . . concerns Anna Deavere Smith’s presidential medal for the humanities and the model she sets for artists determined to combine politics and art. Â Also mentioned are Ellen Page, …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 02:10PM[SHARE]In another guest blog for Symposium Magazine, I discuss the potential of quality television for expanding roles for women artists, focusing on AMC’s series, The Killing. Â More on th…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 07:44AM[SHARE]Tuesday, July 23, 2013
I've loved Melissa McCarthy ever since I saw her in Paul Feig's wonderful Bridesmaids, where she stole the show with her performance as an over-sized, over-sexed-in-her-own-mind, straight-sh…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 02:06PM[SHARE]Monday, July 22, 2013
I’m guest-blogging on the Symposium Magazine site this week, in relation to my essay there on feminist pleasure in pop culture. Â Today’s post addresses Kerry Washington…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:26AM[SHARE]Sunday, July 21, 2013
I’ve been traveling throughout the month of July and will spend the next week or two catching up with “The Feminist Spectator.” Much to discuss, including: The Emmy Award n…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:19AM[SHARE]Sunday, June 30, 2013
Moe Angelos and Marianne Weems of The Builders Association have created a mesmerizing new media performance from the recently published diaries of Susan Sontag. The spoken text is ada…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:00PM[SHARE]Tuesday, June 25, 2013
So here's the thing about Diane Paulus and how she directs musicals: She takes song-driven, narrative-lite titles like Hair and Pippin and makes them practically irresistible. She's …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:55AM[SHARE]Monday, June 17, 2013
I've been reading around in the blogosphere, catching up on current debates and controversies. I noted with interest Laura Linney's remarks, on the occasion of her Crystal Award for wome…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 04:25PM[SHARE]Monday, June 10, 2013
Can't Neil Patrick Harris (NPH) be hired to host all of the televised award shows? Good thing he's already lined up to do the 2013 Emmy Awards in June. If the producers of the Oscars…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:01AM[SHARE] 
