I’d like to wish regular readers of Superfluities Redux a very happy 2012, and offer them my thanks for continuing to visit the site through 2011. I will take a brief pause before resu…
For those who still believe that the theatrical blogosphere rings the death knell for serious drama criticism in America, here’s something to put that fear to rest: The George Jean Nat…
Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the…
In the below excerpt, the Romanian/French playwright Eugene Ionesco discusses his childhood, his early experiences at the theatre, his own particular sense of the absurd, and the close relat…
The Guardian recently launched a welcome series called “Michael Billington’s A to Z of modern drama” with Billington’s comments on Martin Esslin’s 1961 book The…
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…
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…
After 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
While 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…
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Contemporary 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…
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…
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…