2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
I am pleased"and surprised"to announce"that five drama companies, not four, will be producing Satchmo at the Waldorf this season. In addition to Chicago's Court Theatre, San Francisco's Amer…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review two new Broadway musicals, School of Rock and The Color Purple. Here's an excerpt. * * * The commodity musical, that parasitical genre in which Hollyw…
Sammy Davis, Jr., plays drums and vibraphone on The Ed Sullivan Show. This episode was originally telecast on January 6, 1963: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that app…
"I have learned much about human relations through long experience. I give it to you in a nutshell: if you are in trouble, go for help and understanding to a person who is also in trouble! I…
"A memoir is how one remembers one's own life." Gore Vidal, Palimpsest
The first rehearsal for the Chicago premiere of Satchmo at the Waldorf went exhilaratingly well. Barry Shabaka Henley, whom I met for the first time yesterday morning, proved to be both a fi…
The Paris Opera Ballet performs Jerome Robbins' In G Major, a ballet set to Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this sp…
"'You see, the way I look at it, there are only two kinds of books: bedside and wastebasket. Either I love a writer fervently, or throw him out entirely.' "'A bit severe, isn't it? And a bit…
A few minutes from now I'll leave Our Girl's apartment in Chicago and walk two blocks to the rehearsal hall where Barry Shabaka Henley, Charles Newell, and I start work later this morning on…
The Wall Street Journal has given me an extra drama column this week in which I report on two off-Broadway premieres, Bedlam's New York Animals and the Manhattan Theatre Club's Important Hat…
From 2005: Television can make you famous, but it can't keep you famous. It's more like an opiate"as soon as you stop taking your daily fix, you get all pale and clammy, and before long you …
"But the old adage that men grow into office has not proved true in my experience. High office teaches decision-making, not substance. Cabinet members are soon overwhelmed by the insistent d…
I noted in this space eleven years ago the death of Joseph J. Zimmermann Jr., the man who invented the answering machine. On that occasion I quoted something that H.L. Mencken told a reporte…
Irving Berlin sings "God Bless America" as part of a tribute to his eightieth birthday telecast on The Ed Sullivan Show on May 5, 1968. He wrote the song in 1918. It was first performed in 1…
"The typical political leader of the contemporary managerial society is a man with a strong will, a high capacity to get himself elected, but no very great conception of what he is going to …
In today's Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway premiere of David Mamet's China Doll. Here's an excerpt. * * * "China Doll" is a new two-man play by one of America's best living playwri…
In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column I write about a long-forgotten but incomparably vivid stage memoir, Emlyn Williams' George. Here's an excerpt. * * * For years I thought tha…
An assemblage by Jon Hancock of fragmentary surviving newsreel footage and still photographs of Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall concert, featuring Harry James on trumpet, Gene Krupa on dr…
"Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By jove! I'm being humble,' and almost immediately pride"pride at his own humi…
"Movie actors are just ordinary mixed-up people"with agents." Jean Kerr, Mary, Mary
Otto Klemperer is interviewed by John Freeman on Face to Face, originally telecast on the BBC in 1961: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each M…
"The actor's technique is that personal and very private means by which you get the best out of yourself. Every actor does it differently. There's never been an artist alive who didn't have …
Mrs. T and I have just added a new piece to the Teachout Museum, a posthumous impression of an unsigned drypoint by Berthe Morisot, a member of the original circle of French Impressionists. …
From 2005: The trouble with my life is not that it’s dull but that it sometimes becomes too interesting, at which point successive waves of beauty can start looking suspiciously like o…
"If you're not lucky enough to cut your teeth on Shakespeare you should cut your teeth on farce." Hume Cronyn (quoted in the New York Times, June 17, 2003)
