2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column I consider the question of why classic big-cast plays are vanishing from America's stages"and offer some suggestions for what to do about it…
Bill Monroe plays "My Last Days on Earth," which he wrote when he was being treated for colon cancer in 1981. He died in 1996: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that app…
"There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814
"Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all." Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms
TUESDAY, AUGUST 18 (cont'd) As soon as I retrieved my wandering suitcase and returned from the Hartford airport, Mrs. T and I collected our nephew Ian and his friend Max and drove down to Ne…
The Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet plays Terry's "Tete a Tete" on Jazz 625, originally telecast by the BBC on February 21, 1965: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos th…
"Dangers by being despised grow great; so they do by absurd provision against them." Edmund Burke, speech on the Petition of the Unitarians, 1792.
From 2005: My own hand, alas, is not so easy or rewarding. I'm left-handed, with an ink-smudging overhand hook so exaggerated that my first-grade teacher, who in 1962 was already a thoroughl…
"When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity"that was a quality God's image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shap…
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12 Sometimes my theater-related trips resemble paid vacations with a little work thrown in. Other times, irrespective of the quality of the shows that I see, they're just a…
Elmore Leonard reads the first chapter of his novel Freaky Deaky at Butler University in 2010: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, W…
"I make it a practice to avoid hating anyone. If someone's been guilty of despicable actions, especially toward me, I try to forget him. I used to follow a practice"somewhat contrived, I adm…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review a Connecticut revival of Alan Ayckbourn's Bedroom Farce and the New York premiere of A.J. Gurney's Love & Money. Here's an excerpt. * * * Alan Ay…
Jacques d'Amboise and Melissa Hayden dance George Balanchine's Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux on an episode of Voice of Firestone telecast in 1962. The music, originally written by Tchaikovsky for …
"Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression." Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wal…
"As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth." Edward Abbey, A Voice …
MONDAY, AUGUST 10 I'm not afraid to fly anymore, but I still hate it with a passion. I sometimes say that The Wall Street Journal pays me to sit in airports and on airplanes, not to write ab…
Ray Price and the Cherokee Cowboys perform "Invitation to the Blues" on a 1959 episode of Country Style, USA, a TV series produced by the U.S. Army. The song was written by Roger Miller, who…
"Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously." Wyndham Lewis, "Inferior Religions"
From 2005: I wrote what I thought was a pretty funny theater review this morning. It took me two and a half hours to finish the first draft and an hour to polish it. I spent most of that las…
"No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad." Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus
SUNDAY, AUGUST 9 I review a hundred shows a year, more or less, for The Wall Street Journal. This means that I rarely have time to see anything I'm not reviewing, and that I also have to for…
Leonard Bernstein introduces Leopold Stokowski, who conducts the New York Philharmonic in his arrangement of Bach's "Little" Fugue in G Minor. An excerpt from "Bach Transmogrified," a Young …
"A stylist is usually a very diffident person who tries to compensate for his sense of inadequacy by careful attention to every word. A diffident man cannot allow himself to work badly, in s…
