2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
My essay in the July/August double issue of Commentary is about Lincoln Center. Here's an excerpt. * * * Lincoln Center, the first major urban performing-arts center in America, was well on …
"'A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her,' he said, 'but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.'" Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
The opening of the twenty-fifth Academy Awards ceremony, the first to be televised. The ceremony, which took place on March 19, 1953, was introduced by Charles Brackett, co-author of the scr…
"It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh." Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
From 2005: For years my mother took care of me whenever I needed taking care of, wiping my brow and mending my scrapes, listening to me gripe about the slightest ache or pain (I was no bette…
"I don’t have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem." Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland, "The Texas Skilsaw Massacre" (a 2002 episode of King of the Hill)
I have big news. The simplest and best way to break it is to reprint the following press release from Florida's Palm Beach Dramaworks, which went out this morning. It speaks for itself, and …
An excerpt from Peter Brook's 1969 film of King Lear, starring Paul Scofield as Lear, Jack MacGowran as the Fool, and Irene Worth as Goneril: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related …
"Glamour is a trap if you go just for that. It does not develop the ability. At first when one starts acting one is really searching for an identity. Work is really the sole means of an educ…
Time: Wednesday. Place: a rental car en route from Storrs, Connecticut, to Mountainville, New York. Scott Joplin on Guitar is playing on the stereo. HE Hey, what's the name of that rag? Look…
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review Eric Tucker's Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and an off-Broadway staging of Doctor Faustus. H…
Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World, a 1963 film documentary directed by Shirley Clarke: To read more about the film, go here. (This is the latest in a series of arts-related vide…
"Shaw has always seemed a journalist and not really a literary man. It's his tendentiousness, I think, that keeps him trivial. He's always out to solve social problems"the sure sign of a sup…
"I find that I now can read only the true fanatics with any feeling of affinity: those who in courage or desperation abandon any attempt to address an audience of cretins and speak exclusive…
Ever since I was old enough to understand what it meant, seeing the Confederate battle flag on display has made me squirm"and the fact that it continues to fly over state houses in the Deep …
Leonard Bernstein leads the National Symphony in a 1980 concert performance of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait commemorating the composer's eightieth birthday. The text is spoken by Copland…
"Henry James. He is someone to contend with, but an awful lot is missing"how much can be seen by comparing him with Proust. His sexual sensibility is that of a Victorian maiden of the upper …
' Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time is full of seemingly random observations about life whose general applicability causes them to leap off the page. Here are two that come to mi…
From 2005: Like everybody else in the world, I’ve become a compulsive shuffle-player. To date I’ve loaded 2,849 "songs" onto my iBook and iPod, and while I occasionally pick and …
"Many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag) whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Ha…
' How dare you talk about A when B is infinitely more important? ' If I disagree with you, you're almost certainly arguing in bad faith and probably evil as well. ' You are personally respon…
Having attained an age when I find it increasingly difficult to retrieve names with the effortless ease of my youth, I'm fascinated by the persistence, vividness, and exactitude of my earlie…
Fats Waller sings and plays "Ain't Misbehavin'" in Stormy Weather, directed by Andrew L. Stone and released in 1943. The band includes Benny Carter on trumpet, Slam Stewart on bass, and Zutt…
At long last, here's an online video of Theater Talk's 2015 Broadway end-of-season critics' panel, featuring Ben Brantley of the New York Times, Peter Marks of the Washington Post, John Simo…
"My feeling that not just America but the West is finished is based on a conviction that when a civilization becomes obsessed with its deficiencies, it is degenerating." Thomas Berger, lette…
