66 stories by "The Feminist Spectator"
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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 [...]
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…
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 …
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
. . . 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, …
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…
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…
