21,643 stories from ArtsJournal
"Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it."
Ralph Ellison, Invis…
"For the most part, it didn't aim straight at the president. … Rather, producers elevated formally adventurous, politically incendiary plays " like Heidi Schreck's What the Constitution Me…
Jonas Loeb, communications director of IATSE, says this time around turning music venues into a vaccination center would require a new configuration. "It doesn't use any unusual technique." …
From 2006:
I woke up this morning at nine-thirty, an hour later than my normal get-up-and-go time. As I descended from the loft in which I spend my nights, it struck me that I had nothing wh…
"We have all forgot more than we remember."
Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia
Continue reading Almanac: Thomas Fuller on memory at About Last Night.
"No one is going to want to see my Donald Trump" now. Anyone who is seeking Trump comedy after Jan. 21, I just feel bad for them." " Washington Post
Three national lockdowns in Britain, as well as tough social distancing guidelines, have hampered the business of England's court system this past year, creating a huge backlog of cases. Sin…
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli plays the slow movement of Ravel's G Major Piano Concerto, accompanied by Sergiu Celidibache and the London Symphony:Â
(This is the latest in a series of ar…
"Things are beautiful if you love them."
Jean Anouilh, Mademoiselle Colombe (trans. Louis Kronenberger)
Continue reading Almanac: Jean Anouilh on beauty at About Last Night.
Yes, it's partly because of TikTok and the world of duets, collaborations, and free-flowing (but in this case, very directed) creativity. But it's so much more: "Averno [is] the setting of a…
What does it look like when a small-scale, long-term community effort in Detroit is connected to a small-scale, long-term community effort in Seattle or Dallas? What is there to learn and ex…
"Everything about the experience of using a computer is still flat, everything uses these windows, but then we also have high-speed processes that allow for these windows to actually be func…
Puppetry had never been part of the Yiddish theater tradition, but in 1920s America, they were all the rage. So in 1925-26, a pair of writers created a Purim shpiel (the Jewish equivalent of…
Shows were running in the French capital for a few months last year, before a big new wave of COVID infections led to a new lockdown and a crop of new productions were going to waste. But no…
A new episode of Three on the Aisle, the podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading…
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column, I review two theatrical webcasts drawn from important New York productions of the past by the Hunter Theater Project and Shakespeare in the Park.…
A scene from the 1963 film of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya," directed by Laurence Olivier and starring Olivier, Rosemary Harris, and Michael Redgrave:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and…
"A woman can be a man's friend only in this sequence: first an acquaintance, then a mistress, and after that a friend."
Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya
Continue reading Almanac: Chekhov on fri…
The NEC's roots lay in a drama workshop for Harlem youth that founder Robert Hooks ran in a makeshift theater in his apartment until the landlord found out. The professional company was born…
"The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionaries are philosophers a…
On January 17, 1921, in a north London theatre, "an English magician called Percy Thomas Tibbles literally and laboriously sawed through a sealed wooden box that contained a woman. It was a …
James Earl Jones appears in a scene from the original Broadway production of August Wilson's Fences, performed on the 1987 Tony Awards telecast:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- …
"Finality is not the language of politics."
Benjamin Disraeli, speech in the House of Commons (February 28, 1859)
Continue reading Almanac: Disraeli on politics at About Last Night.
"Has it really happened that way, though? To go back to my paragon, Pauline Kael, she was perceived as shaping the course of Hollywood, and I'm not sure she did when you look back at it. Cul…
From 2011:
For the most part I've only talked about it in passing on this blog, but a year ago I started writing a one-man play about Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser, his longtime manager. (T…
