21,643 stories from ArtsJournal
Satchmo at the Waldorf, my one-man play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced numerous times from coast to coast since its Florida premiere in 2011. I've seen eight stagings, two of which…
Just three months after she posted it, TikTokers had conjured up an entire "Ratatouille" musical universe. A composer spiced up her song with Disney-fied orchestrations. Songwriters whipped …
"Almost exactly eight months after the closure of their [last remaining] New York venue and improv training center, the Upright Citizens Brigade has announced the end of their Sunset Theater…
I loved the family Christmases of my youth and awaited them eagerly each year. In adulthood, alas, the holiday season became for me a time of increasingly fraught memories. The first of thes…
"It is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction."
Samuel Johns…
William Church, director of theatre at Interlochen Center for the Arts, writes about the perhaps-unexpected opportunities and opportunities that online-only pedagogy offered in this year of …
In my latest Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I talk about how good plays get turned into bad movies"and who's to blame. Here's an excerpt.
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The universal cri…
Louis Armstrong recites Clement Moore's "The Night Before Christmas."Â This was Armstrong's last commercial recording. He made it at his home in Queens on February 26, 1971, five months be…
"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Continue reading Almanac: Dickens on the Christmas spirit at About Last Night.
"The departure of McKeen, one of the city's most prominent arts leaders, comes as something of a shock. He'd been OCT's managing director since 2008. Before that he spent several years as a …
From 2011:
Yesterday's reminiscence of the first movie I ever saw in a theater has put me in a nostalgic mood, so with the help of Wikipedia, I've compiled a list of interesting things…
"To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year."
E.B. White, "The Distant Music of the Hounds"
Continue reading Almanac: E.B. White on Christmas at About …
Charles McNulty: "Even before the pandemic, the theater's economic model was broken. Our resident theaters, the nonprofit companies that constitute the art form's national foundation, arose …
Well, not in the theatre world, obviously " but in the wider world, Netflix carries some pretty solid cultural cachet. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is the first of Wilson's plays to be adapted f…
Sure, the U.S. is Christmas Carol'd out " but the longtime American theatre Christmas standby is also serving its home country. In Bury St. Edmunds, the play is outside, in the center of tow…
Charles Bruffy and the Kansas City Chorale perform "Nova, Nova," the second movement from Jean Belmont's Nativitas:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that …
"Now Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home."
G.K. Chesterton, The Thing
Continue reading Almanac: …
Theatre leaders met in May to hash out a response to the Black Lives Matter protests and the extrajudicial killings of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people. "They were beginning a pro…
The good: "Musicals " and, in a way, plays too " are now being filmed because of their music, not in spite of it."The less good: "They put us onstage with the story and give us no say." " Th…
Director George C. Wolfe says of the final scene, "It's a very slippery little slope: When does sharing become cultural appropriation become theft?" " Los Angeles Times
"We are all here because we believe in the power of theatre, right? We think it has the power to change minds, to catalyze conversations, to shift narratives. But we most often limit that to…
The author of The Man Without Qualities worked in the theaters of Vienna as both critic and playwright. Author Genese Grill looks at how Musil's two completed plays fed his most famous novel…
"Perth's Fringe World, which opens on 15 January, attracted criticism and protests earlier this year over its longstanding sponsorship by fossil fuel giant Woodside. In a bid to head off dis…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review three webcast productions of A Christmas Carol and a webcast of The Steadfast Tin Soldier. Here's an excerpt.
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Stage versi…
Mel Tormé sings "Moonlight in Vermont" on TV in 1967. The pianist is Stan Kenton:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday,…
