159 stories from Parabasis
by 99 Seats This morning I read this at the Onion A.V. Club, and then I read this at Flavorwire. Both pieces look at work that was terribly reviewed in its time, but has since gone on to not…
By Isaac Butler The Lark is administering a brand new grant from the Jerome foundation that will pay out to winners something $40K over two years. The twist? It's for early-career writers an…
I find copyright/copyleft issues kinda endlessly fascinating, so I was pretty psyched to read to Isaac's HowlRound piece on it. You should definitely check it out; it's a great, comprehensiv…
By Isaac Butler A short essay by yours truly on intellectual property and theatre is up at HowlRound. You can point your browsers this-a-way to take a gander. The essay is more a laying out …
by 99 Seats Chuck D famously said that rap is CNN for black people. I do not consider this hyperbole. I'm not a huge rap fan, but one thing that I find constantly interesting about most rap …
Perhaps you have seen the trailers for the new cinematic adaptation of The Lorax that are making the rounds. Here's one: This marks yet another chapter is ongoing descecration of Dr. Seuss's…
By Isaac Butler The Whale, which will appear at Playwrights Horizons next season, is currently running at Denver Theater Center. This has lead a few outlets (including the Denver Post) to ma…
By Isaac Butler Claudia La Rocco has a new blog post up pushing the ball a little bit further forward in talking about politics, representation and art, specifically w/r/t Seminar on Broadwa…
... Is pretty damn good.
By Isaac Butler I suggest you point your browsers this-a-way to read playwright Cory Hinkle's take on the positives and negatives of the Minneapolis theater scene. Hinkle is much kinder abou…
Whew! Big chunk to talk about today, in a less summary fashion below: The wheels start turning and characters start reappearing in this chunk of The Pale King and we keep returning to the sa…
From The Pale King: I had an idea I'd try and write a play... It would be a totally real, true-to-life play. It would be unperformable, that was part of the point.
All right. L'Affaire Loughlin, as Isaac has so aptly dubbed it, continues apace, with the comment thread approaching 60 comments. Some are thoughtful, some are angry, some are prideful, some…
In the comments to the post below, Scott Walters weighs in: When I read Tom's essay, I knew it would be controversial, and allow a lot of people to thump their breasts in outrage. But it am…
This hit my inbox this morning, both from a friend and in the always useful You've Cott Mail. Oh, boy. Well, as you can imagine, I have some things to say. I left a comment, as...
This Michael Feingold review of Close Up Space has been making the rounds as he uses the show as an opportunity to pontificate on what's bothering him about The Kids These Days With Their Wh…
Claudia La Rocco has a fantastic piece in the Times today talking about how gender stereotypes are playing out on Broadway, given how many female playwrights are represented on the boards th…
An intrepid reader alerted me to the fact that the Times has, in fact, covered the issues of creeping commercialism in nonprofit theater before with a great deal more nuance and old-school j…
Other than being black, Lydia Diamond and Tyler Perry have nothing in common.
A wonderful mini-essay from Rob Weinert-Kendt on our desire to see "important" plays and what that means: [Shame about entertainment] has a lot to do with what we mean when we say we're ente…
This blog has (mostly) stayed out of the contretemps surrounding Arena Stage's play submission policy (short version: they've stopped taking new play submissions, sort-of, for the long versi…
For various reasons, I have found myself surrounded by 20-somethings of late. I swear I'm not seeking out their company. They just keep popping up. Honest. One way they've shown up in my lif…
Two awesome things that are even more awesome together!
I have a feeling this week is going to see me defending Arena Stage quite a bit. Peter Marks pens a piece alledging some kind of shadowy wrongdoing on Arena Stage's part for closing their la…
By Isaac Butler The ultimate purpose of art-- particularly writing-- is not self-expression. Self-expression is, in general, what art is made out of, it's base materials. But like how a wood…
