Made possible
by support from:
Dramatist and director Wesley Savick faces a number of fascinating but formidable theatrical challenges, and the generally compelling Yesterday Happened (how could it not be, given its story?) takes an honorable, visually striking swipe at the problems.
What is a Judicial Review? It is a fresh approach to creating a conversational, critical space about the arts and culture. This is our eighth session, a discussion about the Boston University College of Fine Arts production of the 1990 Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical Assassins, which looks at the lives and sensibilities of men and women who attempted (successfully or otherwise) to kill the President of the United States.
We are a long way from the love-destroyed-by-hostility pieties of Romeo and Juliet, but Actors’ Shakespeare Project director Tina Packer wants to make Troilus and Cressida fit into that reassuring and earnest mold.
One of my students at Boston University, Kyle Clauss, has a program on the school’s station WTBU. He had me on to talk about The Arts Fuse, teaching, and translation, among other issues. Here is the conversation, for those who are interested ….
It is important for audiences to go to Ten Blocks on the Camino Real with an open mind. Do not expect a play like The Glass Menagerie. Go to hear a youthful Tennessee Williams’s marvelously poetic voice soaring in an unbridled, expressionistic way.
It is a pleasure to report that — driven by the lively direction of Jamie Lloyd and the skills of an energetic cast — the National Theatre production proves that even after two centuries Oliver Goldsmith’s classic can still dole out plenty of comic delight.
Director Robert Lepage’s “The Andersen Project” is a masterful meditation on the agonizing process of artistic creation. Few scripts bring the mixed essence of opportunism and magic of show biz together so effortlessly.
Many countries, including our own, still have not officially acknowledged that this genocide actually occurred and who was responsible. New England, and specifically the greater Boston area, has one of the largest Armenian populations in the nation.
Both productions play around with chronology in order to show the dark side of history, to unmask convenient illusions of social or personal well-being by juxtaposing the myopia of the past with the payback of the future.
August Strindberg’s work unquestionably has not received the degree of popular acclaim in America that it deserves. It’s a bit mysterious, given that major U.S. playwrights — Eugene O’Neill, Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams — have openly acknowledged their debts to Strindberg.
Bierce proffers a satiric temperament gone wild and woolly, partly propelled by a revulsion at the criminal vulgarity of the Gilded Age. Given the current triumph of the 1%, his fury at power mad corporations is worth an admiring look.
The year kicks off with few unusual productions — companies are depending on proven New York hits, such as the Yasmina Reza duo, the Tony award-approved “Red,” and “Green Eyes,” though the Tennessee Williams curio tantalizes.
The documentary “The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground” is pleasing to watch, but there are a number of ways of respecting as well as loving great artists, the most important being coming up with the chutzpah necessary to ask the tough questions that generate illuminating, inspiring, or interesting answers.
The essential task of the critic is not to like or dislike the arts or to push bromides, such as to celebrate the “power of reading.” Despite some troublesome modifications, Lionel Trilling carries on the mission of E.A. Poe and Henry James: he articulates the value of the serious act of judgment in a culture hostile to it.
As the year nears its end, time is running out to write at length about some of the new books that gave me pleasure. Thus this quick list of favorites. As usual, my taste runs to prose that’s off-the-beaten-path.
Ben Jonson is one of the great unknown geniuses of the English theater and of western literature. Ian Donaldson’s new biography of the playwright/poet successfully makes the case that he deserves to be better known.
For all of his claims to being a subversive termite, Jonathan Lethem the puffy white elephant appears more often in this collection, trudging down a much safer, much happier road — leave the negativity to the snotty aristocrats.
As the Occupy and Tea Party movements attest, this is a time in America of social action and political upheaval -– not to the degree that we see in “Battleship Potemkin,” but significant nonetheless –- and this classic silent film has resonance today in that regard.
“High”‘s set-up is simple enough — three characters with billboard-sized guilt complexes collide.
We are grateful for the support of our loyal readers.
To donate with a credit card, please click on either one of the buttons below.
PayPal
The Arts Fuse Posterous Feed
| © 2002-2011 The Arts Fuse | Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha |
Recent Comments – Join the discussion!