EXTRA CRITICUM

Ohio Theatre: The end is nigh?

This just in from E.C. reader/commenter/prize-winner Robin Rothstein who sits on the Steering Committee for the Community Forum on the Ohio Theatre. The loss of the Ohio would be a loss of a piece of NYC theatre history, not to mention just one more casualty in a long and ever-expanding list of closings of small venues friendly to experimentation and risk-taking.

Here's a bit about the Community Forum scheduled for Monday night, April 26th at the Ohio. If you can make it, please do and report back to us here at E.C. about what transpired. We all have a vested interest here, folks.

Charles Ives painted with orchestra

When Charles Ives composed his Three Places in New England suite for orchestra, no one knew what to make of it. Part III, subtitled: "The Housatonic at Stockbridge" was inspired by standing along the edge of the Housatonic River in Stockbridge, CT. Listen to the music and you'll hear two distinct forces: 1) the constant rumble of the current of the river which is in the foreground and 2) the faint strains of a hymn, fragmented at first, barely audible, but slowly growing in force. According to legend, there was a church on the opposite shore of the river from where Ives stood, in which a choir was practicing hymns. 

Zadie, Zadie, Grumpy Lady: A Response to "Invaluable Writing Advice"

So I received something via ye olde email machine that I can’t quite get out of my head.  It’s an email from Gotham Writers’ Workshop: writing advice from Zadie Smith – Zadie Smith!  Of “White Teeth” fame!  Zadie Smith’s a great writer! And famous!  And successful!  Her advice must be great, right? Well, not so much.  I’m going to reprint her advice here, and then make a few notes of my own.

Bye Bye Betty

 
Tonight, we say goodbye to UGLY BETTY, a show that was moved to a terrible late Friday night slot and never recovered. Creatively, Betty's first season was incredible - soapy, funny, dramatic and interesting.. but the show hit a creative skid in the second season when Betty's beau, a lovable nerd named Henry, discovered that his ex-girlfriend, Charlie, was carrying his child. It was impossible for the show to let the character go so they did the unthinkable - they gambled that the audience would accept that Betty and Henry were in love and that although he was planning to move out of the city to be with Charlie and the newborn, he and Betty could still be together to have great hot sex. This might have worked on Gossip Girl, but on Betty, where the narrative depends on the main character being 'good'.. I mean, she can be a fuckup, but she basically has to be the one that everyone watching aspires to, well, I believe it turned viewers off and Betty came off looking like a homewrecker and worse, selfish. It's hard to root for that.

If you don't know about these films, you better have a good excuse, like you were raised by wolves, something like that.

These films are not "the best" but maybe we can call them the most influential, and I don't mean they've influenced other films, but influenced the culture. They've affected the way we speak, see, behave, think, and feel. Sometimes we're aware of it, sometimes we're not; some of them are quoted or referenced so often we've lost touch with the original source.  

The Seven Stages of Loss ... er, LOST

 
1. SHOCK & DENIAL-

I am surprised I got so involved with this show and am in denial that I surf the net for comments about the show the day after it’s aired.

2. PAIN & GUILT-

Man, has some of season six been painful but I feel guilty that I’ve watched every minute.

My fascination with Reality TV (fast food) and then my hunger for TV of substance (Showtime, AMC, etc.)

Ok...I don't believe it's a secret that I am a TV addict and have been since my early days of game show and sitcom watching i.e. Match Game '75, Password (with Allen Luden and a young Betty White) and of course That Girl, Bewitched and the like.  As I've gotten 'older' I strayed away from television and became a 'movie snob' seeing at least 5 movies a week in the theaters back in the 70's and 80's and then when Indie's became 'the thing' my snobbery only heightened as I 'swore' I would never (if offered) write for TV - 'so beneath me' - and would only write hardcore, very dark plays and/or screenplays.

This being said, nowadays I can barely keep up with the saved shows on my DVR and the list is long.  I look so forward each week to the following REALITY SHOWS: ANTM, Survivor, Project Runway (which does involve a lot of talent - COME ON !), The Celebrity Apprentice, A.I. (can't let this one go, it's killing me)... Shear Genius and so forth.  My rationale is that I watch to view the psychology of people, some regular and some yes celebrities without a script... Oh I forgot to mention Celebrity Rehab and Celebrity Fit Club - haunting and mesmerizing.

Is Censorship in America Obsolete?

Yesterday some friends and I drove to Philly to see a new play by Yussef El Guindi at the Wilma Theater. Language Rooms is a brilliant, sly, witty, provocative play which deals with issues too numerous and complex to be adequately addressed in a blog, but suffice it to say: this play packs a powerful punch. In addition to being a moving meditation on the immigrant experience in America, it is also a brutal indictment of our government's paranoia and the recent unmooring of the idea of America as a beacon of liberty.

There were lines of dialogue in this play so biting, so sharp in what they uncover of our shared willful blindness, that I felt my body wince even as my throat erupted in uncontrollable laughter. But this is the sort of laughter that emanates from deep sadness; it's the laughter of Kafka and Gogol, Ionesco and Orwell. This laughter stands on a foundation built upon years of suffering.

One Artistic Director Responds to Rolando's Shot Across the Bow

Dear Rolando:

I recently read your post "Playing it Safe: Art's Most Formidable Enemy" with interest. I have a selfish curiosity I suppose, since I am the Artistic Director of a mid-sized opera company that's not in New York City. Given those facts, I have to say, I don't think I'm motivated by fear. At all.