EXTRA CRITICUM

Quotables: Ronald Allan-Lindblom

From time to time, Extra Criticum authors will post a quote from someone we admire, something that has stuck with us over the years and is, as they say, quotable.

The following from Ronald Allan-Lindblom:

Miriam Gillinson: Are today's playwrights too small-minded to think big?

Thanks to Jeff Sweet for flagging this post from the Guardian blog. Of course, it's a question that keeps coming up -- often on the pages of this very site. [ed note: see Rolando Teco's recent post: Our Fear of Ambition: Killing Us Softly And Slowly ] Here's an excerpt:

Panel on Contemporary Dramaturgy at CUNY

Thursday May 5, E.C. pal Morgan Jenness will join a panel of literary managers and dramaturgs including: Amy Jensen, Gideon Lester (Columbia University), Nina Mankin, and Katherine Profeta (Queens College CUNY) as they discuss their work, the field today and how to be relevant in a world of shrinking resources. More info here.

If you want to bump it...go to Philly! (For the Peek-A-Boo Revue)

 Ah, Paris…home of the Moulin Rouge, the Folies Bergere, the Crazy Horse Saloon, where Josephine Baker shook her bananas, and where artists and poets chased the green fairy in the Belle Epoque and beyond…providing much art and merriment in a time that inspired this year’s Philadelphia International Arts Festival. 
 
Ah, Philadelphia, home of the world-famous Trocadero, a Victorian-era theater, once a vaudeville and burlesque house, where the likes of Gypsy Rose Lee and Tempest Storm strutted their stuff, now a performing arts center. Sister cities, indeed!

Amazing YouTube video, courtesy of Mr. Paul Outlaw...

Paul Outlaw flagged this on facebook and I just had to share. Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Roberta Flack? It doesn't get much better than this. Enjoy!

Orchestras are going bankrupt for one simple reason. We don't love classical music anymore.

You don't hear about Aetna or HSBC or Geico having to close its doors because it's unable to pay for the health insurance, pensions and payrolls of its staff. And yet, again and again, that's the story we hear as one by one the major orchestras in this country close up shop. The latest is the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of the all-time greatest. I remember teaching myself to fake conduct to some of their recordings as a kid.

We No Longer Question This: Our Prisons Are Torture Warehouses. And Apparently We’re All OK With It?

There’s an assumption running through and underneath the writing of virtually every television and movie depiction of our criminal justice system. And it’s deeply troubling. It goes something like this: Prison is a world full of unimaginable tortures, ruled by criminal despots with little or no regard for justice such that sending certain white collar criminals to prison can equal a punishment worse than death.

It’s difficult to watch more than one or two episodes of any of the most popular crime dramas on television without coming upon a familiar scenario.

It goes something like this:

Will public outcry over cancellation of various soaps lead to something new?

There's public outcry among soap fans over the recent cancellations of One Life to Live and All My Children. Some see these latest in a string of closures as a last gasp for a genre that had long been out of sync with the culture as a whole. But on the popular site, We Love Soaps, Kevin Mulcahy, Jr. makes a convincing argument that that premise is built on smoke and mirrors and that in fact this recent public outry is indicative of something else: a fundamental disconnect between the power suits in the halls of network television and the people who watch TV all across this country during the day.

Here's a quote from Mulcahy's piece, This is America. Why is our Television Trending Fascist:

"The Office": Good riddance, Steve Carell!

Vulture's Willa Paskin gets at the reason I'm watching The Office with dry eyes and a critic's curiosity rather than a fan's verklemptness:

Yes, the Michael Scott of season seven of The Office is slightly less boorish than the Michael Scott of season two. He has matured over the course of the series — and especially this season, thanks to having found his soul mate, and, of course, having to wrap up his story arc. Michael loves his staff like they are family — they are his adopted family; that's the show's essential premise — but he still remains capable of remarkable acts of insensitivity, which is, and always has been, an integral part of his character. Michael is not, and has never been, perfect. But as Michael Scott, Steve Carell has been nearly so. And over these last few valedictory episodes of The Office, Steve Carell and Michael Scott have gotten conflated. In the world of the show, a lovable buffon is moving to Colorado; in reality, a beloved TV star is going to make movies. Only one of these guys is getting the send-off he deserves.

Legalities of Adapting and Rights

Figuring out the legal rights necessary to adapt something can seem like an impossible, not to mention expensive, labyrinth for playwrights and screenwriters to navigate.  I just chanced upon a helpful document with timetable that sheds light on this, available free online from Cornell University.  If you’re thinking of adapting, this could be a useful reference.

The Killing on AMC...

The Killing is a new show on AMC.  Same network that has brought us The Walking Dead, Mad Men, and of course, the best show on TV, Breaking Bad.  (That's right, Breaking Bad not Mad Men.... sorry, Roland.)  AMC has transformed itself from showing not so classic movies into producing really detailed, really adult stories for a demanding audience.

And The Killing continues this.  It's based on a Danish series of the same name.  Basically, the series is about the death of a high school girl and what follows, the investigation, the family and a local political race.  Great actors, moody atmosphere, here played by Seattle with great aplomb.   12 episodes, 12 days of the investigation leading to the murderer.

Linda Holmes' beautiful and stirring post on 'Monkey See' blog

Linda Holmes' recent post, The Sad Beautiful Fact That We're All Going to Miss Almost Everything is stunning. And definitely worth a read. Here's an excerpt:

You used to have a limited number of reasonably practical choices presented to you, based on what bookstores carried, what your local newspaper reviewed, or what you heard on the radio, or what was taught in college by a particular English department. There was a huge amount of selection that took place above the consumer level. (And here, I don't mean "consumer" in the crass sense of consumerism, but in the sense of one who devours, as you do a book or a film you love.)

Now, everything gets dropped into our laps, and there are really only two responses if you want to feel like you're well-read, or well-versed in music, or whatever the case may be: culling and surrender.

A Hero Chooses

The nature of free will has always provoked rich debate in religion and philosophy.  “Experimental philosophy” is a young sub-discipline, less than ten years old, that uses experimental methods developed for psychological and social research to explore philosophical problems, such as the age-old debate about determinism vs. free will. 

John Tierney recently reported in the New York Times about research being done by Shaun Nichols, professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona, and other scholars.  Nichols’s experiments have confirmed that we have an instinctive belief in free will and it kicks in at an early age. 

Loving Art Too Much: Obsession, Thievery Inspire Jules Tasca's New Play

When I was producing with En Avant Playwrights, we put on a play by Maz Troppe called “How Mona Lisa Got Her Smile.” (It had something to do with Leonardo cross-dressing, a strongman who had lost his mojo, and some purloined diamonds. But I digress…)

In fact, the Mona Lisa has inspired many other works of art since da Vinci painted her in 1503 (or ‘04). She’s been the object of speculation, obsession and fascination since her creation. And, in Paris during the time that provided the inspiration for this year’s Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (1911-1920) she disappeared for two years, spirited out of the Louvre by a worker under his coat.

A typology of stupid sitcom characters

Cross-posted at Robert David Sullivan.

Is 30 Rock's Tracy Jordan a racist caricature? Huffington Post contributor Zeeshan Aleem made the argument last year, complaining that "Tracy, the only black protagonist of the show, is invariably depicted as a hyper-sexual, mentally challenged, violent, emotionally unstable, irresponsible man-child." His essay got some more hits last week when Slate's Elizabeth Weingarten reported on 30 Rock creator Tina Fey confronting the issue on her book tour. Fey conceded that "Tracy Jordan is a ridiculous character" but implied that he's basically an extension of actor Tracy Morgan's public persona.