EXTRA CRITICUM

WRIGHT OUT FRONT: A Playwright Happening

This really cool thing put together by Micheline Auger. Check it out:

WHAT IT IS:

An installation of emerging and emerged playwrights writing new plays in the store front of the Drama Book Shop.  In each two hour time slot, a different playwright will work on their play while the screen shot is projected behind them visible to the street. The public can engage and support the playwright via the Write Out Front Facebook page, Twitter and Website and follow the development of the play and writer after the installation ends.

Cartoon: Critical Thinking

Discord inside a Russian Farmhouse

I have seen many productions of Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya over the years but am not likely to ever experience one with such intimacy as I did recently at Soho Rep in New York. It was an amazing evening of theatre.

Two Worlds, One Message: "Slow down."

I had the rare pleasure of attending two conferences back to back over a 4-day period this past weekend. One was the American Composers Forum's Choral Connections conference in Minneapolis, populated (as one might expect) largely by composers. The other was City Wrights, a conference of playwrights put together by City Theatre in Miami. Both were roughly the same size and both were well put together and full of informative sesssions and panels and--most encouragingly--full of talented artists dedicated to furthering their careers and honing their skills as artist entrepreneurs. Let's face it. If you live in the United States, you pretty much have no choice about the question of whether to acquire some business savvy. It's sink of swim in the U.S. and frequently the difference between a career and an unrealized dream is in large measure determined by grit and moxie.

It may not be surprising and yet I think it's worth noting that in spite of the cultural differences between the worlds of classical "Art" music and theatre, there were common threads, the most notable being the inspiration for the title of this post: "Slow down."

Here's a sampling of what one might have heard at these two gatherings:

Don Draper's Season 5 Adieu Shot Recalls Gregory Peck's in Roman Holiday

Season 5 of Mad Men came to a close with a long pull-back, holding still on Don Draper's face as his wife, Megan--on set for her first television comercial shoot and in full costume--recedes further and further into the darkness, gradually becoming smaller and smaller in frame as Don walks toward us. I'm told the effect has receieved mixed reviews online but I found it wonderful. Emotionally arresting in the way all great filmmaking is. The visual reflects the emotional. Period. So much so that writing about it tends to deaden its effect.

So I'll not say too much more about it other than to point out its obvious homage to William Wyler's use of the same shot to convey the same emotional transition in the brilliant film Roman Holiday in which after a couple of days together, Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn's characters finally face the reality that they are (and will be) forever worlds apart. Here's a shot from the original:

The Gershwins' Death of a Salesman?

In New York City it is now possible to purchase a ticket to The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess. You can also purchase a ticket to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. But not Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park. Just Clybourne Park.

What's up with this trend (do two shows consistute a trend?) of shoehorning the authors' names into the titles of their shows?

A Play I Happened to Have Written

Every writer can tell a version of this story:

For one reason or another, you are called upon to look at some of your old work. As you go through it, a disquieting feeling arises. Lines are unfamiliar. You look at passages and can no longer remember writing them. The decisions that went into each and every word, decisions that lived in the forefront of your consciousness for months, or even years, are gone like vapor. There is a foreign quality to the whole project. You find yourself asking questions: What was the impetus for this scene? Where did these characters come from? In the end, it all crystalizes into a single, almost existential query:

Who wrote this?

"Choose Patti's Encore Song" - an interesting example of tying ownership binds between audiences and live entertainment

So Patti Lupone is opening a new cabaret space in New York called 54 Below. (It's below the former Studio 54, now home to Roundabout Theatre Co.) I was struck by this promo that hit my INBox today inviting me to purchase tickets and email the date of the performance I'll be attending with my personal request for Ms. Lupone's encore number. Presumably, these emailed requests will then be pulled from a hat and one lucky audience member will glow as the opening chords of that little obscure ballad they've dreamed of hearing interpreted by Lupone fill the room.

But what about the other hundred folks whose song was not selected? Do they endure the encore thinking how much they wish their suggestion had been picked and how much better it would have been had it been?

One of those rare star-studded perfect evenings that could only be assembled in New York, as described by Tari Stratton

I was going to post about the Dramatists Guild Fund's 50th Anniversary Gala which was assembled impeccably by its Executive Director Rachel Routh, but Tari Stratton did such a fine job herself on her Magical Miss Tari Tour blog that I figured, why re-invent the whleel? Enjoy! And thanks, Tari, for so completely describing a most memorable evening of talent.

Here's a sample:

Playwright Tammy Ryan charts the landscape of Pittsburgh Theatre on HowlRound

Here's a lovely paragraph from Tammy Ryan's blog post about Pittsburgh theatre from the perspective of the playwright. The post just appeared yesterday on HowlRound.

The Slasher Movie Book!

I had seen films in the theater before I was 17 years old, and I’ve even written about that experience here once before, but when I was 17, a perfect storm blew into my life. I finally had my driver’s license and a car, I lived in the suburbs and hung out with a group of bored, like-minded, teenage boys, and the Golden Age of the slasher film was about to begin. In the fall of 1978, John Carpenter unleashed Michael Myers on the world and the gruesome genre was born, big shiny knife in hand.

Is Mad Men written backward, and is that a bad thing?

On my regular blog, I weigh in on the "Would Joan really do that?" debate sparked by the most recent episode of Mad Men ("Let's remind ourselves that Mad Men characters aren't real"), and I would love to get the perspective of the E.C. community on the importance of character consistency on a TV series. I also have a question prompted by this passage (spoiler removed) in James Poniewozik's criticism of the episode: