Essays about Culture Page 218

The first fruits, tangible and intangible, of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Southern Writers’ Project–a new play-commissioning program designed to cultivate writers and stories from the theatre’s own region–were unveiled on the frosty January weekend preceding Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday at ASF’s sprawling red-brick complex in Mongomery. The timing was anything but accidental. Since 39-year-old…

The title of this column is intimidating me. It keeps sounding like “Last Will and Testment.” I, Christopher Durang, being of sound mind and not on antidepressants, do hereby bring this edition of this magazine to a close. And to my beloved housekeeper, I leave all previous editions of this magazine, as well as a…

His face is familiar to anyone with a ticket to the movies or a VCR, but Hollywood isn’t his home. Wearing jeans and a cap, Jeff Daniels sits on a worn couch in a space that triples as green room and partitioned offices for the Purple Rose Theatre, which he founded in 1991 in Chelsea,…

It has taken many forms, both benevolent and oppressive, and has gone by many names since its inception centuries or even millennia ago: mentorship, indentured servitude, apprenticeship (or, if you read your Dickens, the shortened form, “‘prenticeship”). But if you thought the practice went out with Johnny Tremain, think again. It’s alive and well and…

Contiguous articles in Variety announcing that the contracts of two artistic directors would not be renewed made me think once again about the process of recruiting our theatres’ leaders and ways to then nurture relationships between artistic and managing directors and their boards and communities. At this time of economic fragility in the field, sudden…

A character stands at the center of the stage, talking directly to the audience, sharing a story, taking the crowd into his or her confidence. The device–as hallowed as the soliloquy and as modern as today’s solo–performance scene–has become an almost universal feature of contemporary dramaturgy. The character reaches across the footlights and bonds with…

No, it’s not. Well, not really. I think it has more to do with greatness and costume, actually. You could look at Lincoln and see him as the sum of his outfit. You know, his beard (actually he had lots of different kinds of beards) and his hat, coat, vest and shoes. What inspired you…

Joyce Carol Oates has always been drawn to the underside of the American imagination. Serial killers, rapists and youth gangs stalk the pages of her novels, and scenes of domestic violence, economic deprivation, loneliness and rage are commonplace. The emotional climate is intense; the language often unflinching; the vision corrosive, even apocalyptic. Now the writer…

When V.H. Meyerhold was killed and designated a non-person by the Soviets sometime around 1939, it may have seemed to the director’s adherents that his revolutionary system of kinetic movement for the stage–biomechanics–had died with him. But last year, another sign of the vast political change in Russia became apparent: Authentic training in biomechanics was…

What do these celebrated stage plays and films have in common: A Man for All Seasons, Under Milk Wood, Alfie, The Mousetrap, Voyage Round My Father and Wings? All of them began life as radio dramas for the BBC. American playwrights should take a cue from their British counterparts and be more bold about marketing…