Essays about Culture Page 230

The Orpheus myth never goes out of date  In Robert Lepage’s solo turn Needles and Opium–an evocative odyssey into the drug addictions and lost loves that haunted Jean Cocteau and Miles Davis as they embarked on simultaneous transatlantic flights in 1949 the Canadian theatremaker’s alter-ego, a contemporary character identified only as Robert, reveals his own…

Politics and circumstance have conspired, it seems, to land us squarely in the No Generation: Sex is dangerous, private freedoms are public business, personal flamboyance is suspect. Small wonder that we’re nostalgic for the profligate past–for a time when the sensualist was ascendent, when the flouting of conventional wisdom earned one a place, paradoxically, in…

Theatre managers discuss the recession and prospects for the year ahead  Drowning isn’t a sport. A drowning man isn’t concerned with his form; his only thought is staying alive. He flails and gasps and kicks like mad. This may keep him afloat, but very few would mistake his plight for “swimming.” There are a lot…

Everyone knows what rehearsal skirts are for: Although wrong, wrong, wrong for the show, they make actors very happy. These garments, having absolutely no other relation to the vision of the costume designer than their approximate length, weight and fullness, are ardently requested by the modern actor, who comes to rehearsal wearing a sweatshirt, jeans…

Much of the important work on theatre history and dramatic literature currently being done within the academy falls under the category of “gender studies. ” Responding to Adrienne Rich’s call to revise the cultural past (to “look back in gender,” as Michelle Wandor has put it), feminist critics and their progeny, especially in gay and…

The world was spared another lawyer and got a world-class clown instead when Kenny Raskin’s mother suggested he take an acting course while waiting to go to law school. Now the only U. S. performer in Cirque du Soleil’s Nouvelle Experience, he’s nightly charming vacationing families, lone-wolf gamblers and the occasional Hollywood superstar who wanders…

Many angels grace Angels in America, but only one has wings. This is by playwright Tony Kushner’s design. Forced to endure the purgatory of AIDS-related illnesses and the disease’s horrific effects, his earthbound angels discover the freedom of imagination. By the end of Kushner’s two-part, six-act epic, mortals learn how to fly into terra incognita…

Some 10 years or so ago, a friend, returning from Russia to England where I live, told me he had seen a great production of The Three Sisters directed by Yuri Lubimov at the Taganka Theatre in Moscow. The action was split among three platforms, and sometimes the actors spoke simultaneously on all three. At…

The arts lose some heroes in Congress, but gain a sense of hope  After 12 years of Republican Administrations that were, at best, indifferent to the nation’s cultural community–more often inhospitable and at times outright hostile–the dawn of the Clinton era spells relief to artists and arts professionals. When, during the early stages of the…

In fair Verona, a pair of star crossed lovers takes their lives. Leonardo Dicaprio and the rather attractive Clair Danes take on the distinguished role of playing Romeo and Juliet in the modern remake of William Shakespeare’s epic Love story. Luhrman recreated this dazzling and unconventional adaptation in 1997, carefully picking the actors to portray…