Space Dogs
In the New York Times’ “Science Times” section of 4 November, Dana Jennings, an editor at the Times, published a review of a new book by Olesya Turkinacalled simply Soviet Space Dogs (translated from...
View ArticleGetting from 'Summer and Smoke' to 'Eccentricities'
I suppose most people, especially anyone reading an ostensibly theater blog, knows that Tennessee Williams’s mid-century plays Summer and Smoke and The Eccentricities of a Nightingale are related...
View ArticleMemoirs of a Desperate Actor
by Kirk Woodward[My friend Kirk Woodward has come through with another terrific contribution to ROT. This time, he’s dug into his own archives and brought out a series of entries from a journal from...
View ArticleDispatches from Spain 7
by Rich Gilbert[The continuing adventure of Rich and Sallie in Madrid, Spain, proceeds below. Check back for Dispatches 1-6 (30 November 2014, 10 December 2014, 20 December 2014, and 14 January 2015)...
View ArticleOutsider Art
[A number of years ago, on a visit to Baltimore with my mother, we checked out a new museum. I’m not sure what made us go to the American Visionary Art Museum—it may have been a recommendation from...
View Article"The Pieces Don’t Fit!"
Sitting in the Rectory living room, ostensibly working on a picture puzzle, Mrs. Winemiller, wife of the Episcopal minister of Glorious Hill, Mississippi, and mother of Alma, suddenly throws a piece on...
View Article'Big Love'
It’d been a long time, since last December, since I’d been to the Signature Theatre to see a show. But Diana, my frequent theater companion, and I met at the Pershing Square Signature Center on...
View ArticleDinner Theater
Saturday evening, 28 February, I rode over to New Jersey to see a performance of Once Upon a Mystery, a play by my friend Kirk Woodward which he directed for the Theater League of Clifton’s Annual...
View ArticlePerspectives on Science
[I’m no scientist. I even stopped being any good at it in school when we hit physics in my junior year. But it’s always fascinated me—especially when it comes to things like new discoveries and using...
View Article'Laugh' (Studio Theatre, Washington, D.C.)
I seem to be having a run of plays that have made me think the authors all came up with a gimmick or a plot idea first and then devised a theme or point as an excuse to use it. Back in January, it was...
View ArticleWe Get Letters
A kind of odd thing happened on a recent evening in mid-March. I was in the Washington, D.C., area and, unlike the New York Times, the Washington Post comes with Parade, that dinky, mostly junky...
View ArticleRivera, Kahlo, and Detroit: The Artists
[The City of Detroit declared a financial emergency in March 2013 and in July filed the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history. The Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan...
View ArticleRivera, Kahlo, and Detroit: The Murals
[The is the concluding half of my article on Diego Rivera, the renowned Mexican muralist, and his wife, the artist Frida Kahlo, inspired by the opening last month of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in...
View ArticleDispatches from Spain 8
by Rich Gilbert[Once again, my friend Rich Gilbert has sent me an e-mail from Madrid, keeping me up to date on his and Sallie’s continuing adventure. Check back for Dispatches 1-7 (30 November, 10...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"Presidents at the Theater"
by Rebecca Ritzel[Now seems an auspicious moment to republish the article below, “Presidents at the Theater.” Last Tuesday, 14 April, was the 150th anniversary of the night that Pres. Abraham Lincoln...
View ArticleCarole Rothman: An Interview
[Carole Rothman is co-founder and artistic director of Second Stage Theatre. In March 1987, on the eve of the company’s Broadway début with Tina Howe’s Coastal Disturbances at Circle in the Square (4...
View ArticleWhat Constitutes Theft in the Arts?
When I was in college, Lee Kahn, the school’s theater director, used to like to tell us, “The first rule of theater is theft.” He said that so often that when I began to teach acting and theater...
View ArticleAppropriation in the Theater
A quick check with the Dramatists Guild in New York confirms that the magpie culture of borrowing and re-appropriation that drives current pop music is largely alien to playwrights, even when one work...
View Article"The Pieces Don’t Fit!"
Sitting in the Rectory living room, ostensibly working on a picture puzzle, Mrs. Winemiller, wife of the Episcopal minister of Glorious Hill, Mississippi, and mother of Alma, suddenly throws a piece on...
View Article'Big Love'
It’d been a long time, since last December, since I’d been to the Signature Theatre to see a show. But Diana, my frequent theater companion, and I met at the Pershing Square Signature Center on...
View Article