“We live on the thin ice of unexplained phenomena.”
Patricia Highsmith, notebook entry, October 14, 1944
Archives for January 2010
TT: South to a warmer place
Mrs. T and I flew the coop last Friday and headed down to Florida for a weekend of snow-free playgoing. On Saturday we saw Asolo Rep’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo in Sarasota, then drove across the peninsula to West Palm Beach to catch a revival of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen at Palm Beach Dramaworks.
Today we drive north to Winter Park, where I’ll be spending the next six weeks in residence at the Winter Park Institute, a talking-and-thinking shop on the campus of Rollins College, the liberal-arts school where I spoke last March. That experience was so uncomplicatedly enjoyable that I happily accepted an invitation to set up shop there this winter. Among other things, I’ll be giving speeches, teaching a class in journalistic criticism, and signing copies of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong whenever and wherever anybody puts one in front of me.
Life goes on no matter where I happen to be, so I’ll be spending my weekends seeing plays on Broadway and elsewhere in Florida and writing about them in The Wall Street Journal. I’ll also be making a pair of Pops-related appearances on Thursday and Saturday in Washington, D.C., and at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens. (Read all about them here.)
Insofar as possible, though, I mean to settle into the life of a peripatetic academic. I teach my first class tomorrow–and I can’t wait.
UPDATE: It’s not warm enough in West Palm Beach this morning! Can I send this state back for a refund?
TT: Almanac
“Every artist is in business for his health.”
Patricia Highsmith, notebook entry, August 31, 1966
PLAY
Our Town (Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow St.). Stephen Kunken is now playing the Stage Manager in what has become the longest-running commercial production of Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece ever to be mounted. Alas, it can’t run forever, so if you have yet to see the best show in New York, get cracking. David Cromer’s staging is a re-creative landmark, at once arrestingly original and fundamentally faithful in its approach to the author’s well-loved text. Don’t listen if anybody tries to tell you about the surprise ending–and once you’ve seen the show, don’t tell anybody what happens (TT).
BOOK
Ben Hodges (ed)., The Play That Changed My Life: America’s Foremost Playwrights on the Plays That Influenced Them (Applause, $18.95 paper). The title and subtitle say it all. Among those present: Jon Robin Baitz, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Horton Foote, A.R. Gurney, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, and John Patrick Shanley. Your interest in the nineteen essays will undoubtedly vary with your interest in the nineteen playwrights who wrote them, but every contribution is both readable and worth reading–albeit for very different reasons. I especially liked David Ives’ witty reminiscence of seeing Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance as a teenager in Chicago in the late Sixties. Oh, how the world has changed! (TT).
TV
Great Performances: Passing Strange (PBS, Jan. 13, nine p.m. ET, check local listings). Spike Lee’s performance film-documentary of the Broadway production of Stew’s 2007 rock musical about the travails of a middle-class black bohemian makes its broadcast debut this month. The music is a bit plain-sounding, but the book and lyrics offer a revealing glimpse of a side of black life in America that rarely gets talked about, much less sung about. Annie Dorsen’s staging is full of punch, and Lee has filmed the show with tremendous verve (TT).
TT: My motto for 2010 is…
TT: Something might be gaining on you
If you read this blog at all regularly, I don’t need to tell you what happened to me in 2009. If not, I wrote an opera libretto and published a book, both of which were well received. I also traveled all over America reviewing plays for The Wall Street Journal, some of which were pretty damn wonderful. Best of all, I settled happily into the second year of my marriage to Mrs. T, which has been and will undoubtedly continue to be a rip-roaring success.
What next? Well, I now know what my next book is going to be, and I’ll let you know about that as soon as the ink is dry on the contract. Paul Moravec and I are talking about what our next opera will be, and I’ll let you know about that as soon as (1) we make up our minds and (2) somebody agrees to pay us to write it. And Mrs. T and I are flying down to Florida later today, about which much, much more on Monday, by which time we’ll have seen shows in Sarasota and West Palm Beach. Cool, huh?
New Year resolutions? I’ve made two: (1) Do less. (2) Sleep more. Don’t expect me to keep either one, though.
No Wall Street Journal today, so no drama column today. I’ll see you next week. Have a fabulous year!