This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts–books, ballet, music, painting and sculpture, film and TV, and whatever else happens to catch his eye or ear.
Archives for January 14, 2014
About My Plays and Opera Libretti
Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed by Gordon Edelstein, with John Douglas Thompson appearing in the triple role of Louis Armstrong, Joe Glaser, and Miles Davis. John won the 2013-14 Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle “Outstanding Solo Performance” awards for his performance.
The same production has also been seen at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass., Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn., Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater, the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, and Colorado Springs’ Theatreworks.
In addition, Satchmo has been produced by New Venture Theater in Baton Rouge, La., PURE Theatre in Charleston, S.C., the Court Theatre in Chicago, the Actors’ Warehouse in Gainesfille, Fla., the Alley Theatre in Houston, Seacoast Repertory Theatre in Portsmouth, N.H., B Street Theatre in Sacramento, Calif., Mosaic Theatre in Washington, D.C., Palm Beach Dramaworks, Le Petit Theatre in New Orleans, Prospect Theater Project in Modesto, Calif., Triangle Productions in Portland, Oregon, and American Stage Theater in St. Petersburg, Fla. (I directed the Alley Theatre and Palm Beach Dramaworks productions.) An earlier version of the play, starring Dennis Neal and directed by Rus Blackwell, was premiered at Orlando Shakespeare Theater in 2011.
Satchmo at the Waldorf is published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc. To inquire about obtaining rights to produce the play, go here.
To see John Douglas Thompson on stage in Satchmo at the Waldorf, go here. To watch a Wall Street Journal-produced video interview with me, go here. To watch John and me discuss Satchmo at the Waldorf on Theater Talk, go here. To read my program note, go here.
To read the Boston Globe review, go here. To read the New York Times review, go here. To read a New York Times feature about the play, go here.
I have also written the libretti for three operas by Paul Moravec. The latest is The King’s Man, a one-act drama about Benjamin and William Franklin that was premiered by Kentucky Opera on Oct. 11, 2013. For more information, go here. To read an essay by me about The King’s Man, go here.
The King’s Man is a companion piece to our second opera, Danse Russe, a one-act backstage comedy about the making of The Rite of Spring that was commissioned by Philadelphia’s Center City Opera Theater and premiered there on April 28, 2011. (It was later revived by Kentucky Opera on the same bill as The King’s Man.) To view excerpts from the opera and see Paul and me talk about its creation, go here.
Paul and I began our collaboration with The Letter, a full-evening operatic version of Somerset Maugham’s 1927 play that was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera in 2006 and opened there on July 25, 2009. To see excerpts from the opera, go here.
Below are links to my reports on the writing, staging, premiere, and reception of the original production of The Letter:
Lend me your ears (and eyes)
Men at work
Men at work (II)
Men at work (III)
Men at work (IV)
For better and worse
Men at work (V)
Men (and women) at work (VI)
The case for lower-case opera
The envelope, please
Right turn at Albuquerque
Moment’s notice
Men at work (VII)
Scene stealing (I)
Scene stealing (II)
Becoming an artist
In one piece
Among the brethren
By the clock
Size matters
No, but I heard the movie
The Doctor is in
A doll’s house
Free at last
Looking for trouble
Cover story
Step away from the car, sir
A ripping good show
All blessings are mixed
Tied to the tracks
A very small world
A little taste
Now’s the time
Another little taste
And…they’re off!
Who’d have thought it?
Tweeting an opera
Head first
At the starting gate
Minute by minute
Modern opera in a nutshell
Pit stop
All there is
The news in brief
In a mist
Did Maugham know best?
We know every part by heart
How it felt
Unrest cure
Blowin’ in the wind
About My Podcast
Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America.
TT: A dream come true
Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, is coming to New York at last.
Here is part of the official press release. For more information, go here.
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It was announced today that, following acclaimed, sold-out runs at Long Wharf Theatre and Shakespeare and Company, Terry Teachout’s play Satchmo at the Waldorf will enjoy a New York premiere this spring. Starring John Douglas Thompson and directed by Gordon Edelstein, Satchmo at the Waldorf will begin performances at Off Broadway’s Westside Theatre (407 West 43rd Street) on Saturday, February 15. Opening night is set for Tuesday, March 4, 2014.
In March of 1971, one of the greatest music legends the world would ever know was performing the final set of shows he would ever play at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel. But the audiences who adored him onstage never really saw the man behind the trumpet. In Terry Teachout’s searing and surprisingly intimate play, Satchmo at the Waldorf, we encounter Louis Armstrong where few ever had the chance to see him: backstage. Reflecting on his own unlikely career amidst a rapidly changing society, the icon is stripped bare, revealing complexities and contradictions that his omnipresent smile, horn and handkerchief belied. Critically acclaimed actor John Douglas Thompson, seamlessly morphing between Armstrong, his manager Joe Glaser, and fellow trumpeter Miles Davis, gives one of the most vivid portraits ever created for the stage….
Tickets for Satchmo at the Waldorf, priced at $39 and $79, are available online via Telecharge.com or by phone at (212) 239-6200/(800) 447-7400. Tickets will also be available for purchase in person, at the Westside Theatre Box Office (407 West 43rd Street).
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Here’s the poster:
TT: Lookback
From 2004:
I’ve been deeply immersed in the world of words my whole life long. I started playing with my mother’s portable typewriter as a child. I really did read the dictionary for pleasure. I launched my first periodical, a mimeographed newspaper, in junior high school, and God only knows how many millions of words I’ve published since then. Yet I’ve never been one for wordplay, perhaps because I’m no good at it. Be it Scrabble, Boggle, or Wheel of Fortune, I invariably come up short, a deficiency that never fails to surprise friends who take it for granted that I excel at such games….
Read the whole thing here.
TT: Almanac
“Gloria had been an old-style Episcopalian, resenting any prayer book tempering with Cranmer’s Prayer-book language and any evangelical or feel-good pollution of the service, such as a homily at morning prayers or the passing of the peace at any service. Perdita had drifted from Unitarianism into Buddhism and settlement-house good works. Both women were religious aristocrats, for whom God was a vulgar poor relation with the additional social disadvantage of not existing.”
John Updike, Toward the End of Time