Archives for August 26, 2014

I narrated Project Shaw’s staged reading of George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple last year, and had such a good time that I’ve happily agreed to make a repeat appearance on September 29. I’ll be sharing the stage of Symphony Space with Jefferson Mays and J. Smith-Cameron, two superlatively talented actors whom I admire without reservation, for a performance of Village Wooing, a comic two-hander (Shaw called it a “comedietta for two voices”) written in 1933. My colleagues, needless to say, will be doing all the acting, while I content myself with reading the stage directions out loud.

Symphony Space is at 95th Street and Broadway. The show starts at seven p.m. To order tickets or for more information, go here.

To read Village Wooing, go here.

From 2004:

Over dessert, the talk would likely turn without prompting to women. Balanchine and Armstrong were both married four times, and though Mencken only tied the knot once, he had his fair share of girlfriends, going so far as to write a book called In Defense of Women. Between the three of them, I dare say quite a bit of light would be shed on the ever-intriguing subject of romance and its discontents….

Read the whole thing here.

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies