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Work In Progress
Preview
This post begins a series of unfinished essays on theatre as a fundamental human experience, without which we become lesser creatures (inhumane). They connect the decline in cultural values with the fact that only one in twelve Americans sees even one stage play in a year, and those few see an average of just three. They recount the historical impact of theatre, its religious roots and tensions, its unique cathartic power (“the willing suspension of disbelief”), its ability to “hold the mirror up to nature.”Protected: Over the River and Through the Woods
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Behn Quotes
“Each moment of a happy lover’s hour is worth an age of dull and common life.”
“Love ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a secret.” 
“That perfect tranquillity of life, which is nowhere to be found but in retreat, a faithful friend and a good library.”
“No friend to Love like a long voyage at sea.”
“Faith, sir, we are here today, and gone tomorrow”
Bibliography Continue reading More on Aphra Behn
Protected: Gruesome Playground Injuries
Mamet’s Chiropractor
This is funny:
The (Jewish) Defendant in Mamet’s Romance is a chiropodist (no, a chiropractor!) who discovers and proclaims, at the end of Scene Two, in the middle of a vicious (and hilarious) bloodbath of religious bigotry with his (Catholic) Defense Attorney: “I KNOW HOW TO BRING PEACE TO THE MIDDLE EAST!” Continue reading Mamet’s Chiropractor
First Professional Female Playwright
Theater history tells us that world’s first playwright after the fall of Rome (500 years after, to be precise, at the end of the 10th Century) was a German nun, Hrotsvitha, who penned six comedies in Latin, based on Terrence, with Christian themes.
Three hundred years later, as the Renaissance began, the next plays appear, first in Italy, in Latin, then Italian; then in France, Spain, the HRE; later still (16th Century) in England: Medwall, Heywood, Lily, Kyd, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, Dryden (to name a few).
All men.
The Rover
Mysterious Mamet
“We Must Be Careful in the Woods”
I will begin by confessing that for the past year I’ve been having coffee at Starbuck’s on East Bloulvard with David Watkins every Saturday to read and re-read, over and over, David Mamet’s 1972 tour-de-force, The Duck Variations—his second play (after Lakeboat). Initially, the goal was to stage it, but David couldn’t remember the lines. (He’s an octogenarian engineer who hasn’t been on stage since college). Ultimately we read it at Julia’s Cafe & Books for an audience of two: my wife and daughter. A passerby stopped and watched for a while . . . Continue reading Mysterious Mamet
The Rover, by Aphra Behn
Restoration Comedy by the
First Female Professional Playwright
When?
6:30 PM Monday, June 9.
Where?
At the home of Joanna Gerdy, 3729 Oakwood Ave.
Click here to sign up.
More to come on Aphra Behn…
Cold Reads/International 