“So what do this year’s casting decisions mean, if anything? Are certain plays now so established that they can be unmoored from historical context and still work as art? Have audiences evolved to the point that the race of an actor no longer matters, regardless of the part?”
Tag: 02.24.08
Yanks Bust In On English Crime Novels
“Some of the most popular British crime novels these days are being written by Yanks. In spite of its small murder rate and tighter restrictions on civil rights, Britain is the ancestral home of the mystery and crime genre in fiction. Not only are American writers appropriating and replicating the English character of that genre, they’re succeeding at it.”
Steppenwolf On Broadway (Do We Have To?)
“Taken as a whole, the cast’s re-sponse to the Broadway offer could be summed up as, ‘Do we have to?’ Sure, this thinking goes, Broadway was once the summit of American theater, but these days, it’s just another Times Square tourist trap, the domain of overblown musicals and vanity projects for Hollywood stars who want to show that they can memorize more than one line at a time.”
Remmebering Alain Robbe-Grillet
“Robbe-Grillet was the very model of a postwar avant-gardist. His attempts to wrest fiction free from 19th-century constraints like plot and character, and to wrest objects free from imposed meaning, were never entirely popular with readers but had a decisive influence on critical theory and on the art of the novel, as well as on film, art and even psychology.”
How Did A Jazz Album Win Grammys’ Top Prize?
In his award, Hancock finds hope for jazz and the Grammys’ other poor stepchildren: “I think ‘Give the people a choice’ is the statement that they’re making.”
The No-Win Art Of Awards Show Banter
“It’s inherently inoffensive; it has to be to be approved by stars who often take themselves very seriously. But patter is a necessary award show evil dreamed up by comedy scribes who would probably rather be writing their spec script, delivered by performers who often resent having to say it, and received by an audience that just wants to get on to the acceptance speech.”