Small U.S. Theaters Presenting Large, Multiple-Installment Epics

At the Public Theater in New York. Mike Daisey is doing 29 different monologues on consecutive nights. The Utah Shakespeare Festival is in the midst of a multi-year project to perform all ten of the history plays in chronological order. WNYC’s tiny Greene Space is hosting star-studded readings of all ten plays in August Wilson’s Century Cycle. How and why are these little companies doing such big projects?

The Evolutionary Case For Fiction

“Among the many things that set humans apart from other animals is our capacity for counterfactual thinking. At its most basic level, this means we can hypothesize what might happen if we run out of milk; in its most elaborate form – we get War and Peace. Stories, then, are complex counterfactual explorations of possible outcomes: What would happen if I killed my landlady? What would happen if I had an affair with Count Vronsky? How do I avoid a water buffalo?

Are You A Language Bully?

“Here’s the best way to know for certain: Do you annoy and infuriate people at dinner parties and other social gatherings by correcting others on how they use or pronounce certain words? That’s the key hallmark, because there’s certainly nothing wrong with simply knowing things about words that the average person does not.”