"A Subtlety"
CHARACTERS: Visitor One, Visitor Two, Visitor Three, Visitor Four, Visitor Five, Visitor Six, Visitor Seven, Visitor Eight, Visitor Nine, Visitor Ten, Visitor Eleven, Visitor Twelve, Visitor Thirteen,...
View ArticleBestselling English Author: I Write About an India That the West Is Not...
Chetan Bhagat, a 39-year-old author in India, has been phenomenally successful, with six English books selling 7 million copies and four adapted into successful Bollywood movies. And yet, many in the...
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Piece of My Heart: Quick Questions With Leslie Kritzer and Teal Wicks
I've followed Leslie Kritzer's career for many years -- ever since I saw her in the 2001 Funny Girl staging at Paper Mill Playhouse. I've seen her do a lot of things, most of them comedic. In Piece of...
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There's No Song Like The First Song
The first song you write with someone is like a first kiss. The songs (or the kisses) that follow might be better for other reasons, or you might never want to write another song with that person...
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Richard Bruland and Sophia Dixon Dillo: Art Review
Those who favor a meditative kind of art could do no better than a visit to the current dual exhibition at Lora Schlesinger Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. The front gallery offers a...
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The Bard of the Upper Reaches
My favorite course in college was one of the obvious and simple ones: Shakespeare. We read maybe 20 of the plays and talked about them. Our professor was an eccentric old Greek, Pete Phialas, who had...
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Spectacular Summer Theater, in Ashfield, Massachusetts
I was lucky enough to get a seat to the preview showing of Double Edge Theaters 2014 performance of Sharazad, a Tale of Love and Magic. This rambling one of a kind farm stage creates a real life...
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Meet the 8 Artists You'd Never Guess Were in the Rock Hall (#4: Fall Out Boy)
In roughly a decade, Fall Out Boy has grown from an unknown band rehearsing in their hometown of Wilmette, Illinois, to one of the most popular rock bands touring today. With drummer Andy Hurley,...
View ArticleFirst Nighter: The Musicals Pump Boys and Dinettes and The Gig
Yes. Absolutely. No question. If you can get to City Center anytime through this weekend to see Pump Boys and Dinettes, which is the third and last of Encores! Off-Center summer series, go. It's way...
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Interview With the Last Peyote Guardians: Marakame José Luis "Katira" Ramírez...
José Luis "Katira" Ramirez invokes the sacred five directions of the Huichol people in a benediction before the showing in Guadalajara (Credit: José Andrés Solórzano) Second of two interviews See...
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Busting It Out
A STUDIO VISIT WITH BETTINA HUBBY Bettina Hubby is an interdisciplinary artist with an impulse towards collaboration and integrating daily life into her art (and vice versa), all with large doses of...
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Stage Door: Gertrude The Cry
Shakespeare's Hamlet has inspired many variations - the latest is Howard Barker's Gertrude: The Cry, part of the Potomac Theatre Project at the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Company. Barker has used...
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Czech Folk-Rock: Catching Up With Čechomor
Photo courtesy of Čechomor Several years ago, I interviewed the Czech folk-rock band Čechomor for the magazine Dirty Linen. I kept in touch with them for a while, but in the intervening years, it's...
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Meet the 8 Artists You'd Never Guess Were in the Rock Hall (#5: Katy Perry)
After moving from gospel to pop-rock, Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson -- better known as Katy Perry -- quickly found a place in the pop-culture spotlight with the release of her 2008 hit single "I Kissed a...
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Response to Bill O'Reilly: Jesus Didn't Start a New Religion
Jesus Preaching in the Synagogue in Capernum by Maurycy Gottlieb -- wikimedia.org Bill O'Reilly disputed the two main points of my recent HuffPost blog on his July 16 The O'Reilly Factor broadcast: My...
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A Portrait of the Watercolorist as a Young Man
The provenance of the famed illustrator James McMullan's iconic poster for Lincoln Center's Anything Goes is to be found in the exhibit of watercolors from his recently published memoir Leaving China,...
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Brazil's Lenine Brings His Musical Bridge to Central Park
The Maurício de Nassau bridge in Recife is a replica of a bridge in Amsterdam and a reminder of the era when Holland ruled northeastern Brazil in the early 17th century. It is also the inspiration for...
View ArticleThe Great Dream: An American Opera
"If you live long enough you can write four operas," wrote composer and music commentator Virgil Thomson. Philip Glass has penned at least 17; the fecund imagination of John Adams has so far brought...
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From the Jerusalem Festival: Can Films Transcend Politics?
Watching movies for ten days at the 31st Jerusalem Film Festival might seem like an escape from the current reality of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel as well as the subsequent military retaliation...
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10 Things You Might Not Know About Cindy Sherman: Looking at One Untitled...
Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills are among the most iconic contemporary artworks. Characteristically when they're discussed and analyzed, they're considered as a series. (This is also how I have...
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