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Wafflers
A waffle is a delicious breakfast food that's usually served with maple syrup, but in its verb form it means to be indecisive or titter on the brink of one action or another. The gerund constructed...
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Haiku Reviews: ART December 2014 (Still on View)
MARTIN FACEY, Ink Ginkgo, 2013, Acrylic, mixed media, fabric on panel, 68 x 42 inches Martin Facey was long known as a colorist, straddling figuration and abstraction in the realization of large,...
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A Revealing Look at the Broadway Musical 'Side Show' from One of Its Stars
In 1997, a hauntingly beautiful and richly uncommon musical called Side Show opened on Broadway to critical acclaim. The show was based on the lives of Violet and Daisy Hilton, the famous conjoined...
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Queen of Soul Commands in Philly
Singers come and go... and then there's Aretha, the undisputed Queen of Soul, still playing to audiences who clamor to hear her iconic hits from the '60s, but know she has always has something more to...
View ArticleReflecting on the Boystown Book Series
Like others my age, I remember the moment when I heard about the death of Karen Carpenter, the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, and Princess Diana's fatal car crash. I also remember when I watched...
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How the Spanish Painter Goya Can Help Us Make Sense of a Troubling 2014
By Charles M. Sennott BOSTON - The Spanish master Francisco Goya painted 200 years ago at a time not unlike the age of disruption, revolution, barbarity and torture that defined the year 2014. The last...
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Stage Door: Disenchanted
Imagine Belle in a straightjacket, Rapunzel as a German dominatrix and Snow White as a sassy, wisecracking ringleader of dissatisfied princesses. That, and more, comprise the musical Disenchanted, now...
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Why Thrash Metal Now?
photo of author, date unknown Retro-cycles are now a normal part of pop culture and have been for sometime. It is well documented that it's traced to the emergence of 1950's youth culture and their...
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'Into the Woods' and the Dumbing Down of the Movie Musical
When I was about seven years old I starred in a community theater production of A Christmas Carol. Or, rather, played a supporting character--Schoolboy, to be exact--because I was too overweight to...
View ArticleMet Opera: A New 'Merry Widow' With Renee Fleming In Widow's Weeds
It is hard to imagine a merrier widow than Renee Fleming, and she swirls through the Metropolitan Opera's sumptuous new production of Franz Lehar's popular operetta The Merry Widow with the ease of a...
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Closing The Empathy Gap
As technology allows us to erect more and more electronic barriers around us, the value of removing one's earbuds and looking up from one's smartphone becomes increasingly important. Some people...
View Article6 Reasons 'Huck Finn' Is Not The Dusty Old Classic You Think It Is
If you read Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn back in high school, you were not alone: A 1992 report showed that 70 of all public school students, and 76 percent of all parochial students,...
View ArticlePaul Auster: How I Became a Writer
This video not only tells the story of how Paul Auster became a writer. It also reveals how the American writer works. "A good days work is if I have one typed page at the end of the day, two is...
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Gentrification: Artists in Emeryville Saw It Coming
Ann Weber, a sculptor from Emeryville, California, one of the rapidly emerging "creative cities" author Richard Florida talks about in The Rise of the Creative Class, is just ending her "artist in...
View ArticleFor the Record
We have not yet seen the film Selma. Pending this, we are surprised and perplexed as to why there should be any controversy about the respective leadership roles of Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr. and...
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The Enigmatic Art of Josef Koudelka
"Prague, 1968." Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago, promised gift of private collector. Photo credit, Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos Josef Koudelka's striking photographs in the exhibition...
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Gentrification: Artists in Emeryville Saw It Coming
Ann Weber, a sculptor from Emeryville, California, one of the rapidly emerging "creative cities" author Richard Florida talks about in The Rise of the Creative Class, is just ending her "artist in...
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Saying Goodbye to the Freak Show: Side Show's Inevitable Demise
Back in 1997, after seeing Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner do a television appearance, my mother said about Side Show: "Who would want to see a musical about freaks?" I was a student, not yet a...
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Changing of the Guard: Five Prima Ballerinas Reflect on the Biggest Change in...
Wendy Whelan. Photo: Nisian Hughes This is an extraordinary time in the dance world, when five of the greatest ballerinas of our time, from leading American ballet companies, have, coincidentally, all...
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Masterpiece Musical Theatre
Don't worry about the dead bodies. They're merely collateral damage incurred during the art of storytelling. Whether the victims were shot, stabbed, beheaded, poisoned, or had their throats slit, rest...
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