Roman Coppola: Directors Cut (VIDEO)
In a list of the worst things you could possibly wake up next to in the morning, a severed horse's head would probably feature highly. Roman Coppola's memory of one of the most well-known scenes in...
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April Gornik: Recent Paintings and Drawings at Danese/Corey
The paintings and drawings on view in April Gornik's current show at Danese/Corey -- roiling seas, active skies, and serenely lit forests -- come across as truthful. Gornik believes that "truth should...
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James Chance: A Super Bad Fellow With Swagger
You won't ever find James Chance out of his suit, neckwear or pompadour. And what may read a bit antsy on the outside is the opposite on the inside, for James is focused within the realm of his...
View ArticleOur Night Watch: Liberal Education, the Humanities, and Earnings
Co-authored with Molly Nesbit, Professor of Art and Chair of Art, Vassar College The Obama administration's proposal to include some measure of graduates' earnings in a rating of higher education has...
View ArticleWATCH: Mind-Blowing Images Show What's Right In Front Of You Each Day... But...
Life goes by too fast. Or is it actually too slow? Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg uses time-lapse technology to show us unseen dimensions of life as we know it, from ocean currents to dragonfly wings....
View ArticleHidden Wonders: What Nature Teaches Us About Ourselves
Click here to watch the TEDTalk that inspired this post. Few among us do not find awe and wonder in nature's magnificence and complexity. But in spite of that commonality among folks from all walks of...
View ArticleDreams of Calatrava Fading Into the Distance
When I was doing some consulting work for a Finnish Audio Company, my Finnish partner needed an office to set up shop on the cheap. He ended up renting a cubicle in a large converted loft in the...
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Dead Man Walking at Madison Opera
I was fortunate to see opening night of Madison Opera's too-brief run of Dead Man Walking. The next morning I posted this to my blog: Go. You must see this opera. I never begin a review like this, but...
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A Writer Gets a Residency
I have passed the Point Way Inn, home of Noepe Center for Literary Arts and Martha's Vineyard Writers Residency, hundreds of times. My family vacationed on the Island for years, and now my daughter...
View ArticleHere's Looking at You, Kids
Even under the best of circumstances, creating an original musical is tough sledding. But the writers of children's musicals face a special artistic challenge: To build an audience, they need to mount...
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Dear Mayor Bill de Blasio: Letter From an Urban Designer in Brooklyn
This letter is currently on exhibit with 49 other letters to mayors across 20 cities at Storefront for Art & Architecture downtown. Dear Mayor De Blasio: Thank you. Thank you for being you. Thank...
View ArticleEuropean Travel: Seventeenth-Century Opera in Two European Cities
So far in 2014, using the excellent Web resource OperaBase as a travel-planning tool, Jackie and I have built two European vacations around performances of operas by the seventeenth-century Venetian...
View ArticleStage Door: The Velocity of Autumn, Fluff
It's great to watch an actress at the top of her game. In the two-hander play The Velocity of Autumn at Broadway's Booth Theater, this chamber piece showcases the wonderful Estelle Parsons and Stephen...
View ArticleBringing Slavery Into the Heart of Jane Austen
Getting a screenplay from page to screen can be a long process, and this is doubly so when the subject is so different. In 2004 I conceived a Jane Austenesque, costume-drama feature film with a black...
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Tribute to a Photographer Who Rocked Our World
I co-authored a coffee table book with a friend last year and we just found out it won the 2014 Nautilus Award. The announcement came when I was in the middle of a chapter on a new WHY-TO Creativity...
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Who's Really on Top?
Writers and politicians have toyed with the legendary "battle of the sexes" since men and women were first pigeonholed into hunters and gatherers. If, however, one's perspective on gender roles has...
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'In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play,' Long Beach Playhouse Studio Theatre
A playwright sets her story against a historical or otherwise significant backdrop to provide verisimilitude, credibility, and context. Sometimes the backdrop is as interesting as the story. That's the...
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John Nava: Selected Portraits at the Vita Art Center
John Nava, one of America's pre-eminent realist artists, is the subject of a small show of twelve portraits -- paintings, monotypes and Jacquard tapestries -- now on view at the Vita Art Center in...
View ArticleFirst Nighter: Alessandrini's Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging! Sure Does
Just when the 2013-14 season officially closes with the announcements of awards nominations and when audiences are feeling helplessly besieged by the unusual number of musicals -- too many of them less...
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Stage Door: Forbidden Broadway Comes Out Swinging!
Since 1982, Gerald Alessandrini has been on a mission: to send-up Broadway musicals. His weapon of choice is the brilliantly satiric, expertly rendered Forbidden Broadway franchise, which has spawned...
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