After the 2016 election I kept asking myself how artists should respond in time of political crisis. I sat down with singer-songwriter-satirist Roy Zimmerman the next summer to kick it around—he sure had known what to do, but then he had been doing it all along. Popping a demagogue’s balloon was nothing new for Roy. […]
Archive | Art
Thoughts on “Gunplay: The Rifle Report”
Guns are a symbol of self against society, at once Romantic, Byronic, heroic, and a means to an end which has nothing to do with our selves.
Understanding gun culture
I heard a sad story today about a teen who bagged a pileated woodpecker with his varmint rifle. No one knew what it was — “Ain’t seen one before, ain’t seen one since” — but his family praised his marksmanship, and the lad cut off the feet to carry as a trophy or talisman. The […]
Shameless self-promotion
Making a play for a vampire
All those of you who, like me, are working on vampire plays may appreciate a short list of the books I’ve found useful among many that were not: Despite its garish cover, Rosemary Ellen Guiley’s Encyclopaedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters (Visionary Living, 2005) has a beautiful six-page bibliography and is written in matter-of-fact […]
Durang/Durang by Christopher Durang–seriously
If you live in the Triangle you really ought to know the actress PJ Maske.
Playing with history
At the Taft Museum I came across a Claude Lorrain oil (on loan from the Wadsworth Athaneum) ostensibly about St. George and the dragon. But history, here, is a vehicle for landscape: the dragon ain’t no thang. Which got me to thinking about all the feedback I’m getting about how my play The Whistler could […]
Joshua Hemings redux
Life’s exigencies have occasioned the replacement of Reggie Willis in the role of Joshua Hemings with the exquisite Tony Darnell Davis, who has taught theater (including improv) at the University of Cincinnati and elsewhere, has been an actor, director, producer and writer for decades, as well as President of the Cincinnati Black Theatre Company. He […]
“Limitation frees creativity.”
In which our hero rewrites his entire play in a weekend…
The lead!
Michael Bath will play the role of Henry Hunter in The Whistler. He’s funny, he’s smart, he’s one of us.