One of the few harsh critics of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, which premiered 70 years ago. Mr. Bentley, who was also a playwright, was an early champion of modern European drama in the 1940s but had little use for American plays. Source: Eric Bentley, Critic Who Preferred Brecht to Broadway, Dies at 103
I regularly teach Flannery O’Connor, and assign a whole book of her short stories when I taught an American Lit 1915-Present course. Now that I’m teaching “American Lit 1776-Present” I keep her stories in rotation, but I have more material to cover, so I have to be more selective. O’Connor’s fiction contains many themes and…
BURKE, Va. (AP) — On a recent car ride, my sons, Billy and Jimmy, were discussing an interactive “Minecraft” show on Netflix that allowed them to choose the direction of the story. I said it sounded like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, an artifact of my 1980s childhood. Then Billy, who’s 10 years old,…
The Medium headline calls Colossal Cave Adventure “one of the first the video games,” but it’s a stretch to use “video” to describe the modality of a command line text parser game. The former Patricia Crowther was very helpful to me when I interviewed her by telephone for my DHQ article. I could have written…
And if my point of view is somewhat misty-eyed, There’s nothing clearer in my life than what I wish and feel for you — And that’s a lot. No matter what. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Melissa Shontz (@melissashontzphotography) on Jun 28, 2020 at 5:56am PDT
In June, 2000, I was blogging about Poems inspired by anagrams (T.S. Eliot = Toilets; Emily Dickinson = Skinny Domicile) Where to go if you wanted to know what was happening In 1750 Paris The Lexicon of Intentionally Ambiguous Recommendations A patent lawsuit that claimed ownership of the concept of hyperlinks Reading posture (how do…
In May, 2000, I was blogging about The “I Love You” IRC virus A college that shifted to online applications only A poem about Pez that has lodged this couplet forever in my brain: What art thou, Pez, that must needs be dispensed? T’ be merely wrapped would leave thee so incensed? Hacking the URL…
I was happy to play Watson. The daughter played Irene “The Woman” Adler.
In a peaceful grassy setting, a geyser of books spews into the air. Hundreds of books with steampunk-themed titles like “Modern Manners Errata for the Educated Officer” and “Advanced Elocution and Honor” tumble back to the ground, bounce, and settle. Made for no particular reason, with Blender3D.
In April 2000, I was blogging about… HTML frames (who remembers how much they sucked?) The sorry state of web design (AskTog) The future of reading “Rules grammar change: English traditional replace to be new syntax with” (The Onion) Journalism students who don’t read or watch journalism A design critique I published in the innovative…
I haven’t done any audio theatre recordings in a while (thanks, coronavirus) and I miss it. Here’s my interpretation (recorded some time ago) of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Nightingale.” The nightingale is considered the most beautiful thing in the kingdom… until a mechanical nightingale wins over the citizens, and the true nightingale is banished. But…
In light of current events, I’m dropping the bleak Waiting for Godot from my World Drama class (actually I’m making it optional; students could drop a different play) and adding Thornton Wilder’s absurdist but optimistic The Skin of Our Teeth. Writing while World War II was still raging, Wilder depicts a representative American family…
“It’s due to a slew of rich, physically and emotionally raw performances from this steadfast ensemble that Hinton’s timeless characters are realized as the heroes, albeit tragic ones, that they’re meant to be…. As the youngest of the Greasers, Ponyboy has a unique dynamic with the rest of the gang. He’s doted on to varying…
So proud of my talented, hard-working daughter!
Cherry, the upper-class go-between spanning the worlds of the greasers and the Socs, is played by Carolyn Jerz, last seen at the New Hazlett as the leading lady/gentleman of Prime Stage’s Twelfth Night. Jerz radiates the kind of intense, poised charisma we associate with old Hollywood, and she imbues the sensitive, ambivalent Cherry with so much…
Four sold out matinees this coming week. Haven’t seen it yet myself. (Nabbed photo from phgintheround’s Instagram.)