Shakespeare’s Choose-Your-Own Adventure

If meeting three strange ladies in the swamp Seems ample cause for murthering the king To take his crown, turn to page 86. If this seems kind of sketchy, turn to 12. Shakespeare’s Choose-Your-Own Adventure. Similar:Releasing a Tiny Game and Trying to Get Paid[G]ames is a bit more financially brutal…BusinessKing Hedley II ( #AugustWilson #CenturyCycle,…

Why Is Othello Black?

To us today, the word “black” carries with it a specific cluster of associations informed by history, culture, stereotypes, and literature. Othello may have started in conversation with Shakespeare’s definition of blackness, but today, he speaks with ours. A much more interesting question, really, is: Why is Othello black? Why did Shakespeare write a domestic…

Hanging with the rude mechanicals @setonhilluniversity

A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Similar:Part II of the Mon Valley Medium was a powerful experience. Funny and painful. @thepublicp…CultureCan you tell the difference between factual and opinion statements?I got a perfect score. How did you do on…CulturePictures from opening night of @pictclassictheatre Jane Eyre. (Show runs through the rest …PersonalWhy Teachers, Parents, and Society at…

Surprise: Humanities Degrees Provide Great Return On Investment

The conventional wisdom is that humanities majors are wasting all that tuition money and dooming themselves to lives of underemployment. The conventional wisdom is wrong. Humanities degrees are actually worth well more than the cost of college. […] The present value of the extra earnings that graduates in humanities majors can expect over their lifetime…

Seton Hill takes on Shakespeare’s ‘Dream’

Students in my Shakespeare class will be attending this play. Student actors at Seton Hill University are off on a journey through one of William Shakespeare’s most popular romantic comedies, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Not even the writing style of the Bard — sometimes difficult to master for those new to the playwright’s poetic verse…

Battle of Agincourt — 600 Year Anniversary of Henry V’s “St. Crispin’s Day Speech”

Sure, Marty McFly Day is interesting and all that, but Oct 25, 2015 marks the 600 year anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, the occasion for Henry V’s famous St. Crispin’s Day Speech, which, as Shakespeare rendered it around 1599, ends thus: This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er…

My Kids Are Shatner Than Most

I passed along to my geeklings an appreciation for hammy sci-fi overacting.   Similar:Touch Me Now: York Plays 2025A cast of hundreds participated in a pub…AcademiaThe Offspring (StarTrek:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 16) Data Experiences FatherhoodRewatching ST:TNG after a 20-year break….CybercultureWhat Khan Academy's Fun, Free Learning Empire Has to Do with Dystopian Social Control Over…

The Tribune-Review published a nice preview of Dani Girl.

My daughter Carolyn, Matthew Hommel, Vinny Tresco, and my wife are in this show.  (My wife is also the director.) The show runs Oct 1-3 (Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 at the Geyer Performing Arts Center in Scottsdale, Pa.) Geyer production ‘Dani Girl’ offers inspiration to those touched by cancer. –Tribune Review Similar:BWW Review: TWELFTH NIGHT…

There are many Star Wars references in Dani Girl, so I made this tribute to Tom Jung’s 1977 poster.

Similar:The Siege (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 3) Sisko defends DS9 while Kira tries…Rewatching ST:DS9 Picking up where s2…CultureOnly a Dad (Edgar Guest poem, read by Carolyn and Peter Jerz for WAOB Audio Theatre)Carolyn and Peter Jerz recite “Only a Da…CultureThe YouTubers who blew the whistle on an anti-vax plotWhile rational minds worry about…

Dani Girl (Geyer/13Players)

Dani Girl (Geyer Performing Arts Center, Oct 1-3, 2015) When Dani, a precocious nine year old, loses her hair to leukemia, she embarks on a magical journey to get it back. Simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, Dani Girl is a tale of life in the face of death, hope in the face of despair, and the…

Dani Girl (Oct 1-3, 2015) at the Geyer Performing Arts Center

Vinnie Tresco, Carolyn Jerz, Matthew Hommel, and Kathryn Pretz are in the cast of this playful, intense & inspiring musical. Similar:In Defense Of Metaphors In Science WritingWe live in an elegant universe. The c…CultureStephen Coles’ The Anatomy of Type, reviewed.Talk nerdy to me. You’re my type. What …AestheticsRay Harryhousen, visual effects pioneer, dies  The Harryhausen…

Oh No, Performers Coming Into Audience

PITTSBURGH—Audience members at the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts are reporting that, oh God, no, approximately 20 extremely enthusiastic actors are approaching the edge of the stage and appear determined to continue their current musical number in the main seating area. — The Onion Similar:LGN Launches Quandary to Develop Ethical Thinking through PlayThe Learning Games…