Final week of Pict Classic Theatre’s Oliver Twist (NEXTpittsburgh)

Today is Carolyn’s day off from Oliver Twist… the show’s final week starts tomorrow, and ends with two shows on Saturday Dec 19. Now, the iconic story of Oliver Twist makes its U.S. premiere in a production with local ties and significance for one Pittsburgh-based theater company. If you have yet to catch PICT Classic Theatre‘s Oliver Twist—which opened on…

The Complete Deaths: all of the Bard’s 74 scripted deaths in one new play.

Over the past four centuries, the brutality of Shakespeare’s plays has become the subject of endless academic study, but his contemporary critics didn’t approve of the on-stage gore. Michael Dobson,  director of the Shakespeare Institute, said that Elizabethan drama was known for being gruesome: “The English drama was notorious for on-stage deaths; they were thought crass.…

Recording Christmas Stories for WAOB Audio Theatre

For WAOB Audio Theater, my family spent an afternoon recording “The Little Match Girl,” “Papa Panov’s Special Day,” and a new story, “The Executioner.”  Already online — Ozma and the Little Wizard, and The Monkey’s Paw. Similar:Something to Ponder — Let Me Fix That Meme For YouArtThat moment when you're logging into a table read…

CNN Holds Morning Meeting To Decide What Viewers Should Panic About For Rest Of Day

Kicking around ideas ranging from an uptick in child kidnappings to a new link between laptops and cancer, senior CNN staffers held their regular daily meeting this morning to decide which topic viewers should panic about for the rest of the day.  —The Onion Similar:Two Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbots Talk and Argue with Each OtherSounds…

The Post drops the ‘mike’ — and the hyphen in ‘e-mail’

When I announced these style changes, another Twitter user wrote, “wait, it’s 2015 and there are still people who write e-mail?” Not everyone is on Twitter, of course. For every online Post reader snickering at mike, there might be a longtime print subscriber baffled by mic. Because it would be impractical to edit each article separately…

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:Father copes with toddler son's cancer by creating 'empathy' gameGreen and Larson both admit that even th…AestheticsHere is an example…

“This paper is going to read like smooth jazz.”

  Similar:Computers and Writing 2020 Funding Request: SubmittedMy contributions this year are a worksho…AcademiaStephen Greenblatt's The Swerve racked up prizes — and completely misled you about the Mid…Recently on Facebook I made some of my f…AcademiaThe Day I Stopped Saying ‘Hurry Up’Adorable photos help tell this story abo…CultureHarvard University says it can't afford journal publishers'…

After lights out, the girl is knitting.

Similar:If you like bloody, singing, punning demons you will love this show.If you like bloody, singing, punning dem…AmusingBeing a deaf lipreader during a pandemic means increased social anxietyEven social events are a minefield. The …AcademiaMy crazy Friday night involved tweaking the graphic for an #MLAstyle instructional web pag…AcademiaAnother homeschool year ends successfully. Here are the…

Irrational Geographic : snopes.com

Boosting the signal. This is a real National Geographic cover, but this issue was likely planned and implemented months before Murdoch purchased the franchise. No, National Geographic hasn’t begun covering nonsense since their merger with Fox. Source: Irrational Geographic : snopes.com Similar:Historians Admit To Inventing Ancient GreeksI knew it! Busted!! “One night someone …AcademiaAdvice to…

Smith College Protesters Bar Journalists From Covering Sit-In Unless They Support the Cause

Reporters planning to cover the sit-in arrived at the Massachusetts college’s student center on Wednesday only to find that the protesters intended to keep them out. Alyssa Mata-Flores, a Smith senior and a sit-in organizer, elaborated on the decision to The Republican: “We are asking that any journalists or press that cover our story participate and articulate…