Jaime Green
Most Recently: The Musical About Grizzly Adams And His Bears
Jaime Green definitely does not ever get Cheetos from the vending machine at work.
The Musical About Grizzly Adams And His Bears
In 2008, Ars Nova, a small theater and development space on the far west side of Manhattan, staged a pirate/puppet rock musical called Jollyship the Whiz-Bang. The play was given a limited run, but was extended several times, revived in 2010's Under The Radar festival, and shot its co-creator, Nick Jones, into the peculiarly theater notoriety of someone who's been praised in The Times for "demented brilliance." First disclaimer: I was friendly with some Ars Nova people, and have a deep, weird love for puppets, so volunteered to spend a day helping paint puppets for Jollyship. Second disclaimer: I eventually saw Jollyship, I think, five times. Third disclaimer: I was working at an off-Broadway theater at the time, one that had no idea what to do with this sort of wonderful weirdness, but I ended up reading some of Nick's other plays. One was a musical about an architect that falls in love with his building (or maybe it was vice versa). There was also Straight-Up Vampire, a story of vampires and the American Revolution, set to the music of Paula Abdul. READ MORE
Bacon, Cream And Other Secrets Of Enjoying Late Fall Vegetables
We hear a lot about eating seasonally. I bet Maira Kalman's illustrating a Michael Pollan rule about it RIGHT NOW. In fact, I bet she already did. And I love eating seasonally—yes, it makes me feel superior and in tune with Mother Earth, ohm, but also it just tastes good. Like, a seasonal tomato versus a February tomato, those are two different vegetables. Two different planets. Two different galaxies. Two different universes that only Brian Greene can explain the simultaneous existence of. One is a vegetable, and one is gross, tasteless nonsense. Okay and also I do enjoy feeling sort of touchy-feely at-one with the planet, eating in-season, because otherwise, in the city, I barely know what the seasons are. I can see a slice of park trees from my bedroom window, three blocks away, and they are orange for a month, but otherwise I don't really notice them. I am usually terrible about knowing how heavy a jacket I need, sweater or scarf. So vegetables are really all I have. READ MORE
Embrace Your Prairie Looks And Make Some Applesauce
When I was a sophomore in college I was an incredibly cool and awesome girl, so my two best friends and I did what cool and awesome kids do in college and spent our spring break at Colonial Williamsburg. Don't get me wrong: it was awesome. We were the only people there over 16 and under 40; one of us danced the minuet in a dance-styles demonstration, one of us caught the blacksmith's eye, and all three of us got strange, bemused looks from the employees/waiters/reenactors who were the only people there around our own age. “What are you doing here?” the waiter in one tavern asked. We answered cheerily, spring break! And then he laughed, then shrugged and came back with spoonbread. Now, spoonbread—which is like corn bread but is pudding—was maybe the thing I'd been looking forward to the most about the trip, having remembered it from a trip my family took to Colonial Williamsburg when I was ten. That trip was over Passover, but on the second day we gave in to rolls and spoonbread, and it's funny to look back now and think that that mattered. READ MORE
The Tony Awards Live Chat Extravaganza
Ladies and gents, it's America's most important and most revered awards show for the most important and revered arts! Tonight, literally all of America will stop and join—what's that you say? It's the Heat-Mavericks game six? Oh. Well then... tonight, some of the gays and theater ladies will come together to hide from basketball and indulge in the not-at-all rigged awards system that heaps praise upon select, very expensive productions at a very small number of designated New York City theaters; awards are nominated by literally a couple dozen people and then chosen by all of 750 professional voters. This system serves to make almost everyone feel bad, except a very few rich people! (And yes, also some fine young actors and creators who have exciting new plays.) But also: Neil Patrick Harris is hosting! Who is still only 37. So let's come together in the comments and celebrate this hot mess, right here with our own theatrically inclined hostess Jaime Green!
Interview: Wendy McClure Goes Back to the Little House on the Prairie
When Wendy McClure's parents were moving out of her childhood home, she rescued a box of old books from their garage — Little House in the Big Woods among them. This Laura Ingalls Wilder rediscovery set her on a "pioneer pilgrimage" into the world behind these stories, and her book, The Wilder Life (out now), chronicles this adventure, from churning butter in her Chicago apartment to sleeping in a covered wagon on the open prairie. READ MORE
My Mom Explains How to Make "Turkey In a Bag"
I definitely think Thanksgiving is better than Passover. Although the latter has the edge in terms of length, elaborateness and specificity of the ritual meal, the former pulls ahead with better food (despite lacking charoset), and none of that “thank you god for bringing us out of Egypt by your mighty hand” business. READ MORE
Meet Your Vegetables: Grapes and Things That Taste Like Themselves
When I was a freshman in college, a friend of mine wrote a play for her senior thesis, a play about, I think, Samuel Coleridge and his sister and another poet. (I'm not looking it up because let's see what I remember from those frighteningly many years ago.) Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were also characters. (This friend is now a successful playwright, so well done there.) There was a lot about writing, and a little about an asthma attack, and also, at one point, Gertrude said to Alice, or Alice said to Gertrude, "Salt makes things taste more like themselves." READ MORE
Understudies! How 'Spring Awakening' Changed the Business of Musical Theater
Spring Awakening was first produced off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre Company, an institution that has built its reputation on the in-your-face masculine hyperrealism of Mamet and Shepherd and McDonagh. It featured music by somewhat disappeared (but actually really good!) pop singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik, and words by playwright Stephen Sater. READ MORE
Meet Your Vegetables: Radish Chips
I have a baking sheet of radishes in the oven, hopefully transmogrifying from little red-ringed slices of a vegetable I don't particularly love into rich, crispy, salty little chips, which I hope I will at least like. Heat, oil, and salt-the same magic that makes almost every other vegetable delicious. But a preparation that's a little more finicky this time. And it's one of the last evenings it'll be cool enough for baking all summer. READ MORE
Meet Your Vegetables: Asparagus Is Here!
I texted my sister: I'm realizing I need to invest in a food processor with a shredder wheel. This is pioneer cooking kugel, and she replied, hahah well it will bring you closer to your ancestors who made kugel the same way. READ MORE
