Posts Tagged: Plays
One Last Thing
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The Musical About Grizzly Adams And His Bears

| January 13th, 2012

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 [...]

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Was David Mamet Ever Really A Liberal Anyway?

| June 20th, 2011

After David Mamet trumpeted his switch to Republican Party politics in 2008, there were some who claimed that he'd been a conservative all along. Shelby Steele, an author of right-wing books on race and a fellow at the Hoover Institution who talked with the playwright frequently during his "conversion," said he detected early conservative leanings in Mamet's previous works. “I think he has the same values today that he did before,” Steele told a reporter. “He’s said to me he thinks he might have always been conservative without knowing it. All that happened was, he finally found a politics that suited his values.”

Steele doesn't appear to have looked [...]

Listicle Without Commentary
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52 Terrible Titles Of Plays That Were Actually Produced And Published

| January 9th, 2012

52. The King of the Kosher Grocers 51. Onion Heads 50. Aspirin and Elephants 49. Bashville in Love 48. Aren't We All? 47. Schmulnik's Waltz 46. James Skipworth and the Catfish Colonel 45. Jump, I’ll Catch You! 44. I Think You Think I Love You 43. Tod, the Boy, Tod 42. Maiden's Progeny 41. Grandma Sylvia's Funeral 40. Criminals in Love 39. Six Who Pass While the Lentils Boil 38. The Juice of Wild Strawberries 37. Ding Dong Dead 36. Deflowering Waldo

The Theaaaaatre
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On Being Too Close to Monstrousness

| November 4th, 2011

"You must understand that [David Mamet's] reaction to being surrounded by easy privilege and, frankly, decadence is simply a form of disgust. But it’s overpopulated him, this disgust, and spilled out like an infection into a worldview. Not to get all Freud on his ass, but I think his outlook would be different if his circumstances, i.e., where he lives, were different. There is something about Hollywood liberalism that—even though it is the easiest target in the world—is so stomach-turning in its smugness. It’s no different than his reaction was once to capitalism run amok. I think disgust is disgust." —Awl pal Jon Robin Baitz talks about the [...]