Fifteen years ago I got fed up with hearing myself blabber about how I planned to write a play and actually sat my butt down and wrote my first script. An important impetus for my shift from fantasy to reality, from wannabe to doing it, was the 1959 memoir Act [...] Continue reading »
The Value of Grit for Kids and Artists
A debate is underway in the U.S. about education, with ramifications extending to social policy for alleviating poverty, or at least for improving the ability of the next generation to escape from poverty. In some respects it is a variation on the nature vs. nurture debate. Since at least the [...] Continue reading »
Educating Girls is Just Plain Smart
If you want to glimpse an inspiring initiative about educating girls, check out this recently produced 11-minute video about the Gashora Girls Academy in Rwanda. While visiting central Africa in 2010 for research on a play I was writing, I had the opportunity to visit the foundation of this amazing [...] Continue reading »
Obama on Stage, with Seattle Connection
Abraham Lincoln is not the only American president to be featured on screen and stage this past year. Our current president, who as it happens is being inaugurated today for his second term, has also been the object of dramatic attention. A new play featuring Obama, The President and the [...] Continue reading »
An Israeli Father’s Lament
Beginning writers are advised not to view their scribbles as therapy, not to think that assembling words can somehow disassemble one’s demons. Good general advice. To which there are exceptions. For certain writers, or for just one work among a writer’s output. I recall reports of Eugene O’Neill emerging from [...] Continue reading »
A Tale of Love and Darkness
Amos Oz is celebrated as one of Israel’s finest writers. Based on his 2003 memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness, I would be the last to dispute that praise. Oz was born in Israel in 1939. His parents were part of the huge desperate migration that escaped the Holocaust [...] Continue reading »
A Novel Shows Roots of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Hell has once again erupted in Israel. War is being waged between Hamas, the governing authority in Gaza, and Israel. Prior to last week’s outbreak, Hamas, or militant factions in Gaza which Hamas does not control, had fired around 750 rockets into southern Israel this year. Deciding enough was enough, [...] Continue reading »
Wouk Inspires Gray-Haired Artists
If ever he was assigned a use-by date, author Herman Wouk rejected it long ago. At age 97 he has just published a new novel, The Lawgiver. Furthermore, this is no musty Victorian epistolary novel. The Lawgiver features au courant communication channels like cell phones, text messages and Skype, and [...] Continue reading »
The Creative Habit
“When it all comes together, a creative life has the nourishing power we normally associate with food, love, and faith,” asserts famous choreographer Twyla Tharp on the last page of her inspiring, tough-love book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. This book came out nine years [...] Continue reading »
Zola Examines Poverty
I wrote a recent post about skill vs. luck in an entrepreneur’s success. At a somewhat larger scale this debate encompasses class mobility and poverty vs. wealth. Aside from genetics, is any dice throw more influential than the parents and socio-economic strata that greet us at birth? This debate also [...] Continue reading »