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 »
Cartoon Tomfoolery (#353)
You are invited to play this quick minor league-version of the The New Yorker Caption Contest. Every week I enter the contest in the magazine. Below are five captions. Three are the magazine’s semifinal selections, one is the winner, and two are mine. See if you can guess which are which. [...] Continue reading »
Curiosity on Mars
A science fiction reader I’ve never been. Nevertheless I’ve always had a keen interest in science and make a consistent effort to keep up with developments. Astronomy is one subject that invariably attracts my interest, perhaps because it readily invites the really big questions – Where did we come? Why [...] Continue reading »
Cartoon Tomfoolery (#337)
You are invited to play this quick minor league-version of the The New Yorker Caption Contest. Every week I enter the contest in the magazine. Below are five captions. Three are the magazine’s semifinal selections, one is the winner, and two are mine. See if you can guess which are [...] Continue reading »
Seeing “Red” In Chicago and Seattle
As judged by the Tony Awards the two best new plays on Broadway last year were the musical Book of Mormon and the drama Red, written by John Logan. Red pulled down six Tonys, including Best Play. This year Red is being produced all over the country. Besides being a [...] Continue reading »
Presenting the Intrepid and Independent Lucy Wainwright Roche
Flux doesn’t begin to describe the current business models for many artists in the U.S. Popular music was the first sector plunged into chaos. Book publishing, film and theatre soon followed. The chaos has been different for each sector, but chaos it has been. I try to follow developments in [...] Continue reading »