May 2011

The Magic of the
Magic of Theatre
Directness, simplicity, honesty — those were there. But also how the performers invested the artifice with themselves and didn't just move around inside it. How they shaped the air with their words the way a painter reconfigures a canvas with paint.
Michael Bettencourt

Two To Remember
Lester Cole - He was a New York playwright, a prolific screenwriter during Hollywood's 'golden years' and Iris Chang - She was a diligent and perceptive historian who was also a gifted writer.
Arthur Meiselman

My Hero
For me, he seems to embody the best of both Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson. Sir Derek has possession of breath-taking technical skills of speech and movement. His mind can take you through hair-pin turns of thought with extreme ease. And, like Sir Ralph, he has a glimpse of grandeur and other-worldliness that allows a Cyrano and a Brother Cadfael.
Nathan Thomas

F E A R
Fear mongers have always been with us. They've been around as long as fish mongers and whore mongers. But Glenn Beck has taken fear to a level of irrationality and profitability heretofore unseen in modern times. He is certainly not the only fear monger, but arguably its chief purveyor. His success is built upon fear. He has a propensity for crying and wrapping himself up in the Constitution and has garnered a rabid and loyal following.
Les Marcott

Where'd It Go?
I know why I didn't get a chance to take piano lessons when I was a kid: we didn't have a piano. (My best friend Colleen did. In fact one time we dawdled walking home from school & she missed her lesson. Man, her mom was mad! I didn't stick around to watch the carnage.) Of course when it came to classroom stuff, I was wild about singing.
Claudine Jones

A Brief But Quirky History of he Arts January 2011 Click Here The Rising Fall of the Arts January 2010 Click Here The One January 2009 Click Here What Is Art? / 2008 January 2008 Click Here View of the Arts/2007 January 2007 Click Here The Art of Sex in the Arts February 2006 Click Here State of the Art of the Arts October 2005 Click Here

FILM (Reviews)
Biutiful
Carancho
Win Win

...Having done wrong, how do you atone for it?  Three recent films offer different visions of wrongdoing, at varying levels of magnitude, and reach different conclusions about the possibility of atonement
Miles David Moore

DANCE
Franz and the Real Girl
Balanchine's
Coppélia

It is Balanchine's choreographic genius that makes Coppélia work its kind of magic. Recently restaged by the San Francisco Ballet, this is at once a traditional, three-act, full scale 19th century reconstruction and no ordinary story ballet.
Catherine Conway Honig

DANCE DRAMA
Walking On the Edge
of Water

.....Not all of the theatrical jumping off place was infused with disaster. Embedded in the dance drama  was the reflection on the necessity of clean fresh water. Life is fragile.
Ned Bobkoff

ARTS OF THAILAND
Jaroon Chaijit
In Stone and Wood

I have to thank Thailand's Songkran festival which gave me a chance to meet Jaroon Chaijit, renowned in the Thai world of sculpted art . He creates both wood and stone carvings and continuously exhibits his contemporary art works.
Janine Yasovant
คลิกเพื่ออ่านบทความนี้ เป็นภาษาไทย

In This Issue

The Cry of the
North American Badger
Emotional, intellectual, and literary slavery—and 
the exhilaration that comes from (rephrasing Robert Frost) a momentary 
stay against convention.

by
David Alpaugh

Read the Play

Steiny Road to Operadom
Elena Ruehr's Cantata

This spring the Steiny Road Poet has had the occasion to enjoy the rich sound of large choral groups. This feast of many voices included the Heritage Signature Chorale (Washington, DC) which will be featured in Ysaye Barnwell's Fortune's Bones at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts early in 2012.
Karren Alenier

Life Among
the Heffalumps
My Dinner In Hell:
A Pompous Feast

I'm just back from my own funeral.  I thought it would be deadly. But it was ALIVE! Compared to when I recently dined with the poet Prunella, the queen of pomposity and Jeremiah, the dull prince of prickliness. To tell about it will be the most boring story ever told.  (I've changed the names to protect the innocent....er, the pompous.)
Kathi Wolfe

COMICS
My Old Man!
The Art of Brotherly Love
A new series by Scene4's resident mad cartoonist
Elliot Feldman

POETRY
Tel Aviv, Israel 2000
Prophets dream in the stratosphere
Where planes hide above the clouds
The Eldest's Daughter's voice
Louder than the engine's roar
Forgotten in the Holy Land
Griselda Steiner