I’m going to miss Tom “Rampant Lesbianism” Coburn, Oklahoma’s recently retired senator. I mean, there are so many great things he’s done! True, he lacked Sam Brownback’s visual-aid skills, and has always lacked the high-minded intellectualism of James Inhofe. Nevertheless, I always got a kick out of Tom Coburn, and in particular his annual Wastebook,
Like many people I know, the last few weeks have been a matter of spending fairly large amounts of money on tickets to shows in January for Under the Radar, COIL, American Realness, and so on. Or, well, let me clarify: Under the Radar. As a critic I tend to have the opportunity to receive
To get an idea of where I‘ve been with this, you check out this narrative more or less covering (actually, dancing around) my project with Zoe Scofield and Juniper Shuey. In 2013. Not the 2012 part, not the 2014 part. Just 2013. This is the morass I’m working way through right now–hours of interviews, hundreds
So yes, the entire January shit-show thing is coming back and whatnot, and personally I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all. There’s tons and tons of mainstage, head-lining shows to see that are new (or largely new) to New York audiences. But for better or worse, the entire reason the entire January
Not that I usually indulge in very personal blog posts, but today has been a rather interesting and—in a good way—emotional day. Getting up earlier than I rather would on a Sunday morning, I rushed into the city to meet friends at MoMA to see the Matisse cut-outs exhibit. Matisse is not particularly one of
“Engaging and frustrating, imaginative and jumbled, original and derivative” –Alexis Soloski, The New York Times “The refreshing result (half-documentary, half-Genet) is chaotic, but it’s also productive and genuinely subversive; Hamilton gives us the kind of mess you learn from making.” –Helen Shaw, TimeOut New York “[A] dramatic seed blossoms late in the production when the
Sister Sylvester’s The Maids’ The Maids Opens Oct. 31 A note from the dramaturg: I was just re-watching a video we shot in early summer during the first rehearsals we did for The Maids’ The Maids, (opening Oct. 31 at Abrons Arts Center; tickets $20). It was unpleasantly hot that day, and I’m wearing multiple
A lot of people may be under the impression I don’t do much writing anymore. In a sense that’s true, because I don’t blog as much. But I do have a fairly busy writing schedule. As one of the editors of Chance, I’m often slammed with beautiful and ambitious pieces. For instance, in the current
Back in 2007, Harper’s magazine ran an article called “On the Rights of the Molotov Man” that I’ve always remembered. It’s about image culture, and specifically the fraught tale of a particular photograph, recounted through two separate essays: The first by artist Joy Garnett, the second by photographer Susan Meiselas. Garnett explains how, in 2003,