Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
John Lennon and Chuck Berry perform “Memphis, Tennessee” and “Johnny B. Goode” and are interviewed on a 1972 episode of The Mike Douglas Show:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.”
Alfred Korzybski, Manhood of Humanity
I vaguely recalled having read about her horrific experiences, but knew nothing of the details. Now I know all about them, and I find myself in awe of her, not just because of her indomitable determination but because it turns out that in addition to being an excellent singer, Ms. Tillemann-Dick is also a very fine writer. “The Encore” is one of the best books I’ve ever read about the effects of chronic illness on the human spirit. Most of us, I suspect, like to think that we’d rise to a difficult occasion if forced to do so, but rarely are we put to the test. Ms. Tillemann-Dick was, and she faced it with a courage that I can scarcely begin to fathom.
Ms. Tillemann-Dick was diagnosed in 2004 with pulmonary hypertension, an extremely rare and devastating disease of the lungs. A 20-year-old music student, she’d set her sights on an operatic career, and she had every reason to believe that her dream would come true. Instead, her doctor told her to stop singing at once, warning her that “those high notes are going to kill you.” PH, as it’s known to those who have it, is debilitating, incurable and, if left untreated, fatal. But she refused to give up, telling herself, “I just want to live—really live—for as long as I have left.”
A second, more enlightened specialist encouraged her to keep on singing, and she continued to study and perform for as long as her waning health permitted. Palliative treatments kept her going until 2009, when it finally became clear—as is always the case with end-stage PH—that the only thing that would save her life was a double-lung transplant. Fortunately, she survived the painful operation, and to the amazement of her doctors, she started singing in public again a year later, something that no one but Mrs. Tillemann-Dick had thought possible….
Our hearts go out to Yonatan Doran, Charity’s husband. May he find comfort in the knowledge that her life was a blessing and an inspiration.
One last thing: if you haven’t signed up to be an organ donor, please do so now, and encourage your friends to do likewise. Charity’s life was lengthened to noble effect because two people who never knew her did so.
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A 2011 TED talk by Charity Tillemann-Dick:
From 2009:
Read the whole thing here.One of my closest friends, a writer whom I admire greatly, has dedicated his latest book to me. I was one of the first people to suggest that he write it, and he claims to have profited from my counsel and encouragement. That’s nice to know–especially since the finished product turned out to be a first-rate piece of work. (I suppose it would feel uncomfortable to be the dedicatee of a piece of junk!) I received a copy of the uncorrected proofs in the mail the other day, and it was a decidedly strange experience to see “For TERRY TEACHOUT” printed on the fifth page. I’ve been written about in a couple of memoirs and mentioned in passing in a half-dozen other volumes of various kinds, but never before have I been the dedicatee of a book….
“To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.”
Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society
Patricia McBride and John Clifford dance George Balanchine’s Tarantella, set to the music of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, in an undated telecast:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak.”
John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson (February 2, 1816)
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From “Julius Caesar” to “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” and beyond, theater has long given us fictionalized what-are-they-like-at-home glimpses of powerful politicians and their private lives. At their best, such shows can be both provocative and memorable, but the latest of them, Lucas Hnath’s “Hillary and Clinton,” takes a self-evidently promising subject and misses every opportunity to make it dramatic. No matter how you feel about the Clintons, you’ll likely find it a once-over-lightly disappointment.
What is most puzzling about Mr. Hnath’s play is the episode from the Clintons’ shared life that he has chosen to put onstage. Instead of writing about the 2016 election, he’s turned the clock all the way back to 2008, the year in which Mrs. Clinton (Laurie Metcalf) lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama (Peter Francis James). What’s more, he’s sought to write what the marquée cutely describes as “primarily a comedy,” although that catchphrase is misleading: Shorn of its limp punchlines, “Hillary and Clinton” is the story of the complicated, apparently unhappy marriage of two formidably ambitious people, one of whom usually got what he wanted and the other of whom mostly didn’t.
As promising as this sounds on paper, it doesn’t work in the theater, in part because John Lithgow is playing Bill Clinton. Granted that theater is an art of illusion and that Mr. Hnath has very specifically instructed his actors not to “imitate” (his word) the people they’re playing, Mr. Lithgow’s familiar onstage persona, that of the comic WASP, is so far removed from Mr. Clinton’s down-home glad-handing that you spend much of the play wondering who thought it was a smart idea to cast him….
Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This” is back on Broadway for the first time since 1988, and it probably shouldn’t be. It’s not a bad play, you understand, but no amount of high-class craftsmanship can conceal the fact that “Burn This” is a smiley-faced variation on “A Streetcar Named Desire” (neurotic-but-not-hopelessly-so dancer turned choreographer, secretly sensitive coke-snorting stud whose sexual prowess brings her back to life, nice boring boyfriend, happy ending) with a Sassy Gay Second Banana™ thrown in to confuse the issue. The four parts are respectively played by Keri Russell, Adam Driver, David Furr and Brandon Uranowitz, all of whose performances have a shallow, one-notey feel….
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To read my review of Hillary and Clinton, go here. To read my review of Burn This, go here.Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow talk about Hillary and Clinton:
A TV commercial for the original 1987 Broadway production of Burn This:
Lanford Wilson talks about Burn This in 1987:
Humphrey Bogart endorses major-league baseball in an undated TV commercial filmed and originally telecast in the Fifties:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
George Orwell,Nineteen Eighty-Four