Drama Queen

Friday Mack Attack, 10/10

2008-10-10T14:53:54Z

A bit late, I know, but I was very busy in synagogue yesterday atoning for all the mean things I've written about perfectly nice people during the past year.

This week I'm macking on: journalists who drag theater out of its complacent spot as William Shakespeare's publicity machine, and into the bright light of contemporary affairs. The New York Times' Patricia Cohen wrote a chilling feature this week about the nosediving economy's effect on Broadway. The Stranger's Brendan Kiley published a hotly discussed column on how theater can fix itself (and though I might only agree with about half of his 10 fixes, the simplest--beer, babysitting, brash new works--would go a hell of a long way toward putting those coveted young butts in the seats, and keeping the old ones coming back for more). Ellis Henican keeps inviting me on his radio show to look at the election through a dramatic lens. And I'm sure there are plenty more examples I've missed that you're welcome to post below. Anything, anything journalists can do to give theater a makeover so it's no longer regarded as film's boring, uncool older sister (Ugh, that farthingale? So 500 years ago.) is a welcome change. I know it's great, you know it's great, the challenge is getting people to talk about theater as much as they talk about television and film.

Obviously, it's a tougher goal since you have to actually leave the house to be part of the conversation, but if you can convince enough people they're missing enough of a cultural moment by staying home, or even better, can get inside their homes with a creative, interactive online presence surrounding each show (A good start? See New Paradise Laboratories' posting of auditions for its upcoming show Fatebook, a la The Real World, on its YouTube channel) and then offer them something extraordinary to discuss on their way out the door (and again, back online), you've elevated the entire sociological food chain. Nice work.

This week I'm hating on: Oliver Stone, who gives you one more reason to spend your hard-earned entertainment dollars at a live, rather than filmed, performance. Why? Because, in the tradition of World Trade Center which was released around the five year anniversary of the attacks, his new film, W., couldn't possibly be released at a worse time. No one wants to see this now, because we've been living it for the last eight years. The right won't be interested because, well, it's Oliver Stone, and the left won't be interested because the wounds aren't just fresh, they're suppurating. Stone is such a pompous jerk that I imagine he thought he'd be doing the left a favor by helping to influence the election. Wrong and wrong. All Stone will have achieved with this film, no matter how good it is, is to remind everyone on both sides of the aisle the reason "liberal" became a dirty word (so self-righteous, so annoying). The worst part is that Josh Brolin, a genius of understated acting, might have turned in a career-making performance with this one, to say nothing of how much fun it would be to watch Richard Dreyfuss tackle the Darth Vader role (Hey, Cheney's the one who joked that his wife said the comparison 'humanized' him).

Sure, with its epic, dynastic subject, it might be a great movie. In seven or so years. When we're in the midst of President Obama's second term, we're all driving American-made magnetic air cars and laughing about the days when we thought the nation was headed for bankruptcy and war with Iran. Boy, that was a time.

Below: Fatebook audition of "Katizzle Applebizzle from the 'hood of Minnetonka."

Friday Mack Attack, 10/3

2008-10-03T00:07:31Z

This week I'm macking on: Philadelphia. We're hosting a free Bruce Springsteen concert/rally for Obama on Saturday. Gary Steuer is wrapping up his first week as head of Mayor Michael Nutter's re-opened Office of Arts and Culture and the Creative Economy (that last part was added by the mayor for the office's new incarnation) even as the Wall Street economy proves how much less worthy it is of financial assistance than our artists. In Conflict is featured in this month's issue of American Theatre (I just reviewed the article's author, Krista Apple, here) going strong Off-Broadway and there are murmurs of its potential for a larger house. The 2008 Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre, kick off on Monday night. And finally, I'm headed to Sarasota, Florida this weekend--host of the 2009 American Theatre Critics' Association conference--and figured as long as I'm down there, I'd get a head start on checking out the drama scene. So what's playing at the Florida Studio Theatre? A Murder, A Mystery and A Marriage, with book and lyrics by former Arden Theatre Artistic Director Aaron Posner (the Arden will premiere Posner's new adaptation of Chaim Potok's My Name Is Asher Lev later this season) and music by Pig Iron member James Sugg, whose original production The Sea (Tom Waits fans, go on and click. The songs are very Swordfishtrombones, in a good way, and the show stands on its own.) was one of my all-time Fringe Festival favorites. And, oh yeah, didn't I hear something recently about the Phillies? So while visitors might pour on the haterade and call us fat, unfriendly, unstylish, ugly, a crappy vacation destination, dirty, noisy, dangerous and boring (things got worse for us since the last survey), all I have to say is dontcha wish your city was hot like ours?

This week I'm hating on: Clowns. Specifically the clowns of the San Francisco Clown conservatory, who came up with this idea: a "Naked Clown Calendar" as an MS fundraiser. I know it's for a good cause and maybe you can pay the Judy Finelli Fund to not send you a calendar. Because really, this has to be the worst idea since last week's announcement of American Psycho, the Musical. Ever think about a clown's nipples? A clown's hairy belly? No? Of course not, and you know why? Because it would make you cry, not laugh. Because only John Wayne Gacy's victims had to do that, and they didn't want to. I couldn't upload any of their pictures as they're protected, and, um, they're scary. No need to thank me.

Your moment of Zen: Theater Critic Has Stage Fright

2008-10-02T17:31:02Z

If you missed my appearance with Ellis Henican yesterday on Sirius Radio's Ron Silver Show, here it is, but it's on the long side. I come in at about 10:15 to discuss the drama--and dramatic analogies--surrounding tonight's vice presidential debate. More coherent than last time, but still suffering performance anxiety; one more reason to hate actors, I guess. (Oh, come on, it's a joke.) Enjoy.

WendyRosefield-Palin.wav

Temple Theater Expands the Brand

2008-10-01T00:40:54Z

Last season, Temple University's theater department scored a major hit with In Conflict, an original production based on former Philadelphia Daily News writer Yvonne Latty's book of the same name. The show and its undergrad cast have since gone on to a stint at New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival--where they won the "Fringe First" award--and are now Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theater, where they received an enthusiastic review from the New York Times' Ben Brantley.

Brantley's review picked out several of the same passages that I did when I reviewed the show last year for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Here's my review. Feel free to compare and contrast. I believe the show has changed a bit since the premiere, but we both seemed to share the same impressions:

War in Their Own Words: Vets Speak on Life and Loss
by Wendy Rosenfield
Congratulations to Temple Theaters and director Douglas C. Wager for creating In Conflict, a collection of former Philadelphia Daily News writer Yvonne Latty's interviews with Iraq war veterans that first appeared in book form, and has now been adapted for the stage.
There are many triumphs in the piece, not the least of which is the sheer variety of vets and war experiences represented, 19 in total: a Vietnam-vet officer who "bleeds red, white and blue"; an unabashed liberal enlistee who says he was sent to Iraq to be a "bullet catcher"; a triple amputee who shyly admits, "I miss my body"; a lost 26-year-old who spits, "I gave up my soul - can't nobody give me a prosthetic soul." Each story is fascinating, heartbreaking, heroic or all three, with insights as original as the individuals who generously share them. It is remarkable that with such a wide range of voices, the same themes emerge in most of their testimonies. They want the Veterans Administration to help care for their wounds, both physical and psychic, but tragically, they have mostly been abandoned. They wonder why exactly they were sent to Iraq. They wonder if civilians even care that they've nearly died defending our right to order a hot latte.
If I have any quarrel with the show it's that it could be shortened by a few narratives - not because they're irrelevant or dull, but because by including so many, they risk losing their individual impact to a sense of overload. However, I also wouldn't want to be the one to choose whom to cut and whom to keep.
So why see this version of Iraq veterans' stories instead of staying home and ordering up HBO's? Because In Conflict's most arresting feature is the irony that suffuses the whole endeavor. Latty recalls, in one of the filmed segments that appear between monologues, the disorientation she felt upon entering Walter Reed Medical Center and seeing men and women, the same age as her Villanova students, wearing the same baseball caps with shredded brims, the same t-shirts that declared their affiliations, but all missing limbs or faces. It is a similar feeling watching these uniformly excellent Temple students reciting the soldiers' tales and adopting their mannerisms. Perhaps they're so good because essentially, they're playing themselves, inhabiting a parallel universe where their doppelgangers are, instead of runnng to Wawa for a Coke, driving a booby-trapped road into hostile territory for that same Coke.
Based on the book by Yvonne Latty, adapted and directed by Douglas C. Wager, scenery by Andrew Laine, costumes by Marian Cooper, sound by Christopher Cappello, lighting by J. Dominic Chacon, video by Warren Bass.
The Cast: Tim Chambers, Sam Paul, Suyeon Kim, Sean Lally, Tom Rader, Stan Sinyakov, Danielle Pinnock, Ethan Haymes, Damon Williams, Amanda Holston, Joy Notom

Today's review marks another first for Temple, a move into Center City Philadelphia. They didn't pick the greatest show for their in-town debut, but did a serviceable job with the production. Review here.

Below: The Official Trailer for In Conflict

Longest Day's Journey into Night

2008-09-29T11:46:50Z

Here's today's Inquirer review of Villanova Theatre's Long Day's Journey into Night. There are a lot of colleges in Philadelphia turning out a lot of top-shelf productions lately. Unfortunately, this wasn't one of them.

All This Week She's Had Butterflies

2008-09-27T15:20:54Z

Sarah Palin at Philly's Irish Pub last night doing her version of "Omigod You Guys!" Bailey was so much cuter.

Who nailed it better?

New Friday Feature: The Weekly Mack Attack

2008-09-26T17:44:26Z

In an effort to stick to a blogging schedule, I'm going to start posting a "Weekly Mack Attack" on Fridays, a shout-out and call-out of whatever got under my skin during the previous seven days. The first entry comes from the realm of political theater, and even though you wanted to leave during intermission (That's what this whole "break" in the campaign was, right?) they can't/won't refund your ticket. At least the second act will be shorter than the first.

This week I'm hating on: John McCain's electioneering. Yeah sure, that's like shooting fish in a barrel, and next week I promise not to go for anything so obvious, and maybe even for something arts related, but come on, already. John McCain: save the drama for your sugar mama. Learn to multi-task. What really worries me is that considering Sarah Palin's recent transformation from Miss Alaska also-ran to Miss South Carolina (such as and, the Iraq), he's just crazy enough to dump her... But just sane enough to wait until after Obama's next significant polling uptick.

This week I'm macking on: The array of Barack Obama goodies on Etsy, a clearinghouse for all things handmade. There are McCain items too, but as we learned this week, conservatives are boring. So is their political paraphernalia. The best they came up with? "Nobama" t-shirts. Obamazons? They're uniters, not dividers. Hip-hop lovers can order "Obama Said Knock You Out" shirts, while metalheads can tear it up in one that screams (but not in a German accent) "Here I Am, Barack You Like a Hurricane." Indie types can smirk in their ironic Andy Warhol-style "Yes We Can" American Apparel tees. Fancy folk can order up a hand-calligraphied "Elitists for Obama" button and lace their election night parties with some Obama portrait cookies. And old-schoolers can "Rock Out with Your Barack Out" on a glossy 3x5 print. So many ways to beg your fellow Americans not to screw this one up.

Below: Electioneering we can enjoy--Easy Star All-Stars' Radiodread version of the Radiohead song.

To Post or Not to Post?

2008-09-26T16:32:21Z

I'm sort of split on the idea of posting my reviews here, since they're local and you're probably not. But I'm going to do it anyway, because, well, they're online, and so are you. You can feel free to let me know if this exercise adds nothing (or something!) to your Drama Queen experience.

So for anyone interested, here's my review of Gas and Electric Arts' production of Lisa D'Amour's Anna Bella Eema from today's Philadelphia Inquirer.

Below: a video of G&EA's rehearsal process. Fairly pretentious and kind of ridiculous, but then again, rehearsals probably shouldn't be filmed anyway. The show was much better than this would lead you to believe.

Did Someone Mess with My Calendar?

2008-09-25T15:17:02Z

...Because it doesn't look like April 1.

So does that mean this is for real? For really real? Is American Psycho really slated to hit Broadway in 2010?

Didn't anyone learn their lesson from The Fly, the opera? I'm all for Grand Guignol revivalism, and even more for Bennington grads making mad money, but seriously? American Psycho, the jukebox musical? Didn't The Wedding Singer satisfy everyone's '80's cravings when it closed after less than a year? Didn't Glory Days satisfy everyone's thirst for blood?

I'll bet anyone a bloody, bloody Andrew Jackson (I'm not one of those Bennington grads making mad money) that Patrick Bateman's catalogue of murders--assuming it ever makes it to the stage--will rival the Moose Murders for the terror it inspires in its investors.

But, um, if everything does work out, who wants to drive up with me to see it?

Below, Bennington grad Justin Theroux in the film based on Bennington grad Bret Easton Ellis' book.

Up With Populist People

2008-09-24T19:59:48Z

My new favorite blog is Mark Blankenship's The Critical Condition, and not just because he sparked up my Lazy Sunday by posting his distressingly catchy Silence of the Lambs hip-hop track right after a post about Eminem's imminent return. I love it because even though he's often critiquing theater for the New York Times, he's not afraid to simultaneously feed his pop culture jones. And why not? If someone has to check out Celebrity Autobiography or Perez Hilton Saves the Universe, then all the better if they own a copy of Suzanne Somers' "Touch Me," (everyone should) or check in on the pink poseur several times a day anyway.

At this point, Pop culture is so pop that VH1 is already loving up the naughty aughties while we're still waist deep in their muck, and FakeSarahPalin has 4,263 followers on Twitter (Yes, I'm one of them). With troupes like Les Freres Corbusier eliding easily between Schoolhouse Rock and Ibsen, it ain't enough anymore to brush up your Shakespeare. You've gotta watch New York brush up on hers as well. Or not. But still, you never know.

So hallelujah that playwrights like Tom Stoppard are there to worry about the big stuff, to school us on Havel and Housman, and that theater critics are, for the most part, thrilled to have such a deep well from which to draw. But considering the heaping helping of Pink Floyd in his latest work, it seems even Stoppard's been dipping into the shallow end of the waterhole lately.

Though Blankenship--kicking back and mixing up his arts coverage with "Clay is gay" stories--may not save the world, he just might help save informed, professional criticism from extinction by expanding its reach outside the realm of a handful of subscribers and niche enthusiasts. And by "save it," I mean, "make a video for his Silence of the Lambs rap." Hey, whatever works.

Below: the meta-moment of the pop culture year. So far.

2008 Philly Live Arts/Fringe, in a Wordle

2008-09-18T18:14:44Z

The 2008 Philadelphia Live Arts/Fringe Festival is over, but my extracurricular work--sorting out what I've seen and divining new ideas, trends and rising stars from the pack--continues. Rather than summarize the whole experience, click on the word cloud below. It's composed of all my festival reviews and is almost as chaotic as the fringing experience itself (who knew "balls," and "blood," would figure so prominently)?

Want more? Here are links to every review in the cloud (bonus: they're attached to reviews from my Philadelphia Inquirer colleagues).

Sebastienne Mundheim's Sea of Birds

Green Light Productions' The Widow's Blind Date

Greg Kennedy, Innovative Juggler

Bash

Entertaining Mr. Sloane

Court Martial at Fort Devens

Ballad Boys

A Priest Walks into a Bar

The Lost Book of Miriam

If that's still not enough, well, fine, I'll summarize anyway.

For me, the most exciting moments at this year's Philly Live Arts/Fringe were those that took theater out of the theater. Viennese artists Matsune + Subal opened Store, a social experiment wherein two performance artists set up shop on South Street, a busy, exhaust-choked urban thoroughfare that was once where "all the hippies meet," (it's not nearly as nice as it sounds on this link, but you do get a bit of historical flavor and some Dead Milkmen trivia) and is now home to an array of condom stores, tattoo parlors, bars, and--considering those volatile ingredients--a heavy police presence. So it was nothing short of astonishing to watch as everyone from hoochies to hipsters fell under the Matsune + Subal spell, purchasing ridiculous mini performances from a menu and laughing out loud as the pair ran through traffic with a plastic sheet fluttering behind them a la Christo, or posed as a .75 cent "Cheap Copy" of a grinning Buddha.

England's Rotozaza brought Etiquette, a two-person event, in which you and a friend are the two people, and the table in front of you is the stage. This link shows a video of the project's New York incarnation, but here in Philly, the setting was vastly different. It took place at the Last Drop Cafe, a local java joint that's been cultivating an air of pretentiousness since grunge, and whose grimy interior was perfectly suited to the piece. While a woman's voice (via recorded message, played through a pair of headphones) directed me to perform tasks, a man directed my husband, who sat opposite me at a cafe table filled with tiny props--a ball of clay, piece of chalk, glass of water with an eyedropper perched on its rim. We performed bits from Godard and Ibsen, and though I announced loudly "I am a prostitute," no one around seemed to care. It was a somnambulistic experience, being inside this hyper-dramatic event complete with a thrashing storm, that appeared to have no impact on its surroundings.

Anyway, these, to me were examples of the essence of a perfect Fringe fest, productions that blurred the lines between performer and audience, performance and perception. There were several others equally exciting, but the real point here is that the Fringe is not the time to mount a conventional production of a standard old play. Unless you're adding a radical new spin (Oedipus at FDR's olly-popping skateboarders, for example), save yourself the agony, save it for your regular season and make room for artists whose work expands the form and offers us a reflection of our present and a glimpse into the future.

Jerome Bel says it best:

I Went to Broadway and All I Got Was This Lousy Show

2008-09-15T17:00:58Z

Finally made it to New York yesterday (first time this season) and saw The 39 Steps. The show, a farcical, campy, reimagining of Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 romance/suspense/thriller, won one of the five Tony Awards for which it was nominated (Best Lighting) and was praised effusively by Ben Brantley in the New York Times. I settled into my seat with high expectations and the lingering frisson of excitement that still hits every time I head into the business end of the Lincoln Tunnel.

So all the greater was my disappointment when the production was halfway as good as it could have been, with a set design halfway as creative as several Philly Fringe shows I'd seen, and with a halfway committed cast running on autopilot. At intermission, my companion (and provider of my ticket) St. Paul Pioneer Press theater critic Dominic Papatola, remarked, "Well, this is a strange little show for Broadway."

Strange indeed, and not in a good, gatecrashing, Passing Strange, kind of way. Rather, it was strange that of all the shows in the English-speaking world to choose to pick up and mount on Broadway, why should this bit of West End escapist fluff that seems plucked from the rounds of regional repertory theaters--an Irma Vep with a bigger cast and less ingenuity--be anointed? Mind you, I have nothing against fluff, even if it arrives during an era ripe for meatier fare (witness August: Osage County's success on that front). But this fluff? Really?

Following the show, we indulged in a discussion of Broadway's current impotence and regional theater's growing virility, which is all well and good, considering we're both covering theater in our respective regions. But while it's nice to be smug about your city's healthy theater scene, the power of the regional theater inferiority complex is such that you still wonder if in the face of the Manhattan machine, your hometown triumphs are merely the result of boosterism and provincial pride.

Well, guess not. In this weekend's announcement of the closing of Forbidden Broadway, its founder, Gerard Alessandrini cited plain old boredom as the reason for shuttering his nearly 30-year-old star-skewering satirical institution.

"When Broadway becomes too theme-park-like, it makes it difficult, and it just looks like it's becoming overly commercial the next couple of years," he said.

When it's not even fun to make fun of Broadway anymore, something is terribly wrong. Visiting New York should be like opening a compendium of the best new American plays and musicals instead of walking down memory lane, or even worse, walking straight down the middle of the road to Broadwayland. A revival here and there is fine, but you don't end up getting a Gypsy or All My Sons in the first place by only banking on the tried and true. One look at the 1956 Tony nominations (or even the 1976 nominations), packed with original productions of original ideas and well, compared to this season's lukewarm musicals and revivals of revivals, perhaps it's best to avert your eyes. Or hey, look elsewhere--like to regional producers--for guidance.

Sarah Palin, Friend or Foe of the Arts?

2008-09-11T13:55:21Z

So with all the ruckus about Sarah Palin's VP nomination, I haven't seen much about her stand on arts funding (I've also been submerged in a Fringe Fest fog for the past week-and-a-half, so if I missed something on ArtsJournal about the issue, my apologies). If she's truly aligned with her running mate John McCain, she'd be all for eliminating arts funding altogether.

Well, turns out it's not that simple. It seems that under Palin's governorship, the Alaska State Council on the Arts (AKSCA) has increased its funding very slightly--just over 4%--to nonprofit artists and organizations. But while on the surface this appears to be promising news, it comes with the caveat that the council ran out of grant funds by the end of the third quarter of FY2007, and thus, "was only able to receive applications for three of the four normal quarterly grant deadlines." As AKSCA's operating report budget changes the information it includes from year to year, I'm not sure if this is due to more money going to fewer organizations or just plain poor planning. However, it does appear that before Palin's tenure, arts funding was on the decline in her state, and has since seen an incremental increase.

The most significant bump in AKSCA's funding comes in grants to schools for arts education, which last year rose just over 31%. This number doesn't include grants for field trip transportation (there were 68 of those, if you were wondering, though the report doesn't say whether this number increased or decreased). Participation in Alaska's Arts Education Consortium--an art teachers' professional development conference--has also increased under Palin, with the number of teachers rising from 27 in 2005 to 70 in 2008.

Of course, just because Palin accepted money for arts funding and kept Alaska's Council on the Arts open doesn't mean she'll be a friend of the arts once she becomes VP, heaven help us (Hey, it's a blog, not a newspaper. Go read the Inquirer if you want impartiality). Considering her ties to Pat Buchanan and far right sympathies, this widely circulated bit from Time magazine about her tenure as Wasilla's mayor:

Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

and Artnet's report on her slashing of Wasilla's Dorothy G. Page Museum budget, it's probably safe to say artistic freedom isn't high on Palin's list of national priorities. The Obama/Biden ticket has laid out its Platform in Support of the Arts for all to see, but don't bother searching the word "arts" on the McCain-Palin site, because it's not there. And consider this: if the arts don't even merit a mention on the candidates' website, what will happen to the country's arts and culture economy when they are in office?

Twittering from the Fringe

2008-08-31T14:58:28Z

Just a reminder that I'll be Tweeting from the Philadelphia Live Arts Fest for the next two weeks. Last night's events included Israel Horovitz's The Widow's Blind Date--review to appear in tomorrow's Inquirer--and a battle of the official/unofficial festival bars.

Official bar: It's low-key, I'll give them that. Video animations by Lars Jan and ambient music by James Sugg (and Turkish food, apparently, though it was gone by 1 a.m.). Unofficial bar: Last night, a cabaret hosted by local arts impresario Scott Johnston, and featuring the band Black Landlord (picture, if you can, Run-DMC with a horn section and hipster backing band), Pig Iron's phenomenally talented Dito van Reigersberg as his alter ego Martha Graham Cracker, and the gals from the Peek-a-Boo Revue (winners of this year's Miss Exotic World "Best Troupe" category) shaking their artsy can-cans. Winner: the unofficial event, hands down, which is kind of fitting considering this whole thing started out as a fringe festival anyway.

The link to my Twitter page was supposed to be in today's paper, but wasn't. Go to www.twitter.com/wendyrosenfield. If you're not currently receiving Tweets from anyone, sign up. It's so easy you'll be embarrassed you waited so long.

Don't worry, I won't tell anyone.

Political Theater Goes Literal

2008-08-30T14:59:22Z

In this year's presidential election, "political theater" is getting a literal spin. And why not? Elections--and their behind-the-scenes machinations--are always events of high drama. But with this race's epic, historic themes it appears the temptation toward artistic license was too much for editors and pundits to resist.

Way back in April, Newsday columnist Ellis Henican interviewed me for his radio show about the Clinton-Obama debate, asking for a theater critic's interpretation of the proceedings (I was a Clinton supporter, and thought the Obama camp was hoping to portray her as Lady Macbeth. It seems ultimately, she managed that feat on her own.)

Now the thespian angle seems to really be catching on. The Wall St. Journal's Andy Jordan posted a bit of video reportage (see below) from the DNC with this title: "Democratic Convention: Nomination as Theater." And though Jordan is more conversant in the language of film than of stage, he puts in a valiant effort to describe the event's mise en scene.

Today, a piece by playwright Christopher Durang appeared on the New Republic's site, parsing speech by speech, the DNC's dramatic appeal. The best part, to me, of Mr. Durang's endeavor is that it really serves as a reminder to readers and editors everywhere that neither arts journalism nor theater criticism are as easy as they look. Though Durang is a fine playwright (and something of a Philly local, too; he has a home in Bucks County), Walter Kerr, he ain't.

On Monday, my friend Dominic Papatola, theater critic for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, will cover the Rebublican National Convention for his paper--a pretty exciting turn of events for a guy more accustomed to the sedate halls of the Guthrie than the Xcel Energy Center's hockey- or RNC-fueled mayhem. I'm hoping his coverage will include more than a few dramatic references, as the Republicans, with their Deus ex Machina--otherwise known as Sarah Palin--and Shavian cast of characters lend themselves particularly well to cynical interpretations of their performance. Not that I'm, you know, biased or anything.

And hey, maybe this shifting of duties will turn out to be a good thing for all those arts critics clinging desperately to their jobs. I turns out our perspective just might be useful after all.

Seen any other examples of political coverage as arts coverage? Send me a link.

Update: Brendan Kiley, an arts writer for Seattle weekly The Stranger, is taking his campaign coverage to a new level--by getting pepper sprayed at protests.