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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Paying the rent

September 14, 2004 by Terry Teachout

The reason why I posted so much yesterday is that there really wasn’t much else I could do. A three-man film crew moved into my apartment after lunch to tape me talking about Paul Taylor. Their arrival time fluctuated throughout the morning (first they wanted to come at two, then they wanted to come at four, then they wanted to come at two…), and though they were perfectly nice in every possible way, the vacillations disrupted my writing rhythms. Once they finally arrived, it took them an hour to set up and another hour to knock down. Unable to summon up enough consecutive thought to write a piece, I gave up and started knocking out blog entries instead.


Today will be different. It’d better be. I have two Wall Street Journal pieces due, a profile for Wednesday’s paper and a drama column for Friday’s paper. Assuming I get them done on time, I can start working on the 2,000-word book review that I’m scheduled to ship off to a magazine some time tomorrow. (To my credit, I’ve already written 500 words’ worth of the review, but the rest has yet to make itself manifest.)


For all these reasons, I’m leaving the show to Our Girl today, and maybe tomorrow, too, depending entirely on how smoothly the prose flows. For the moment, I put out enough food on Monday to keep you happy, right?


Later.


UPDATE: One down, two to go….


UPDATE #2: Two down, time for a nap.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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