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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: The best medicine

October 3, 2005 by Terry Teachout

I just came home from a special “parent/teacher” performance of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (the show is usually dark on Sunday nights) to which persons under the age of sixteen were not admitted. A good thing, too, because it was really, really dirty. Also really, really funny: the show ran some twenty minutes long, mostly because of all the extra laughter. Would that I could share a few of the more printable punch lines with you, but I was laughing so hard all evening long that I wasn’t able to scrawl any legible notes. Suffice it to say that if another such performance should ever be given, do whatever you have to do to wangle a ticket–and leave the kids at home.


Speaking of fun, you know what? I took Saturday off. No writing, no editing, no chores, no gallery-going, no bound galleys to read, no Broadway press preview. Instead, I watched a couple of dumb movies on TV (Mickey Blue Eyes, forsooth!), stared at the walls (which of course has a different implication in the Teachout Museum than it does in most places), and went to a birthday party for one of my best friends. Oh, and I slept until eleven! Whee!


Now the prose engine is turning over in earnest, but I’m feeling a lot livelier for my day-long rest, in addition to which I have far less on my plate than I did last week. As you can see, blogging is coming easier again: along with today’s postings, you’ll find plenty of new stuff in the right-hand column, to which I commend your attention.


That’s all for today–I’ve got a deadline to hit, and I’m happy to say that I’m not dreading it. See you Tuesday.

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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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