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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for October 24, 2007

TT: Picture this

October 24, 2007 by Terry Teachout

My latest videoblog for The Horizon, Commentary‘s artblog, has just been posted. In it I talk about Alex Ross’ The Rest Is Noise, the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Pygmalion, two new books about postmodern architecture and the life of Shakespeare, the most memorable thing that happened at my wedding ceremony, and the latest addition to what I’m now calling the Teachouts’ Museum, a lithograph by Toko Shinoda.
To view it, go here.

TT: Orange juice for one

October 24, 2007 by Terry Teachout

I love teaching, and one of the few things I dislike about my professional life is that it keeps me too busy for part-time classroom stints. Once a year, though, I work off some of my frustration by leading a hands-on seminar in journalistic criticism at the NEA’s Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera, which is where I was yesterday morning. I spent three very intense hours working with six very smart critics, and enjoyed myself enormously. The only problem was that I had to get up early to write the first half of my Wall Street Journal drama column, then rush home after the seminar to finish it up and send it off to my editor.
Now I’m in Minneapolis, where I’ll be seeing Brian Friel’s new play this afternoon, then flying down to St. Louis immediately after the show and driving from there to Smalltown, U.S.A., to spend a couple of days telling my mother all about the Big Event. On Saturday I return to New York, and the next day I’ll be seeing Kevin Kline in the Broadway revival of Cyrano de Bergerac.
I could stand a day off, or even two. More important, though, I haven’t seen Mrs. T for a week and a half, and I miss her sorely. She was supposed to be accompanying me on my latest sprint through the hinterlands, but illness intervened, so I’ll be seeing The Home Place by myself, and listening to the car radio as I make my way from St. Louis to Smalltown instead of chatting happily about nothing in particular. It’s funny how fast you get used to not being alone.
Of course I still have the best job in the world–I can’t believe I’m getting paid to see two Brian Friel plays and a Stephen Sondheim musical in one week–but as Joni Mitchell once put it, The bed’s too big/The frying pan’s too wide. I’ll be glad when both are full again.

TT: Almanac

October 24, 2007 by Terry Teachout

“A small town is automatically a world of pretense. Since everyone knows everyone else’s business, it becomes the job of the populace to act as if they don’t know what is going on instead of its being their job to try to find out.”
Jeanine Basinger, A Woman’s View

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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