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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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TT: Home alone

February 15, 2010 by Terry Teachout

Frederick-Childe-Hassam-xx-A-New-York-Blizzard-xx-Isabella-Stewart-Gardner-Museum.jpgI left Mrs. T behind in Tampa last Thursday (she’ll be keeping warm in Florida and Los Angeles for another couple of weeks) and flew north to New York. It wasn’t easy to say goodbye to her, or to give up being a visiting scholar-in-residence at Rollins College and return to the land of dirty snow, and it didn’t help that I had to jump on the merry-go-round right away. On Saturday I drove up to Massachusetts to review Shakespeare & Company’s production of Dangerous Liaisons, then returned home the next morning and gave myself a night off–the night of Valentine’s Day, alas–before plunging back into my everyday life. No doubt I’ll be up to speed by week’s end, but for the moment I’m finding it hard to shift gears.
It’s not that I’ve been goofing off. In addition to lecturing, teaching, giving interviews, hitting deadlines, and seeing shows all over the state, I wrote the first draft of a one-man play about Louis Armstrong in my spare time. Yet all these things somehow seemed less stressful in Florida, partly because of the (mostly) pleasant weather and partly because of the change of scene, of which I was in desperate need. I was too busy with Pops and The Letter to take any noticeable amount of time off in 2009, and spending six weeks working in Winter Park was as close as I managed to get to putting my feet up.
I know I can’t go on like this, nor do I want to. After spending several hours last week working on my summer theater calendar, I managed to hack out enough time for a no-fooling pull-the-plug two-week vacation at the end of May. No shows, no deadlines, and maybe even no e-mail! Mrs. T insisted on it, and she didn’t have to do much pushing. I can’t wait to go up the spout three months from now. All I have to do is keep moving until then, and I think I’m equal to the task. Unlikely as it sounds, it’s going to help that so many shows are opening in New York during the second half of the theater season. I won’t be able to squeeze in any more out-of-town playgoing trips from now to the end of April, so instead of bouncing from coast to coast and back again, I’ll content myself with bouncing between New York and Connecticut.
For the moment, though, I’ve got three shows to see, three weeks’ worth of mail to open, and two Wall Street Journal columns to write, so excuse me if I disappear. I’ll be back next week. Until then, take it away, OGIC and CAAF! Your trusty co-blogger is about to be otherwise occupied.

TT: Almanac

February 15, 2010 by Terry Teachout

“Our intentions make blackguards of us all; our weakness in carrying them out we call probity.”
Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (trans. P.W.K. Stone)

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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