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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for January 12, 2011

TT: Out of joint

January 12, 2011 by ldemanski

I’m in suspended animation, sort of. I was supposed to fly last night from Sarasota, Florida, to New York’s Kennedy Airport, but my flight was canceled in the afternoon and rescheduled for this morning. Later in the day my new flight was canceled, leading to a mildly amusing absurdity: JetBlue then rescheduled me to arrive in New York at 11:32 Thursday morning and depart again for Sarasota at 12:18 that same afternoon.
Not that it mattered, since I’d needed to get to Manhattan in time to see two plays on Wednesday, a matinee and an evening performance, and meet with a stage director in between shows. The canceled flights thus took away the point of my trip, so I decided to be sensible and sit tight in Sarasota for two extra days.
Hyatt%20Sarasota.jpegAnd what am I doing here? Nothing out of the ordinary. Last night I wrote another chunk of the third chapter of my Duke Ellington biography, on which I’ve been working since Mrs. T and I arrived in Florida last week. I got up this morning, ordered a room-service breakfast, knocked out my Friday drama column for The Wall Street Journal, and e-mailed it to New York. We’re staying at a waterfront hotel, and though it’s too brisk to swim, the sun is shining brightly, so the next thing on my agenda is a walk.
Needless to say, I’m going to keep on chipping away at the Ellington book while I’m here, but neither Mrs. T nor I has ever been to the Ringling Museum of Art, so an afternoon field trip may be in order. On Friday night we’ll go to Asolo Rep’s revival of Twelve Angry Men, which is why we came to Sarasota in the first place. The next day, weather permitting, I’ll fly up to Philadelphia for the workshop performances of Danse Russe about which I posted earlier today.
I have, in short, plenty to do, but I’m still at loose ends. My life requires me to live by the clock, and it always throws me for a loop when that clock gets stopped, whatever the reason may be. Last week’s vacation on Sanibel Island was part of a carefully wrought plan–seven days of relaxation–and so doing nothing seemed all right to me. Today, by contrast, I ought to be be tearing up and down the snowy streets of Manhattan, slipping and sliding from one appointment to the next. Instead I’m sitting in a hotel room in Sarasota, looking at the sun on the water and feeling vaguely guilty.
Such guilt, I suspect, is one of the curses of modernity: these days precious few of us know know how to turn loose the passing hours and let them go unregretted. Perhaps I’ll feel better about their passing later today, and I already know I should regard it as an act of grace. For the moment, though, I can’t shake off the nagging suspicion that I’m somehow to blame for their demise.

TT: Two giant steps

January 12, 2011 by ldemanski

Cocteau.jpegDanse Russe, my latest operatic collaboration with Paul Moravec, will be given two staged workshop performances this weekend, the first on Saturday night in Wilmington, Delaware, and the second on Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia, where Center City Opera Theater will be giving the world premiere on April 28. This one-act opera is a backstage comedy about the making of The Rite of Spring, and Paul and I have been busily revising it ever since the first workshop performance in November. These latest performances are open to the public, and assuming that the sky doesn’t fall again, stranding me somewhere in Florida, I’ll be present at both of them.
For more information, go here.

TT: Snapshot

January 12, 2011 by ldemanski

Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang play “Wild Cat” in King of Jazz:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

TT: Almanac

January 12, 2011 by ldemanski

“There is nothing, I think, in which the power of art is shown so much as in playing the fiddle. In all other things we can do something at first. Any man will forge a bar of iron, if you give him a hammer; not so well as a smith, but tolerably. A man will saw a piece of wood, and make a box, though a clumsy one; but give him a fiddle and a fiddle-stick, and he can do nothing.”
Samuel Johnson (quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson)

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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