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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 14, 2012

TT: Now’s the time

February 14, 2012 by Terry Teachout

pops%20-%20joe%20glaser%20001.jpgShakespeare & Company has announced performance dates for the New England premiere of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my one-man-two-character play about Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser, which stars John Douglas Thompson and will be directed by Gordon Edelstein. Opening night is August 22, 2012, and the show will run through September 2 at the Founders’ Theatre in Lenox, Massachusetts.
Tickets go on sale today. We expect them to sell briskly, so if you’re interested in coming, don’t dally.
For more information, or to purchase tickets on line, go here. You can also call the box office at 413-637-3353.
UPDATE: I just received this e-mail from a Playwright Who Must Remain Nameless:

a critic who’s a working playwright!!!!!! outrageous!!!!! outlandish!!!!!! impossible!!!!!!! hoorah!

And yes, I’m smiling. Broadly.

TT: Motto

February 14, 2012 by Terry Teachout

I put this Hugh MacLeod cartoon on the back of my business card around the time that it started looking like Satchmo at the Waldorf was going to get produced.
No, I’m not having second thoughts:
422283_10150690210432193_652497192_11229198_2032367246_n.jpg

TT: All-American (II)

February 14, 2012 by Terry Teachout

One good list deserves another, so here are the ten American plays I most wish I’d written. The second “play” is actually an evening-long bill of one-act plays by the same author, but it’s my list, so I decided to count it as a single work.

As with my previous list of American novels, the word best was nowhere in my mind when I drew up this roster. Since I’ve lately become a playwright myself, I suppose you could say that I have more of a stake in this list than its predecessor, but the standards for inclusion are identical: these are the ten American plays that mean the most to me personally. I love them and identify with them, and though I will never live long enough to write anything remotely as good, they collectively define the kind of play I’d like to be able to write:

revibountiful.jpg• Horton Foote, The Trip to Bountiful

• William Inge, Come Back, Little Sheba

• David Ives, All in the Timing

• Warren Leight, Side Man

• Kenneth Lonergan, The Starry Messenger

• David Mamet, American Buffalo

• Lynn Nottage, Crumbs from the Table of Joy

• Thornton Wilder, Our Town

• Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

• August Wilson, Fences

TT: Almanac

February 14, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.”
Willa Cather, One of Ours

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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