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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Lookback: running on empty

December 1, 2015 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2005:

The trouble with my life is not that it’s dull but that it sometimes becomes too interesting, at which point successive waves of beauty can start looking suspiciously like one damn thing after another. Experience has taught me the dangers of overscheduling myself, but though I’ve learned the lesson fairly well, it doesn’t always stop me from signing up for one event too many. Nor do I ever have total control over my schedule: press previews and deadlines fall where they will, not where I would, and every once in a while they become fused with the other parts of my life in such a way as to rob me of the ability to fall asleep. “Oh, God, I’m wired,” I find myself muttering grimly at three in the morning, knowing I’ll have to go on booming and zooming for several days past the last deadline before the adrenalin finally leaches out of my pores and I become my even-keeled self once more….

Read the whole thing here.

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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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