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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Saving my presence

May 1, 2017 by Terry Teachout

I still can’t quite get used to the fact that theater companies around America are performing Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, without my being there to see it happen. On Thursday, for example, Satchmo opens in Portland, Oregon, for a month-long run at Triangle Productions, a company about which I know nothing save that it exists. Nor am I familiar with the work of Salim Sanchez, the actor who’ll be playing the triple role of Louis Armstrong, Joe Glaser, and Miles Davis. Not only will I not be in Portland this week—I’m busy covering shows in New York and on the East Coast—but nobody in Portland has gotten in touch with me about the production. It’s as if I were a Famous Dead Playwright, the author of a dusty classic, instead of a non-famous, undead guy who’s hard at work on Play No. 2.

Dramatists Play Service, Inc., the publisher of and licensing agent for Satchmo, assures me that it’s normal, or at least not uncommon, for regional theaters to produce plays by non-famous, undead playwrights without reaching out to their authors. Once the papers are signed and the show licensed, the company is on its own, and in most cases it simply doesn’t occur to the director or actor to check in with the playwright: they do their thing, and that’s that.

I’m just fine with all this. Like a full-grown child, Satchmo now has a life of its own, and it doesn’t require my presence to flourish. That’s a good thing, an outcome of which I once dreamed and which has, to my amazement and delight, come to pass. Nevertheless, it feels more than a little bit funny to know that my brainchild is being put on stage without me, in the same way that someone might check one of my books out of a library and read it. What will Triangle Productions’ staging look like? What kind of accent will Salim Sanchez use when he plays Glaser? Will the citizens of Portland laugh in the usual places—or at all? I’ll never know.

It turns out that Salim is on Facebook, so I sent him a note last week wishing him the very best of luck (and no, I didn’t use that jinx-making phrase!). He wrote back at once and as follows: “I am so honored to be a part of this amazing piece! I will do my best to do it all the justice it deserves. Once I get in the zone, I’m gonna kill it!” That touched me greatly. I’m sure he will, and I hope that everyone in Portland who comes to see Satchmo enjoys watching him do so. But it’s a purely theoretical hope, for only in the most tenuous sense can you sincerely wish good luck to people you don’t know. This, too, is part of the mystery of being a modestly successful playwright. You write a show, other people in other places put it on stage, and…that’s that.

The mezzo-soprano Jennie Tourel once told this story about Paul Hindemith:

Hindemith, after he wrote a piece, wasn’t interested in it anymore. He never came to hear my Marianleben; although he knew I do it very well, he said he’s not interested to hear it—he’s written it.

No doubt such detachment is a becoming thing in an artist, and perhaps I’ll acquire it if I live long enough. I don’t have it yet, though, and somehow I doubt that a time will ever come when I’m not interested in seeing what other people do with Satchmo at the Waldorf. It’s my baby, all grown up.

Just because: Rod Serling’s “The Comedian”

May 1, 2017 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERARod Serling’s “The Comedian,” directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Mickey Rooney, Edmond O’Brien, Kim Hunter, and Mel Tormé. This teleplay was originally broadcast by CBS as an episode of Playhouse 90. It aired on February 14, 1957:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: Malcolm Muggeridge on humor and freedom of expression

May 1, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“The area of life in which ridicule is permissible is steadily shrinking, and a dangerous tendency is becoming manifest to take ourselves with undue seriousness. The enemy of humor is fear and this, alas, is an age of fear. As I see it, the only pleasure of living is that every joke should be made, every thought expressed, every line of investigation, irrespective of its direction, pursued to the uttermost limits that human ingenuity, courage and understanding can take it.”

Malcolm Muggeridge “America Needs a Punch” (Esquire, April 1958, courtesy of Thomas Vinciguerra)

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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