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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Off and running

November 8, 2017 by Terry Teachout

I spent much of Tuesday sitting in an upstairs studio at Palm Beach Dramaworks, rehearsing Billy and Me, my second play, which opens there on December 8. The plan was simply to read through the play from start to finish, but we ended up taking a searching look at the second act, as a result of which I went straight home after rehearsal and spent the evening doing rewrites.

These weren’t the kind of scared-to-death rewrites that you do when it’s obvious to everyone in the room that a show simply isn’t working. They were aimed at taking an act that was already strong and making it smoother and clearer. I know this because the half-dozen new speeches that I wrote last night gushed out of me like water from a fire hose. Pretty much the same thing happened at the first rehearsal of Shakespeare & Company’s 2012 production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, at which Gordon Edelstein and John Douglas Thompson cheerfully informed me that they both thought I ought to write a new character, Miles Davis, into the show, preferably that same night. I gulped a couple of times, then went home, rolled up my sleeves, set to work, and showed up at the rehearsal hall the following morning with the job all done. That’s more or less how things went yesterday.

Bill Hayes, the artistic director of Palm Beach Dramaworks and the director of Billy and Me, and Nicholas Richberg and Tom Wahl, who are playing the parts of Tennessee Williams and William Inge, are friends and colleagues of long standing, so it was no surprise that the four of us got along so famously. What made me even happier was that I made the acquaintance yesterday of Cliff Burgess, who is playing three smaller parts, and Debi Marcucci, Katie Pyne, and Stefanie Anarumo, the stage manager, assistant stage manager, and assistant to the director, all of whom were new to me. I can already tell that Cliff, the newest member of the cast, is going to do a terrific job. As for Debi, Katie, and Stefanie, I love working with women—virtually all of my best friends are women—and I knew within seconds of saying hello to them that Bill had put together a fabulous team.

I figure we’ll probably start off today’s rehearsal by reading the new speeches that I wrote last night and discovering how they sound when spoken out loud by first-class actors. I’m sure I’ll be doing a certain amount of topping and tailing after that, but I already feel good about our first day’s work.

Snapshot: the Alban Berg Quartet plays Beethoven

November 8, 2017 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAThe Alban Berg Quartet plays the third movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132. Beethoven titled this movement “Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode”:

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

Almanac: John Cleese on comedy in old age (1)

November 8, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“I don’t know much about contemporary comedy. I don’t watch any. I’m 77. I will almost certainly be dead within 10 years—maybe I’ll get 15. So to sit down to watch a sitcom seems to be a rather futile way of passing the time. It’s as simple as that. If I have a free evening, I’ll read, because there are so many things I don’t begin to understand and that I’d like to try and get a handle on before I’m dead. I’d rather do that than watch comedy.”

John Cleese, quoted in David Marchese, In Conversation: John Cleese (Vulture, September 12, 2017)

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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