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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

At long last…

December 8, 2017 by Terry Teachout

Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production of Billy and Me, my second play, opens tonight in West Palm Beach. With two smooth public previews under our belts, I feel confident about the upcoming occasion. I wish Mrs. T could be here to share it with me, but saving her absence, I expect to have a perfectly marvelous time tonight.

Truth to tell, my opening nights have always been happy events. If past experience holds true, I’ll be excited, but not nervous. I’ve never been like George S. Kaufman, who found them so anxiety-making that he was incapable of sitting down to watch his own shows. As Moss Hart recalled in Act One,

Back and forth across the back of the theatre he paced at a tremendous clip, staring down at the carpet and heedless of what or who might be in front of him. The ushers threw him a sidelong look and gave him a wide berth. He paced up and down like a man possessed, as indeed he was possessed at those moments, by a demon that only the laughter of an audience in the proper places could exorcise.

For whatever reason, that’s not me. I sit quietly in my seat and watch the show, always aware of the audience’s unfolding reaction but nonetheless fully engaged with the actors on stage, and when the curtain falls, I breathe a sigh of relief and feel good about the whole thing. Go figure.

In preparation for the big night, I present—as I always do before my opening nights—the following clip, which I first saw on TV as a child and which in recent years has become increasingly relevant to my life.

Break a leg, everybody:

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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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