Archives for April 2020

“Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now, and would not wait for the suitable moment that never came. Periclean Athens leaves us not only the Parthenon but, significantly, the Funeral Oration. The insects have chosen a different line: they have sought first the material welfare and security of the hive, and presumably they have their reward. Men are different. They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss the last new poem while advancing to the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature.”

C.S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time”

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the American Shakespeare Center’s webcasts of Much Ado About Nothing and both parts of Henry IV. Here’s an excerpt.

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As America’s theater companies start to grapple with the myriad problems of life in the shadow of the coronavirus, streaming video looms increasingly large in their planning….

No company is streaming more new shows than Virginia’s American Shakespeare Center, whose home, Blackfriars Playhouse, is an impeccable re-creation of the wood-and-plaster interior of a 300-seat theater built in London in 1596, housed in a modern architectural shell. Actors and audience alike are illuminated by the same electric chandeliers (there are no spotlights) and the shows are at once true to Elizabethan open-stage performance practice (no sets, no scene breaks) and eclectically contemporary in visual style. No sooner did the company close its doors than it quickly converted the playhouse into a homemade soundstage and taped every show in its current repertory. Five of them are now viewable online, with more to come.

To date I’ve watched “Much Ado About Nothing” and both installments of “Henry IV,” all of which are part of ASC’s “Actors’ Renaissance” series, which takes Elizabethan-style authenticity a radical step further. These productions, as was the case in Shakespeare’s day, have no director: Instead, they’re staged by the actors themselves. The no-frills three-camera shoots, like the stagings, are wholly to the point, and while the results are all of a piece with ASC’s fast-moving house style, it’s still thrilling to see the (mostly) youthful, colorfully costumed casts do things their way….

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for this year’s ASC “Actors’ Renaissance” series:

Some of Manie’s Friends, an extremely rare kinescope of a televised tribute to Manie Sacks, the recording-company executive, hosted by Perry Como and originally broadcast by NBC on March 3, 1959. In addition to Como, the performers include Sid Caesar, Rosemary Clooney, Betty Grable, Bob Hope, Dinah Shore, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, and Jack Webb:

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

“There’s nothing as safe as ignorance—or as dangerous.”

Rex Stout, “The Squirt and the Monkey”

“Ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny creatures are in reality insane. The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public.”

Akira Kurosawa, Something Like an Autobiography (trans. Audie E. Bock)

“Nichols and May: Take Two,” an American Masters documentary about Elaine May and Mike Nichols originally telecast on PBS in 1996:

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

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so as long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.”

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

From 2010:

Each day is, of course, its own challenge, and I’m sure that I’ll forget to be grateful for all my good fortune at some particularly exasperating point in the week to come. But this posting, along with others like it that I’ve written in the seven years since this blog opened for business, is meant to serve as a marker, a permanent reminder of my obligation to appreciate all that is good, both in my own life and in the world around me….

Read the whole thing here.