From 2005:

I went to my framer yesterday afternoon and picked up the presidential commission for my appointment to the National Council on the Arts. It’s a splendidly old-fashioned document, about twice the size of a college diploma, printed in copperplate script on thick cream paper by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It is, of course, a fill-in-the-blank form, starting with a space on top for the current president’s name, with the blanks filled in by a calligrapher….

Read the whole thing here.

“Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.”

Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day

In an undated TV interview, Gore Vidal talks about Franklin J. Schaffner’s 1964 screen version of The Best Man, his 1960 play, and the ideas about politics on which it was based:

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

“To want power is corruption already.”

Gore Vidal, The Best Man

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s Shaw! Shaw! Shaw!. Here’s an excerpt.

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Webcasts of the plays of George Bernard Shaw have been scarce during the pandemic. It’s a shame, for Shaw’s plays are for the most part comedies of ideas, political and otherwise, whose crackling verbal virtuosity makes them suitable fare for home viewers in search of thought-provoking diversion. The problem is that they also tend to be lengthy, at times long-winded, and call for fairly large casts, making them commensurately harder to produce online.

But Shaw also wrote several small-scale curtain-raisers and theatrical skits, three of which have been bundled by Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, one of the very best classical companies on the East Coast, into a two-hour triple bill called “Shaw! Shaw! Shaw!” …

Bonnie J. Monte, the company’s producing artistic director, staged “Shaw! Shaw! Shaw!” and was eager for it to be seen by a larger audience. To that end, she has just launched what she calls “Pandemic Playhouse Entertainment,” a venture that she describes on STNJ’s website as having been “partly inspired by the television shows ‘Playhouse 90,’ ‘Philco Playhouse,’ and ‘Masterpiece Playhouse,’” the great live-TV anthology series of the ’50s and ’60s….

The results, taped on the company’s main stage, feature simple costumes and scenery, both designed by Ms. Monte herself—she is also responsible for the outstanding sound design—and can be viewed with equal pleasure on your home TV or laptop. Either way, they look and sound as fine as STNJ’s consistently impressive track record would lead you to expect….

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for “Shaw! Shaw! Shaw!”:

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I talk about how to jump-start a post-pandemic revival of the arts in America. Here’s an excerpt.

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As everybody with even the slightest interest in the arts knows, the coming of Covid-19 has had a catastrophic effect on creative institutions in every part of America. According to Americans for the Arts, a Washington-based advocacy group, one out of every 10 nonprofit arts organizations in the U.S. reports that they “doubt their ability” to survive the pandemic….

Calls are being made for the re-creation of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration, a mammoth New Deal relief program that, among countless other things, gave jobs to artists through such programs as the Federal Art, Music, Theatre and Writers’ Projects. Others want to see the U.S. emulate countries like France, where freelance artists can qualify for long-term unemployment support and direct state subsidy of the performing arts is common, while still others have urged the new Biden administration to create a cabinet-level Department of Arts and Culture.

The NEA is plugged into many major arts institution in America and already has in place the bureaucracy needed to funnel funding throughout the country, while the foundations have the cash. What they need to do is think more creatively….

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Read the whole thing here.

Alfred Hitchcock is interviewed by Dick Cavett on TV in 1972:

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

“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.”

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude)