theaterboy®

That's refreshing.

Joyce Wadler's Raul Esparza interview in the NYT, I mean.

An actor--a star, even--acknowledging that his life's not perfect, his career has occasionally been agonizing, his relationships are hard, and that he hasn't always behaved like a prince? Go figure.

Tboy suspects it'll make readers like him all the more.

The Permanent State of EmERgency ...

Oy.  Am I the only one who thinks insisting on "theatre" to describe what happens on a stage is like capitalizing the A in "art"?

Isaac over at Parabasis reports that a Lincoln Center Director's Lab listserv is ablaze with earnest discussion on the hoary question of  "Theater" vs. "Theatre."

I've heard any number of arguments about this, but none of them have much in the way of content. They all seem to boil down to the notion that the stage is a higher art, and thus needs distinguishing.

We don't feel the need to be posh about rumours.  Or about harbours, unless we're real estate developers trying to add a little snob appeal. (Hmmm... Snob appeal? Could that be it? Nah....) And we don't speak of glamour, even in "the theatre."

City Paper's Dave Nuttycombe did the homework a couple of years back, talking to everyone from then-TCG boss Ben Cameron (who advanced the  "Technically, '-er' means the building and '-re' means the process" argument) to the senior editor of U.S. dictionaries for the Oxford University Press -- who responded that Cameron's position was "a distinction in search of a difference: People love to try to find logic behind word choices that are usually not logical at all."

In the article's 1544 words, though, the best quote was from Theater of the First Amendment's Kevin Murray: "It's kinda like the 'e' on the end of 'Olde Town.' Some people think it adds class ...."

Ouch.

Spent the morning ...

... at WETA, where the yakking in the green room before today's Around Town taping was largely centered around the new Bond film and the new movie version of Dreamgirls. Yes, the one with (shudder) Eddie Murphy.  Tim Gordon and Joe Barber say it's great, that a screening full of critics applauded it.

Me, I'm reserving judgment.  I've heard other people say Jennifer Hudson aces the part of Effie White. I've even heard people say she makes the role her own.

But have those people watched this?

I'm no knee-jerk, revival-hatin', adaptation-loathing it-was-better-the-first-time queen, I swear, no matter what the Rorschach folk say.

But I do think Hudson's got some serious livin' up to do.  And no matter how good she is, she's not doing it live on stage night after night.  I never saw the original Dreamgirls, as it happens.  But man, if I'd been in that theater, I'd have been throwing chairs from the sheer f*ckin' thrill of being in the same room with all that noise.

Damn, that's a well-built song. And a hell of a performance.

Nice little story ...

... on Marketplace just now about the latest study on the creative economy. (Story doesn't seem to be up on the Web yet; I'll add a link when it is is up now, over here.)

Basically, if I'm summarizing correctly, this new analysis goes beyond the assertion that a creative class makes a city more attractive to some putatively more productive class, and claims that artists create their own idiosyncratic economies, complete with supply chains and microindustries that otherwise wouldn't exist in that locale.

There's more... this is just my quick, not-enough-coffee take.  But it's encouraging.

Rome returns. Also: Oh, Canada!

This joyful news, stumbled across on Histriomastix: HBO's Rome will finally get a second season in January. 

This is joyful because Tboy's Tivo has been impatiently looking for new episodes since last November, shortly after the camera pulled back from Ciarán Hinds' bloody corpse--and then cut to Lindsay Duncan, being all chilly and mean and smug.

Because really, after her seeing her Titania/Hippolyta in the RSC's Midsummer at the Kennedy Center back in 1996, Tboy will watch more or less anything with Lindsay Duncan in it.  (He's even willing to forgive her Under the Tuscan Sun, because let's face it, her crazy-ass expat was by far the least bad thing about that piece of crap.)

Tboy had more or less given up on Rome, he confesses, though he supposes he might have checked the HBO web site, which has long promised a follow-up season. Of course Tboy doesn't generally put a lot of faith in such things until shooting starts. Apparently shooting started back in the summer, when Tboy wasn't paying much attention anymore.

Also: Heaven bless them, those wacky Canadians have apparently started selling the second-season Slings & Arrows DVDs here in the U.S.; they're finally, finally, finally available on Netflix.  And you'll notice, over there in the right-hand column, that they've materialized at the top of Tboy's queue...

Misbegotten?

So, wasn't it just a couple of years ago that Cherry Jones and Gabriel Byrne did Moon for the Misbegotten on Broadway? I'm not sure I ever want to see another production, which I realize is an impolitic (impertinent?) thing for a critic to say. But I've got her performance burned thoroughly into my brain, and I'd hate for another to dislodge it.

Tango, Maureen

Dropped in on what Americans for the Arts calls a "Creative Conversation" this evening. It involved a tango lesson, plus some brainstorming among members of the group's Emerging Leaders Network, on the topic of how to better communicate across disciplines here in the D of C.

Tboy brainstormed, but did not tango. There's such a thing as getting too close to the people on your beat.

WIT artistic director Mark Chalfant, however, did tango. Chest up, shoulders down.

Then there was a small traffic jam, and many people were very nearly crushed...

Vote.

If'n you haven't already. Just to make him make this face again.

DC and Maryland polls are open until 8, but you've only got another hour in Virginia. So get out there.

I'm off to watch election returns at Mondello's house, starting around 7.  Y'all better make me proud.

But zombies are at least entertaining.

So, kindly go read this.

Then come back here and discuss: Need theater be art? Or is the occasional entertainment acceptable? Is it true that much theater aspires to sitcom-hood? If so, is that an abomination?

I go back and forth. It pains me that so much of what I see leaves me going "Ehhh." On the other hand, I can't bring myself to think it shameful that I'm kind of looking forward to the prospect of Noises Off at Arena Stage. 

(Whether I think it's shameful that it's scheduled at Arena Stage, a house nominally dedicated to producing "huge plays of all that is passionate, exuberant, profound, deep and dangerous in the American spirit," is another matter entirely. Exuberance I could find for you in Noises Off. The rest, probably not so much. Bob and I bitch about this in pretty much every year-ender we write for the City Paper. On the other hand, Molly produced Passion Play, so...)

Can't navel-gaze at length this evening--click here to see why, if you like--but then that's the delightful thing about blogs: Your commentariat can sometimes be enlisted to do the work for you.

So, any thoughts?