Tag Archives: theater

Hubris, Chris Christie, and Greek Tragedy

Not just Democrats and far-right Republicans, but playwrights and screenwriters, will be jumping all over Chris Christie’s “Bridgegate” scandal. Why? Because Chris Christie is caught in a whirlpool of hubris, and the ancient Greeks tragedians have taught us how such … Continue reading

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Mental Health Break: Elephant on a Trampoline

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“Waiting for God”: A Short YouTube Video by Santi Tafarella

Today I made my first foray onto YouTube by setting up an account at XtraNormal.com. XtraNormal.com is a FREE animated video production site where you can mash together scene and character templates to create stories. You can then download them to YouTube. It’s … Continue reading

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Lest We Forget: In 2004 a Birmingham Theater Closed a Play Written by a WOMAN Because It Offended a Religious Community (the Sikhs)

See the original BBC report on playwright Gurpreet Bhatti’s censorship here, as well as the craven response of a Catholic archbishop (who supported the Sikh clergy in shutting her play down): Mohan Singh, a local Sikh community leader, said: “When … Continue reading

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“What does Marsellus Wallace look like?”: A Classic Scene from PULP FICTION in Typography

Typography is a glorious and poetic art form, and it’s done exceptionally well here:

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“Popcorn”: A Poem by Santi Tafarella

  At dusk, above the heads of   two hundred movie goers standing   bored and perhaps too politely in line,   two-thousand egg-shaped leaves   cupping ten-thousand unbuttered   white blossoms,   salting in the ocean air

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Getting Naked to the Classics: Euripides’s “Bakkhai” Performed in the Raw

The above photo is from Dionysus in 69, a stage play of Euripides’s Bakkhai, performed in New York City in 1968. The play garnered a good deal of public controversy for the display of nudity in the performance. Euripides’s Bakkhai  is, … Continue reading

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Doubters of the World Unite: Peter Ustinov on Belief and Doubt

The British actor Peter Ustinov, who died in 2004, made this rather astute observation: Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them. The quote is taken from Jack Huberman’s The Quotable Atheist, p.306. The way I read the quote is that … Continue reading

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George Carlin on God and the Problem of Suffering

In memory of George Carlin (1937-2008), that Prometheus who stole comedy-fire from frowning heaven, and brought it to earth, relieving humans, if for only an hour, of their suffering, wherever God would not or could not. In one of his stand-up routines he … Continue reading

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Poison in the Ear: Shakespeare, Karl Rove, and Barack Obama

A theme in Shakespeare’s plays is poison poured into the ear—from Iago going around whispering his poisons into the ears of the characters in Othello, to Lady Macbeth and the Weird Sisters arousing the lusts of Macbeth for power. In Hamlet, Claudius … Continue reading

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Euripides’s “Bakkhai”: Is Dionysus Jesus?

Euripides’s “Bakkhai” is an extraordinary play, and functions on many fascinating levels. At one level it can be read as an indictment of rationalism, and a warning to the audience against atheism. Toward the beginning of the play, for example, … Continue reading

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