A Fun Program For Lovers Of All The Arts….

Saturday, 09 July 2011

I’ve always looked for really good Arts programs that will give me an enjoyable way to keep current with our cultural life.

Too often, the programs I attended lacked either the quality or the fun I was looking for, so I was delighted this spring when I was introduced through my good friend, Adriana Mnuchin, to a new program she’d co-founded with Nancy Becker called RoundTable Cultural Seminars.

GUEST BLOGGER: Lee Stewart

Monday, 28 March 2011

A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN: The PECCADILLO THEATER COMPANY is the resident company at historic ST. CLEMENT’S in Manhattan.  Dedicated to the rediscovery of classic American theater, it is a member of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, the service organization for the city’s not-for-profit theater.  The company, founded in 1994, has received an Obie Award, a Drama Desk Award, and has been nominated for several others.

The current offering from Peccadillo Theater Company is A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN.  The first words that come to my mind, describing the current production of the classic, and in my opinion, underperformed musical play based on the autobiographical novel by Betty Smith, are “ambitious” and “heart.”

GUEST BLOGGER: Lee Stewart

Monday March 14, 2011

VIEUX CARRÉ: At the end of Elizabeth LeCompte’s interpretation of Tennessee Williams’ “Vieux Carré,” the stage looks like the sickbed of a patient ravaged by raging fever. And indeed, her presentation (I hesitate to call it a play, it is more an impressionist piece replete with disjointed audio and video images) is fever-pitched and far more erotic than Williams would, in his time, have dared. Props are littered about the stage and one wonders if they will ever be found in time for the next performance.

GUEST BLOGGER: Patricia Watt

Monday, February 21, 2011

My dad, Douglas Watt, was a music critic and columnist for The New Yorker for 45 years, and a drama critic for over 60 years at The Daily News.  He had the first cable TV show reviewing the theater, was a founder of the Drama Desk Awards, Drama Critics Circle, and The Astaire Awards, chaired the Pulitzer jury for Drama, was a composer/lyricist, and spent 75 years on the aisle.

I joined him for probably half that time, when mom didn’t go.  My mother, Ethel, was in 14 Broadway shows before the age of 30, then retired to raise a family, until she became a producer.

Guest blogger: Johanna Garfield

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

My father had a theater ticket broker named Eddie who could get us center orchestra seats to any show no matter how impossible tickets were said to be. During those stress-free years of frequent theatergoing (Dare I admit I saw Oklahoma! the first time around?) I became the theater nut I remain to this day.