Tynan's Anger

In the midst of reshuffling the purpose of this blog, I have decided to provide a neat little summary of where it has been from 2008-Present:

---

Major Features:

The Top 10 Quotes from English-language Drama This Decade:

• Part One: Quotes 10-6
• Part Two: Quotes 5-3
• Part Three: Quotes 2-1

Rock N Roll Case Studies:

• #1: So This is Girl Power: Rock 'n' Roll as Defined By Hillary Clinton's Democratic Convention
• #2: “Hot Topic is the way that we rock”? How Le Tigre and MC Lars address the Adorno problem.
• #3: Holy Shit! Holy Shit! Holy Shit! The Jesus Lizard is getting back together!
• #4 Thoughts on the Day Ron Asheton Died

How to Save Theater Criticism

• Part One: No Sex for the Critic: Why theater critics are not normal people
• Part Two: Would Kenneth Tynan Twitter? Theater as the ultimate digital diversion.
• Part Three: What is to be done

Screeds:

• How America Failed Theater: Theater from a Business Perspective
• Bush is not Batman!
• The Dark Side of Internet Dumb-ocracy
• Neil LaBute hates American theater, and sounds immature doing so
• How Michael Riedel is killing theater criticism
• Is hipsterism dead? Or was it already dying?

Prominently Linked/Commended Posts:

• Was Mark Prior's downfall the fault of Dusty Baker, or incompetent doctors?
• Rock ‘N’ Roll Case Studies #3 Holy Shit! Holy Shit! Holy Shit! The Jesus Lizard is getting back together! “Nice post, Ethan. You've gone to my head and made me feel all swooshy. –David Wm. Sims, bassist for The Jesus Lizard.”
• Tom Stoppard discusses Chekhov, the media, democracy, and the theater with David Remnick at BAM
• What Sweet Search has to say about the future of SEO
• The Don Hall/Mike Daisey/Scott Walters/Adam Thurman debate
• New Stanislavski translation: RTFM, Actors!
  - "[Ethan Stanislawski is] the best-named theatre blogger in the 'sphere" Kelly Nestruck, The Guardian

And yet, the most trafficked individual post:

Gerard Butler Not Into the Whole Celebrity Gossip Thing

Labels: Blog, hipsters, how theater failed america, how to save theater criticism, links, michael riedel, rants, rock 'n' roll case studies, top theater quotes of the decade

There's only so much time to post links, so here's the storys that have been getting my attention lately:

• My first major 6th grade crush turned Scientology robot Katie Holmes is headed to Broadway to star in All My Sons, in a role that awkwardly praises her legs. Sure enough, the YouTubes have already beat the future Joe Keller (John Lithgow) to it.
• Mel Brooks hams it up for an interview with the Los Angeles Times in honor of Get Smart. Best line? "You're Greek, Andreas. We don't start sentences with 'or' in America."
• While were on the topic of Mel Brooks, unless there was a Bialystock and Bloom-esque accounting scheme, those 23 year old Broadway starlets of Glory Days I blogged about have cost their producers several millions of dollars after a grand total of one performance before closing. They seem to be handling it in the manner I would: lounging about their apartments watching bad sitcom reruns
• Theater people are doing what they do best—being dramatic—over this year's Drama Desk awards. The domination of Broadway in this years awards has led to resignations, accusations, counter-accusations, and counter-counter accusations. I lost track of all the complaints by the second paragraph, but it seems the primary complaint was removing someone from an email list in a fit of anger. Leave it to theater people to see having less email clutter as a source of outrage.
• Michael Feingold at The Village Voice has an excellent article on the resurgence of the musical in recent years. No snarky remark here, just damn good commentary to be found
• Finally, The Guardian has a post up on the theatricality of Barack Obama's speechmaking, echoing W.J.T Mitchell's commentary in my Theories of Media class this winter. Sometimes I wonder if I would be supporting Obama as strongly if I hadn't seem his 2004 Democratic Convention speech live, but based on my demographics, it'd be a miracle if I wasn't an Obama supporter anyway.
  

Labels: all myy sons, barack obama, drama desk awards, drama queenery, get smart, glory days, john lithgow, katie holmes, links, mel brooks, musicals, village voice