The Arts Fuse Newsletter, March 12
A call for "guerrilla theater", a review of Peter Wolf's memoir, homage to the late Tom Robbins, BLO's "The Seasons", and a conversation with Sonya Chung, the director of Film Forum
From The Editor's Desk:
[Editor’s Note: I am speaking only for myself in this commentary, not for any others who are involved in producing the Climate Crisis Cabaret.]
Why did I help organize the Climate Crisis Cabaret? Because these are not normal times. And we need more theater like it.
But some in the Boston theater community don’t think business as usual needs to be interrupted. Or, they may think it, but aren’t willing to act because it will upset the status quo, undercut decorous social/economic arrangements. The fact is, normality itself is under threat today from both the dangers posed to democracy by the right and our inaction on mitigating the degradation of the environment. Our stages are largely ignoring these existential dangers. This neglect reflects a baffling indifference to the survival of the theater companies themselves as well as to the well-being of future generations. It also represents a retreat from theater’s responsibility to do more than supply entertainment or confirm accepted notions. For the Greeks, the stage had the civic responsibility to speak truth to (or at least dissent from) unjust power.
At the moment, an ascendant right is slicing and dicing our institutions, particularly those that deal with the climate crisis, as it marches toward what looks like an autocratic reign. This anti-democratic movement demands a strong public reaction from our theaters or, at the very least, incisive efforts to dramatize what’s at stake in the contest. What are our elemental values? Why do we hold them? What happens when we forsake them? The first tragedians would have promptly swung into poetic action. (Euripides would have loved Trump – one of his satyr comedies starred a giant, mindless, priapic bull.)
Read the rest of the commentary here
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Archive: From the Editor's Desk
Book Review: Peter Wolf’s “Waiting on the Moon” — A Captivating Memoir by Boston’s Own Zelig
Compiled by Paul Robicheau
Timelines bounce a bit through the loosely organized, vignette-rooted book, where the back half casually weaves through a checklist of characters and tales not to be missed.
Short Fuse Podcast #70: Reading and Talking Film — Sonya Chung, Film Forum
By Elizabeth Howard
In this engaging conversation, Elizabeth Howard speaks with Sonya Chung, the director of Film Forum in New York, about the intersection of film and literature, the relevance of the Oscars, and the impact of independent films.
Opera Preview: “The Seasons” — A Fascinating and Disturbing Weather Report
By Helen Epstein
“I wanted, with this opera, to see if audiences and collaborators could feel something about our changing weather, in an artistic space.”
Classical Album Review: Handel’s Oratorio “Jephtha,” in All its Highly Dramatic Glory
Conductor Jane Glover, marvelous soloists — including superstar countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen — and a superb chorus and orchestra invigorate one of Handel’s last and greatest works.
Arts Remembrance: Tom Robbins’s “Joy in Spite of Everything”
By Gary Lippman
In his writing, in his life, and in his fun, generous, and winsomely wise spirit, the late — but never late for a party — Tom Robbins chose to feel “ridiculously fine” and wanted us to feel the same way.
Book Reviews: The Fiction of Mikołaj Grynberg — Simultaneously Embracing the Tragic and the Comic
By Roberta Silman
Two astonishing books about the lives of Polish Jews who survived the Second World War or were born after the war.
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Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
