How could something go wrong that I can't see?

What do you love about this character?
His sense of purpose and his devotion and commitment to Diana [played by Ripley]. I’m a hopeless romantic myself and I love my wife tremendously, so I understand his desire to make his wife better. Most husbands, whether the issue is depression or an accident or illness, whatever the circumstance may be, want to be the knight in shining armor, to push a button and make it better. Dan is so adoring, and yet there’s something very naive about him. Because it’s not that easy. He has hidden in the shadows of denial for too long in his marriage and his life. And yet the thing that’s so beautiful about the show is that by the end, he has that moment of understanding and more importantly, acceptance.
- J. Robert Spencer on his character, Dan Goodman, in the new Broadway musical Next to Normal

"[The stage] demands a special discipline, a raft of technical skills that cannot be mediated by the ministrations of directors and cinematographers."
~ Charles Isherwood

More Like "Arrogantly Self-Important"

Stephen Holden of the New York Times recently wrote this about new musical Passing Strange:

The young man’s naïve infatuation with Europe, where he dives into a bohemian paradise of sex and drugs, inspires [...] a scathing response to his being fetishized as an angry black militant by a group of German cultural revolutionaries [...] In conclusion he wonders if he is “the postmodern lawn jockey sculpture.”

The term postmodern indicates the intellectual seriousness of the show."

I guess I should begin throwing in the term "postmodern" to my blog posts, lest all three of you who read it begin worrying about my intellectual seriousness.

Reality vs. Reality

"In this age of reality TV, what is more real than watching a real person – with real talent – singing their heart out, or acting their heart out, or dancing—only for you? You paid [for] a ticket. You're sitting there and we're performing for you. To me, that is the ultimate human collaboration. And that's what's missing when it's just a camera in your face and you have to cry." (Laura Benanti, Broadway Beat: Meet the Tony Nominees)

Life is a Cabaret

"That's the scary thing about theater—it doesn't live on. But that's actually the most beautiful thing about it, too. That's why it's more beautiful than film and certainly more beautiful than television, because it's like life. Real life. Any picture that you take or any video that you make of yourself is not really you, it's only an image that represents the experience you had. In theater, the process of it is the experience. Everyone goes through the process, and everyone has the experience together. It doesn't last—only in people's memories and in their hearts. That's the beauty and sadness of it. But that's life—beauty and the sadness. And that is why theater is life." (Sherie Rene Scott, broadway.com Q&A, January 24, 2008)

Accidental Profundity

    "The great artists of the theater's Golden Era -- many of whom would have scoffed at that characterization of themselves and insisted instead that they were craftsmen [...] applied themselves to the modest and deeply difficult goal of creating work that was entertaining, and so, they invariably, and often inadvertently, created work that was profound." (Peter Birkenhead, Give my petards to Broadway, June 8, 2007)

Homegrown Theatre Terrorists

    "[T]he theater has been hijacked. It's been commandeered by grant-proposal writers and dramaturges, by panel-discussion moderators and chin-in-hand bureaucrats, many of whom brook no more dissent than the Bush administration." (Peter Birkenhead, Give my petards to Broadway, June 8, 2007)

A "culture of transcendence" . . .

“Virtually all cultural institutions, from literature professors at Ivy League schools to producers of soap operas to the loudest heavy metal bands, are all equally bereft of points of perspective for their activities.  In such a time the church could be a community displaying, in its corporate life and the lives of its members, a culture of transcendence.  This would not mean escaping from the world.  It would require refusing to conform to its ways, not only when they are evil, but when they are not beneficial or constructive.” (Kenneth A. Meyers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, p. xvi)