Latest Posts

Radio

The Ghastly Impermanence: The Museum, The Department Store and The Landfill

Artists like Norman Corwin strove toward an idea of radio as an artist’s studio with radio drama as a natural product of the process. Yet as so often typical in American culture, singular artistic visions hardly merit a mention in histories of radio. The idea of an artist’s studio went largely ignored, because the goal of OTR was not to produce art but rather to produce consumers.

Theater

Landscape of the Body: The Limits of Pastiche

John Guare’s plays were po-mo before po-mo was the American theater’s default setting. They revel in pop culture references. They erase the line between reality and the phony “hyperreality” promoted every day in the media. His approach to the material is that so beloved of deconstructionists everywhere: pastiche. The difficulty in staging this pastiche is that the play often threatens to turn into pure chaos.

Cinema

Night and Day Film Noir Series Month Four: Carol Reed’s The Third Man

In this entry the Night and Day Film Noir series’ curator Bradon Ryan and the Star’s José Amador effuse all over Carol Reed’s production of Graham Greene’s script The Third Man, briefly delve into the film’s production history and somehow find themselves in the middle of discussing the worlds of Joss Whedon, the Terminator movies, the Rambo movies, and Mutiny on the Bounty.

Politics Theater

Odin’s Horse and the Lehrstück ohne Lehre

In our post-Bush era, political theater is increasingly rare. In our remote, cozy and often smug city of Seattle it is rarer still. Anything encouraging Americans to get together in a group to solve problems is a general anathema. Stereotypes have hardened. Dialogue is emotional and without sense. Issues are treated not as matters to solve by consensus but rather to be solved by fiat. It is no wonder discussion feels polarized.