Raison d'etre

Why this blog exists:

Last week I saw Fiona Shaw buried up to her waist in a ton of gravel on a set that had to be moved 31 inches upstage per Deborah Warner's wishes. I have always wanted to turn Beckett's Happy Days into a one-woman opera, a soprano or mezzo-soprano of a certain age surrounded by non-pitched percussion, multiple percussionists becoming Willie, the hapless, helpless husband.

The Beckett estate would never allow this, I suspect.

I had always thought that Happy Days must be a risky play to produce, though upon seeing it I realize that you would only mount it for the most exceptional of actresses - which Ms. Shaw is - so in a way it is a star vehicle, though doubtlessly one for actresses without vanity.

A couple days after this I saw Hansel and Gretel at the Met, with a Second Act that was just so beautiful and fragile and fantastic. A fish-headed maitre d' came up from the floorboards to help a battalion of chubby, benevolent chefs prepare a feast for hungry and lost children. Shortly after of course the children found themselves being fattened up to be feasted upon by the witch of the Gingerbread House (which in this new production looked a little like the kitchen at Jean Georges turned Orwellian)...Hansel and Gretel was wonderful, sweet entertainment of just over two hours, which I would never had seen if a friend not wanted to share her childhood joy with me.

And then the next day I went to the Whitney to see the Kara Walker exhibit, My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, which was as stunning as every critic said it was. The simplicity of execution - mostly black silhouettes against stark white backgrounds, stood in stark contrast (well, literally) to the complexity of the statements being made. It was angry, but it wasn't. The artist accepted her own contradictory feelings on herself and race and and and, and expected us to. We were looking at, in largely black and white, an ongoing conversation, heightened in pitch but not an argument, about being black or white. It wasn't incendiary (which I kept expecting it to be), it was simply stunning.

And that is why this blog exists. I simply see and hear too many beautiful things to not record it. For myself, for you.