Feel my forehead: that’s my brain working!
The headline is a quote from a character in a play being staged in Austin this month. The brain has to do a lot of work to really understand it,…
Homer’s Iliad 2.0
Anyone with even a passing interest in ancient Greece, or the foundation of Western literature, has read Homer’s Iliad. That original, from the mists of time more than 4,000 years…
Concerning Levels of Horniness: Burlesque in Austin
Burlesque has a long history, and it is very much alive in Austin. As a comedic and exaggerated stage performance originating in Europe four centuries ago, it became popular in…
The Tragedy of Queen Caroline
Queen Caroline was custom-made for the finest caricaturists who ever lived. Her husband, King George IV, decided to charge her with adultery shortly after becoming king in January 1820. The…
He knows everything in the world about Milton!
My headline is taken from a novel by Virginia Woolf (pictured here). In Mrs Dalloway (1925), the character named in the title is “someone who can’t understand the pleasures of…
THE WORLD WAS AT STAKE: Churchill and De Gaulle
In the changing fortunes of fate, Charles de Gaulle “has become a unifying force in France. Winston Churchill, on the other hand, is now a figure of controversy again.” How…
Erma Bombeck: at wit’s end
How a Suburban Mom Transformed Boredom and Dread Written by Allison Engel and Margaret Engel, featuring Sarah Fleming Walker, the Austin Playhouse Associate Artistic Director, and central character who performed…
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: At the LBJ Library
It was not the usual interview at the LBJ library in Austin. Being questioned was not the Vice-President (one of those will be here in June) or a famous Admiral.…
THEY CANNOT ERASE US: Austin Gay Men’s Chorus
At a performance this weekend, the Austin Gay Men’s Chorus laid down a marker to all who oppose gay rights: They Cannot Erase Us! This concert is a bold choice,…
Flirt, fuck, is there so vast a difference?
That existential question, posed by John Updike in a letter to a woman who would become his wife, was written in 1974. It is, to put it bluntly, the animating…