Detail from a painting by Caspar David Friedrich, on view at the Metropolitan Museum “Our opponents know full well that we are entering an age of emergency…Our task is to build a wide and deep movement, as spiritual as it is political, strong enough to stop these unhinged traitors. A movement rooted in a steadfast […]
Theater
It Matters What Matters
At the Huntington Theater: Vincent Randazzo, Avanthika Srinivasan in The Triumph of Love; directed by Loretta Greco; photo by Liza Voll It seems like the right thing to do during times like these is to start every communication with an acknowledgement that what is happening in our world is terrible, wrongheaded and soul crushing. So yes, […]
Pick Your Pals
Pick your pals and your communities because we are going to really need each other over the next few years. Picking your pals also means choosing who you listen to, read and admire. A myriad of versions of what’s going on right now are flourishing, so you need to find the narrative threads you can […]
Crumbs and Bones
Lynn Nottage, playwright (Photograph: Bryan Derballa) Hollywood gossip isn’t typically my thing. But the controversy that has erupted between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni touches into so many “in this moment” memes, trends and themes that it has taken up residence in the public square. Some of this reminds me of the “blue/black” or “white/gold” […]
Convergencies
Diary of a Tap Dancer (Photo: Nile Scott Studios and Maggie Hall) Looking for travel lanes in the current cultural landscape—one that has become increasingly complex, narrowbanded, detoured and unpredictable—has become a fraught undertaking. Maybe it’s just me and my navigational tools that are outdated or arcane. But I can’t seem to find the currents […]
Breaking the Story
“You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can’t, but also knowing that literature is indispensable to the world… The world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimeter the way people look at reality, then you can change it.” –James […]
We’re All in the Room
Last year a group of us heard a presentation by Dario Robleto at the Fogg Museum. (More about that here.) Robleto is a refreshingly unpretentious artist who is doing his work without the sandbaggery of fads, posturing and artifice. His projects have gestated in the liminal space between science and art. Working under the canopy […]
Do What You Do, and Do it Well
Heather Cox Richardson’s rise to prominence is an “if you build it, they will come” story. The Boston College history professor (with a specialty in 19th century America) started posting informed political coverage on social media five years ago. Carefully written and loaded with relevant historical context, these dispatches were so well received that she […]
Not a Straight Line, More of a Curve
“At moments of historical crisis, when the necessity of choice generates fears and neuroses, men are eager to trade the doubts and agonies of moral responsibility for determinist visions, conservative or radical, which give them “the peace of imprisonment, a contented security, a sense of having at last found one’s proper place in the cosmos.” […]
Stories Within Stories: Romeo and Juliet at the American Repertory Theater
“We are building something immense together that, though invisible and immaterial, is a structure, one we reside within—or, rather, many overlapping structures. They’re assembled from ideas, visions and values emerging out of conversations, essays, editorials, arguments, slogans, social-media messages, books, protests, and demonstrations. About race, class, gender, sexuality; about nature, power, climate, the interconnectedness of […]