Category: Review
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Platonov and Anton Chekov’s Proto-Grunge Philosophy
Originally posted at HowlRound Before he shot himself in the head, Kurt Cobain wrote a suicide note in which he said, “I still can’t get over the frustration, the guilt and empathy I have for everyone. There’s good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it…
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Dispatches from LALA Land: Radar L.A.
Originally published by HowlRound The 2013 Radar L.A. interdisciplinary theater festival brought artists from around the world to perform alongside and in collaboration with Los Angeles theater artists. Presented by REDCAT and CalArts in association with Center Theatre Group, and curated by Mark Murphy of REDCAT, Diane Rodriguez of Center Theatre Group, and Mark Russell of…
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A Feminist Guide to Horror Movies, Part Five: The Blood of Carrie
Originally published by Ms., Sociological Images, and The Huffington Post Carrie is largely about how women find their own channels of power, but also what men fear about women and women’s sexuality. Writing the book in 1973 and only three years out of college, I was fully aware of what Women’s Liberation implied for me…
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Playing Shakespeare’s Men
Originally Published by HowlRound Though Shakespeare created around 798 male characters, his dramatic corpus contains only about 149 female ones. That’s a ratio of roughly sixteen to three. Yet every year the best conservatories accept at least as many women as men—if not more—and every year they graduate both men and women trained to act…
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Dispatches from LALA Land: On the Fringes of Hollywood
Originally posted at HowlRound. This year’s Hollywood Fringe Festival–only the fourth in it’s history–featured 212 separate productions in 50 different spaces for a total of more than 1,000 performances. They took in $258,000, all of which went directly back to the individual productions. For a city not known for its theater, that’s no small beans.…
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Dispatches from LALA Land: Adventures in the OC
Originally posted at HowlRound. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was wary of attending the theater. LA is an industry town, and if there’s one thing I’m not interested in, it’s staged screenplays. Don’t get me wrong–I love film. I just don’t want to see it on stage. Because technology allows for far…
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The Miss Julie Dream Project and Time Machine: The Musical: Not Extended, but Still Winners
The “Best of Fringe Extensions” program has swung into full gear, and, excited for the chance to see some of the shows I missed the first time around, I went to the Hollywood Fringe website looking for a list of shows. I went to the home page, then the blog, then the “about” section. Nothing.…
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Uncurated, Unmediated: Why Fringe Festivals Are Perfect for Solo Shows
The Hollywood Fringe Festival, like most Fringes, is all about freedom of expression. Taking after it’s mother-ship The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Hollywood Fringe mission states that it “is completely open and uncensored. This free-for-all approach underlines the festival’s mission to be a platform for artists without the barrier of a curative body.” Perhaps that’s…
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Miss Julie and the Timeless Art of Slut-Shaming
Cross posted at Ms. Apparently, some things never get old. Neil LaBute, screenwriter of such movies as a remake of the 1973 film The Wicker Man, about crazy, man-killing witches, has adapted the misogynist classic Miss Julie, written in 1888 by August Strindberg. (If you haven’t heard of Strindberg, think Rush Limbaugh as a 19th-century…
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The New Evil Dead: A New Lesson in Masculinity. And Oh Yeah, Tree Rape.
Cross posted at Ms. SPOILER ALERT: This post contains major spoilers. Also, TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE. I am not really into gore for gore’s sake: When I go to horror movies, I want to be held in suspense and suddenly surprised, not just grossed out. Luckily for Sam Raimi fans, the new version of the 1981…
Holly L. Derr 