I’ve been thinking all day about Ellen DeGeneres’s hosting of last night’s Academy Awards show broadcast, which seems to have drawn mixed reviews. I was personally delighted by her l…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:59PMPeggy Shaw’s latest solo show, Ruff, explores with brutal honesty and frank clarity the physical and emotional costs of surviving a stroke. Shaw says her 2011 stroke felt as thou…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 10:55PMThere’s a bit of a firestorm on Twitter and on line these past few days about criticism (again), prompted in part by Polly Carl’s HowlRound post, “A New Year’s Diet for the …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:05PMI often begin writing blogs that for one reason or another don’t get finished. I’m taking this New Year’s Day 2014 opportunity to spend a few words (well, more like 5,000 words!) men…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 05:09PMI grew up on the music of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, often whether I knew it or not, singing along to scat-like sounds of Dionne Warwick in “Do You Know the Way to San José?” and la-…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:18AMUnlike Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks, Oscar Isaac plays an unlikeable character who never quite redeems himself. The Coen brothers’ latest film is shorter on the quirky outlandishnes…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 12:12PMIn a World, actor Lake Bell’s debut as an indy writer/director, is a wonderful, witty, madcap exploration of voice-over talent inscribed with a feminist message. “In a world . . .” r…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 11:19AMMary Poppins was the first movie I ever saw. The moment warranted dressing up to go downtown (in Pittsburgh) to see it at a swanky theatre with my parents and my then very little sister. …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:25AMBeing acknowledged by your peers for a career’s worth of work is a wonderful thing. On November 9, at the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) conference in Dallas, I was hon…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 12:50PMIt used to be that lesbian films—that peculiar underground brand made by and about and for lesbians, though not necessarily starring them—were sordid affairs. The subcultural economy f…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 02:56PMTwo weeks ago, Slate ran a short piece called “Fun Home: Is America Ready for a Musical about a Butch Lesbian?” The article quotes collaborators Jeanine Tesori [...]
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 03:46PMAnd now, for a little cross-posting . . . The good folks at Imagining America have begun a new journal called Public: Arts, Design, Humanities. It’ll be another terrific online forum…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 04:00PMClassic Stage’s production of Shakespeare’s love story competes with the high visibility of Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad performing on Broadway in a rendering that got respectful tho…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 12:23PMJohn Tiffany’s brilliant production of Williams’s classic boasts acting so precise and full and rich I sometimes found myself raised above the play, marveling at the skill and talent ins…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 12:05PMThe 2013 Emmy Awards deserve only brief mention here. What a tone-deaf show! What a shame that of several of the evening’s surprising upsets, Kerry Washington didn’t take hom…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 06:43AMAnne Washburn’s terrific new play, in an elegant, understated production directed by Steve Cosson at Playwrights Horizons, addresses a near-future dystopia in which American civilization h…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 04:12PMWhat’s irksome about this play by filmmaker Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men) at the Atlantic Theatre Company is that it’s so clearly a rough draft. While most American playwr…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 07:02AMNeill Blomkamps’ commitment to the plight of the global 99% seems radical for a filmmaker given a block-buster budget and a chance to work with superstar Matt Damon. The South African fi…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:29AMBlanche DuBois is an iconic character of the white male American imaginary, a damaged, even pathological figure, whose sexual and emotional pathos drives Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar N…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:09AMTeaching my course on gender, sexuality, and pop culture last spring, I encountered some of the progressive, queer-friendly narratives of the ABC Family network’s line up for th…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 01:24PMThe Killing‘s third season proved a terrific corrective to the flabby, rainy, interminable, “Who killed Rosie Larson?” affair of its first two. With a taut story-line and ever-d…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:36PMCity Center’s new summer “Encores! Off-Center” series was inaugurated this month with Jeanine Tesori as Artistic Director. The program is an off-shoot of the wildly popular Encores! …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 06:47PM. . . concerns Anna Deavere Smith’s presidential medal for the humanities and the model she sets for artists determined to combine politics and art. Also mentioned are Ellen Page, An…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 02:10PMIn another guest blog for Symposium Magazine, I discuss the potential of quality television for expanding roles for women artists, focusing on AMC’s series, The Killing. More on that…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 07:44AMI’ve loved Melissa McCarthy ever since I saw her in Paul Feig’s wonderful Bridesmaids, where she stole the show with her performance as an over-sized, over-sexed-in-her-own-mind, straigh…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 02:06PMI’m guest-blogging on the Symposium Magazine site this week, in relation to my essay there on feminist pleasure in pop culture. Today’s post addresses Kerry Washington…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:26AMI’ve been traveling throughout the month of July and will spend the next week or two catching up with “The Feminist Spectator.” Much to discuss, including: The Emmy Award n…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:19AMMoe Angelos and Marianne Weems of The Builders Association have created a mesmerizing new media performance from the recently published diaries of Susan Sontag. The spoken text is ada…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:00PMSo here’s the thing about Diane Paulus and how she directs musicals: She takes song-driven, narrative-lite titles like Hair and Pippin and makes them practically irresistible. She’s …
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 08:55AMI’ve been reading around in the blogosphere, catching up on current debates and controversies. I noted with interest Laura Linney’s remarks, on the occasion of her Crystal Award for wo…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 04:25PMCan’t Neil Patrick Harris (NPH) be hired to host all of the televised award shows? Good thing he’s already lined up to do the 2013 Emmy Awards in June. If the producers of the Oscars…
SOURCE: The Feminist Spectator at 09:01AM