Terry Teachout's Blog, page 217

TT: Almanac

"We sink too easily into stupid and overfed sensuality, our bodies thickening even more quickly than our minds."

M.F.K. Fisher, Serve It Forth

TT: A trip to the country

Here's where I took my mother this afternoon:

TT: Almanac

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."

Jane Austen, letter to her sister Cassandra (Dec. 24, 1798)

TT: Snapshot

Sean Connery and Zoe Caldwell in a scene from Macbeth, telecast by the CBC in 1961:



(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

TT: Inch by inch

Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, opens in Orlando on September 15. Dennis Neal and Rus Blackwell, the star and director, are preparing for the premiere as I write these words. Meanwhile, I'm spending the week in Smalltown, U.S.A., wondering what they're up to.

Yesterday Dennis sent me this wonderfully vivid publicity photo by Kristen Wheeler that shows him in costume as Louis Armstrong, one of the two roles that he'll be playing in Satchmo at the Waldorf (the other is Joe Glaser, Armstrong's manager). No sooner did I open his e-mail than I felt a surge of jealousy sweep through me. How come Dennis and Rus get to have all the fun down there in sunny Florida while I sit around twiddling my thumbs?

Of course, I'm not exactly taking it easy. I'll be flying to the West Coast next Monday to spend a week at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival , after which I head to Wisconsin for a week at Spring Green's American Players Theatre . But as much as I'm looking forward to both trips, what I'd really like to be doing right now is sitting in the Orlando rehearsal room where my colleagues are starting to bring my play to life.

Alas, I can't make it to Florida until a week before opening night, and I expect that the time between now and then will pass with increasingly agonizing slowness. But at least I have this picture to remind me that exciting things are happening, with or without me.

TT: Almanac

"All men are hungry. They always have been. They must eat, and when they deny themselves the pleasures of carrying out that need, they are cutting off part of their possible fullness, their natural realization of life, whether they are rich or poor."

M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf

HOW A GREAT AMERICAN PAINTER VANISHED FROM THE CRITICAL SCOPE

" To this day there is a noticeable reluctance on the part of native-born art lovers to admit that a quintessentially American composer like Aaron Copland might actually be great, or that a stage actor need not have an English accent to perform the plays of Shakespeare or Stoppard. Could it be that the reputation of John Marin, whose subject matter is as American as his briskly improvisational brushwork, suffers from our nagging sense of cultural inferiority?..."

TT: Almanac

"Home is a notion that only the nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend."

Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose (courtesy of Mrs. T)

TT: Just because

Mike Nichols and Elaine May perform "Mother and Son":

TT: Not while I'm around

I'm headed to Smalltown, U.S.A., to spend the week with my mother, who is recovering from a heart attack. (Yes, she's doing fine.) I have a couple of pieces to write while I'm out there, so don't expect anything more than the usual daily stuff in this space. I'll be back when I'm back.