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The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare
I am sure I have read this play before, because I have some vague memory of it; but I don’t know when. My reread is inspired by the Houston Shakespeare Festival: I’m going to go see both this, and...
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Othello by William Shakespeare
Wow, what a work. There’s a reason we still read, admire, study, and act this play today, what, 4 centuries after its creation. I read this, like The Taming of the Shrew, years ago, but I needed the...
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movie: A Streetcar Named Desire
photo creditOn my recent very very long overseas flight, I watched several movies. Thanks Husband for spotting this classic for me! As you may know, A Streetcar Named Desire was a play by Tennessee...
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Clothes for a Summer Hotel by Tennessee Williams
Here’s how I got here. First, the disappointing Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, as a consolation prize, renewed my interest in the Fitzgeralds. (I have purchased, used, two biographies of Zelda based...
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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams
Arguably Tennessee Williams’s best-known or best-regarded play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may be familiar to some of us for the 1958 film starring Elizabeth Taylor (shown on the cover of my copy from the...
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Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
“The Oedipus Cycle” is made up of three plays by Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. I cannot remember at this moment what motivated me to read or reread these plays; something...
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Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles
This is the second play in a trilogy; see the first, Oedipus Rex, here. At the opening of Oedipus at Colonus, 20 years have passed, during which Oedipus has wandered in exile with his daughter Antigone...
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Antigone by Sophocles
This is the third play in a trilogy. Please see my write-ups of the first two: Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus. I have studied Antigone in some depth before, also in Fitzgerald’s translation, and I...
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Ajax by Sophocles
I read Ajax from my copy of Electra and Other Plays after being reminded of his tragic story by Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles. It is a short play, an easy read, but like so many of the...
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The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare
I had a pleasant reread of this early Shakespeare comedy in preparation for the Houston Shakespeare Festival this summer. Of course you saw my post the other day about what a special copy of the book...
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A View From the Bridge by Arthur Miller
Another tragic dramatic masterpiece from Arthur Miller. I read Death of a Salesman and The Crucible in school; I am hoping to see this one produced onstage soon, so I picked up A View From the Bridge,...
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The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare
from Wikimedia CommonsI am working on a Maximum Shelf for the first book of Hogarth Shakespeare: The Gap of Time, by Jeanette Winterson. In preparation, naturally, I got myself a copy of The Winter’s...
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Writers by Barry Gifford
Barry Gifford’s brief fictional scenes of celebrated authors are funny, tragic and insightful. The prolific and versatile Barry Gifford (Wild at Heart; The Lost Highway) has a little fun with a range...
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Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
In preparation for Devon McNamara’s seminar at the recent residency, I reread Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, in the copy I bought for an undergraduate class some 15 years ago. Some things don’t change. I...
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Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill
This play takes place over a single day, from 8:30 am to midnight, in five scenes in four acts. It features a family of four, Mary and James Tyrone and their two adult sons Jamie and Edmund. Mary is a...
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WVWC Dept. of Theatre and Dance presents Fool For Love (2019)
Written by Sam Shepard in the ’80s, this one-act play features just four actors/characters; this production was student-directed, and one of the lead roles was played by one of my students. (I was...
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