Ruhl’s musings may remind readers of Lydia Davis’ aphoristic short stories: fresh, piquant and slyly irreverent.
An acclaimed playwright reflects on her art and craft.
MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer nominee Ruhl (Drama/Yale Univ.) is a busy mother of three whose work is often interrupted by her children’s needs—for food, say, or “a fake knife to cut…fake fruit.” Instead of writing “something totalizing, something grand,” she has collected some thoughts on theater: writing plays, acting, watching productions and dealing with “Other People: Directors, Designers, Dramaturgs, and Children.” Though she claims that she knows “next to nothing,” she notes that theater is not “about knowing, or putting forward a thesis,” but about “making knowledge” from the prismatic perspectives of a few characters. Ruhl’s essays, generally a page or two, sometimes are much briefer. In “An essay in praise of smallness,” she writes, simply, “I admire minimalism.” In an essay entitled “Is there an objective standard of taste?” she responds, “No.” Several essays consider the power of language. “In the world of imaginary things, speech acts are everywhere,” she writes. “One declares the imaginary world into being.” For Ruhl, theater depends on physicality rather than psychological analysis. Future playwrights, she maintains, would do well to study juggling rather than literary theory. “Words like ‘liminal’ and words like ‘unpack’ should go in essays about theater and get banished from rehearsal rooms,” she writes. “Actors used to be akin to prostitutes in the public mind. Now we are akin to professors.” The author laments the lack of freedom for a playwright to fail, caused in part by subscription audiences who may “feel that by subscribing, they have been inoculated against failure” and in part by the cost of mounting plays. She also laments the “whitewashed” stage: Casts are predominantly white, unless a playwright specifically calls for a nonwhite actor in a particular role.
Ruhl’s musings may remind readers of Lydia Davis’ aphoristic short stories: fresh, piquant and slyly irreverent.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-86547-814-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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