Culture Watch

History Plays Need Football’s Two-Minute Drill

by Bruce Chadwick

In football, there is nothing as exciting as the two-minute drill. It is a 120-second plan that each team uses to try to score a touchdown or kick a field goal at the end of the game when time is running out.  The two-minute drill, full of fast passes, surprise formations and unbridled fury, offers football followers a lot of football because the team knows it has to score and time is limited.  Teams, watching the clock tick as they play, appreciate it.  Fans love it.History plays

Censored Art: The Return of the Repressed

by Paul Boyer

The politics of art, and specifically the politics of art suppression, remains a perennial topic of controversy and public attention.   Most recently, Paul LePage, newly elected Republican governor of Maine, has been in the news for ordering the removal of a mural from the lobby of the Maine Department of Labor because—surprise!—it portrayed  labor organizers, striking workers, and even the iconic World War II image of “Rosie the Riveter.”  LePage’s spokesman explained that the governo

Lizzie Borden Took an Axe...

by Bruce Chadwick

Lizzie Borden at Eight O’Clock WorkShop Theater Company312 W. 36th St.New York, N.Y.Lizzie Borden took an axeAnd gave her mother forty whacks.And when she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one.On August 4 in the stifling hot summer of 1892, Lizzie Borden was accused of the brutal, bloody

A Proposal for a New ‘Spiderman’ on Broadway: Turn on the History

by Bruce Chadwick

So now they have fired the director of the $65 million Broadway mega-musical ‘Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark,’ the glitzy story with music by rock superstars Bono and The Edge and a long history of woe, from the death of a producer to city safety violations to hospitalized actors who fell from the flying rigging of the set. The show, in the works for years, has been running in previews for months, but the opening has been continually delayed. Last week, director Julie Taymor (‘The

The Stage Takes another Look at Horse Racing History. And the Winner Is…

by Bruce Chadwick

Three Men on a HorseBeckett TheaterTheater RowW. 42d St.New York, N.Y.At the start of Three Men on a Horse, patrons get a replica 1935 race card and lay imaginary bets on their favorite with track workers dressed as they were that year.  Three small horses race across the stage. Everybody yells loudly as the horses move. There is a win

History Catches Up With the Windsors

by Thomas Fleming

Amid the avalanche of commentary on The King’s Speech winning almost every Academy Award worth mentioning, no one seems to have noticed one of the more prominent losers:  Edward, the Duke of Windsor, and his beloved bride

Guilty or Not Guilty: The Case for History’s Bad Guys

by Bruce Chadwick

Spy Garbo3LD Art & Technology Center 80 Greenwich St.New York, N.Y.In Spy Garbo, history’s notorious villains Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain, British spy and Soviet doubly agent Kim Philby, and Wilhelm Canaris, head of the German Abwehr during World War II, chat with each other in a huge, sterile “library limbo,”

Hollywood History: Behind the Scenes and Between the Sheets with Marlene Dietrich

by Bruce Chadwick

PumaNew Jersey Repertory Company179 BroadwayLong Branch, N.J.Marlene Dietrich remains one of the most famous women in the world more than twenty years after her death.  The gorgeous blonde Dietrich, with her soft, sexy German accent, provocative lifestyle and fashi

‘That Championship Season’ Is a Theatrical Slam Dunk

by Bruce Chadwick

That Championship SeasonBernard B. Jacobs Theater242 W. 45th St.New York, N.Y.Every year for the last twenty years, four of the five starters for the small Pennsylvania high school basketball team that won the state championship in 1952 gat

New First-Person Shooter Video Game Exploits Mexican Narco-Violence

by Stephen J.C. Andes

Two weekends ago approximately forty people were murdered in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas.  If you count Thursday, the total comes to 53. It was the worst body count in memory according to one news report.  Unfortunately, the carnage has become all-too common. In 2009-2010 some 6,000 people perished amidst spiraling drug violence in the border town.  Law enforcement efforts to sto

What Could Be a Better Place to Store History Plays than a Mint (Theater)?

by Bruce Chadwick

As soon as I walked into the handsomely appointed third floor lobby of the Mint Theater at 311 W. 43rd Street in New York and saw the mammoth poster for their latest production, What the Public Wants, a play about a 1909 British press baron, I thought of contemporary press lord Rupert Murdoch, whose television and radio stations, and flotilla of newspapers, are found somewhere in just about every nation in the

Anne Frank Lives On In "Compulsion"

by Bruce Chadwick

CompulsionPublic Theater425 Lafayette St.New York, N.Y.The diary of Jewish Dutch teenager Anne Frank, a mesmerizing chronicle of her two years in hiding in Amsterdam during World War II, found after the Nazis sent her and her family to a concentration camp, has captivated

The Opera Brings Back Richard Nixon

by Bruce Chadwick

Nixon in ChinaMetropolitan OperaLincoln CenterNew York, N.Y.There he was at the door of Air Force One, smiling and waving to history with that signature choppy shoulder salute of his, happy wife Pat at his side, rumpled Henry Kissinge

Black Playwrights Look at Slavery in New Theater Series

by Bruce Chadwick

The 150th anniversary of the Civil War has inspired an explosion of books, television documentaries and movies, such as Robert Redford’s upcoming The Conspirator, about the people who murdered Abraham Lincoln.  Why not a theater series about slavery, the issue that caused the war, and a series written from the African American point of view? That’s the idea of Judy Tate and Godfrey Simmons, writers who teamed up to produce The American Slavery Project, a se

Why Daniel Mendelsohn is Right (and Wrong) about "Mad Men"

by James Livingston

I’m a great admirer of Daniel Mendelsohn because he draws our attention to what we don’t notice.  In writing brilliantly about contemporary movies and plays, he reminds us of ancient, recurring, ever-insistent narrative structures and demands.  He points us backward, but his words always let us live forward.Even so, sometimes he gets it wrong, usually because the erudition born of his classical training blinds him:  he knows enough to doubt everything.  His skeptical take on B

"The King's Speech": King George VI Wasn't the Only Royal Stutterer

by Charles Carlton

The Oscar-winning film, The King’s Speech, does an excellent job of showing how George VI’s stammer affected his life and reign.  With the help of the Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, Bertie (as he is called in the movie) explores the roots of his speech impediment which lay in his childhood, particularly in his relations with his martinet father, George V.  “My father was scared of his father, I was scared of my father,” George V threatened his sons, “and I’m dammed w

This Week’s Fringe Festival Goes from Zany to Historic

by Bruce Chadwick

The Fringe Festivals are off-off-off Broadway theater festivals designed to give avante garde writers a chance to stage their far-out plots and unknown actors an opportunity to shine.  They are definitely not aimed at the $130 a ticket Broadway crowd, but at the younger, more casual group of people looking for good entertainment at reasonable prices.This formula started with the first Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1947 and has been successful ever since, with festival

History Lovers Should ‘Rush’ to See “The Diary of a Madman”

by Bruce Chadwick

Diary of a MadmanBrooklyn Academy of MusicHarvey Theater651 Fulton St.New York, N.Y.In the heavily praised film The King’s Speech, actor Geoffrey Ru

The Decaying Ruins of Detroit as an Art Project

by Katherine Horn

Recently, during the Super Bowl XLV, there was a commercial by Chrysler declaring that Detroit was not yet defeated and would not turn into a ghost town.  There have been numerous articles and images drawing our attention to Detroit in the last few years which have highlighted the issues Detroit is facing and that the city may not be able to bounce back from this economic recession.  One of the victims in Detroit, of this recession, are the many buildings, especially historical ones, w

Hollywood and Its Relationship with History

by Kiernan Bagge

This last January, attendees of the American Historical Association (AHA) convention received a special treat: a sneak preview ofthe upcoming movie The Conspirator. The film, the first production of the recently founded American Film Company,exploresthe trial of Mary Surratt, convictedconspirator in the Lincoln assassination plot and the first woman to be executed by the federal government on charges of treaso