Author Archives: Paul Crabtree

In the 50s, 60s, and 70s American corporations and manufacturers commissioned reputable and successful composers (such as Kander and Ebb, who also wrote Cabaret) to write large-scale Broadway-style musicals that would energize the sales force. These Industrial Musicals were fully staged and … Continue reading →

What makes an audience? What motivates people to buy a ticket? What influences their decisions? Answer this with any degree of certainty and a job in the Audience Development Department of a major arts organization can be yours. Ask a performer … Continue reading →

Two verses of Hillaire Belloc’s satirical verse The Garden Party deftly satirize how class distinction is expressed. The scene would be an expansive lawn in view of a splendid English manor house, thrown open to the locals (by invitation) for an afternoon … Continue reading →

In America, celebrity can get you anywhere. It can even win you the Presidency. Most importantly, it can maneuver you to a position in front of the microphone ahead of the other guys. The media turn to celebrities to offer … Continue reading →

The Confederate flag remains a fiercely reviled image of the subjugation of the African American population because it rallied the supporters of slavery in the American Civil War. It recently flew at the state capitol in Raleigh, North Carolina, to celebrate the … Continue reading →

“All is true” wrote Balzac, in English, at the beginning of his 1835 novel le Pere Goriot. It is a warning that despite the dastardly characters and their actions the book is a realistic representation of Parisian life, not to be … Continue reading →

“It’s all Greek to me!” Languages pick on the foreignness of other languages to express a communication breakdown. Many pick on Chinese, probably because of its complex script and pronunciation. Some choose Hebrew, some Russian, presumably for their non-Roman alphabet … Continue reading →

Qwirkle is my new game of choice. It’s easy to understand, fun to play, there’s no board, just a bunch of colorful tile pieces that can travel anywhere. The rulebook is so small and concise that the game takes less … Continue reading →

“From the very beginning opera brought together all the arts. It involved painting, poetry, drama, dance and music, making it the most complex of art forms. It was, as Samuel Johnson later pointed out, exotic and irrational, and, as many … Continue reading →

What happens to that slice of experience left behind when the meaning of words changes? Technology has been responsible for a completely new vocabulary as well as widening the meaning of many words already in use (consider the meaning of … Continue reading →