Don McNeill’s Breakfast Club
3 hours ago
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Howard Korder in New York
(This post is from the blog of the Mother of Invention Acting School in Los Angeles and San Francisco (www.utteracting.com): an acting class in Los Angeles San Francisco for serious, motivated students.)
In class, we do scenes from three plays each cycle. One writer whom we have worked on quite abit and who I like a lot is Howard Korder. The plays of his that we have worked on in the class are Search and Destroy, Sea of Tranquility, and Boys' Life.
This morning, I was enjoying my new jet-set lifestyle on glamorous Southwest airlines, on the way to the Southlands to teach my Wednesday evening class there, and I came across this review of a revival of Boys' Life at Second Stage in New York. (By the way, Second Stage is where Mark Brokaw, who is one of the creators of the approach I teach in the class cut his teeth in New York, before Yale and after, I believe).
While searching for the web version, I came across Frank Rich's review of the original review:
I think I prefer Frank Rich at his current occupation, political commentator, to him as a theater critic, but still, an interesting comparison.
The play was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize when it appeared. I think its a little too potent for hte Pulitzer crowd though.
I love Howard Korder. He has all of the verbal talents of David Mamet, but he's got more going on. His plays are less suffused with testosterone than Mamet's, although alpha swagger is a part of his palette. There is more room for thoughtfulness in his plays, less relentlessness. And he seems to have a penchant for loopiness or wackiness that Mamet lacks, to my mind. He leaves me wanting more, always.
Thanks Howard! Keep em coming!
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