Holidays can be a treacherous time for people dealing with depression and/or substance abuse. Some people, when they hear the term "bottoming out," fantasize about a gloriously gluttonous sexual frenzy. But for those in recovery, bottoming out has a very different meaning. As Joel Spitzer writes:

It used...

"I'd rather gnaw a bean than be gnawed by continual fear." That quote is attributed to Odo of Cheriton, a 13th century preacher who explained the moral of Aesop's popular fable, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Even though Aesop is believed to have been a Greek slave who...

In 1959, while working with Jule Styne on the songs for Gypsy: A Musical Fable, Stephen Sondheim concocted the following lyric for Act II's first number:

"Wherever we go, whatever we do,
We're gonna go through it together.
We may not go far, but sure as...

During March's Behind The Curtain Festival, as I watched semi-staged readings of Meghan O'Connor's In The Wings and Stuart Bousel's Pastorella, my mind wandered to the topic of musicals that deal with backstage life. Cole Porter's 1948 triumph, Kiss Me, Kate (which was made into a brilliant MGM musical in...

There's an old saying that "knowledge is power." However, long before anyone had written up a job description for an "intellectual property" lawyer, people were battling over who should and should not have access to knowledge.

• The Royal Library of Alexandria was one of the most important collections of knowledge...

One may be the loneliest number, but two can't always offer the perfect solution. Whereas one person can supposedly change the world, doubling down on false premises and bad concepts can only lead to disaster. Onanism can lead to an endless pursuit of pleasure while attempting to get similar mileage...

Last summer, as I was riding home on BART from a performance at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, an aspiring young playwright from Los Angeles who had noticed the press kit in my hands started to chat me up. After inquiring what play I had seen that night, he got right...

March 22, 1962 is remembered by many musical theatre fans as the night Barbra Streisand took Broadway by storm as Miss Marmelstein during the opening night performance of I Can Get It For You Wholesale. Based on Jerome Weidman's novel, many of Harold Rome's lyrics dripped with a unique brand...

Some people believe that hindsight is 20/20. I think it's warped by sentimentality, wishful thinking, and rose-colored glasses. Whether one listens to Betty Buckley singing "Memory" from Andrew Lloyd Weber's long-running musical, Cats, or Barbra Streisand's version of the title song from 1973's The Way We Were, memory tends to...

Every now and then it helps to revisit a classic work of art from a different perspective than the one you've grown used to. After witnessing the American Repertory Theatre's new production of The Glass Menagerie (starring Cherry Jones, Zachary Quinto and Celia Keenan-Bolger), Ben Brantley wrote a fascinating ArtsBeat...

I recently fell in love with an essay by Geoffrey O'Brien that appeared in the New York Times. When I say that "We Are What We Quote" "graced" the editorial section, I mean to pay tribute to the elegance of its craft, the depth of its insight, and...

On a cold and wintry day back in the 1950s, I put on my mittens and galoshes and stepped outside into a grey-skied winter wonderland. Snow had fallen the previous night and was now more than a foot deep in our driveway and backyard.

A thought suddenly came to mind...

Although the plots of many musicals have been built around love stories and comic devices, a growing number can be identified as "message" musicals. Whether commenting on religious persecution, racism, controversial medical issues, interfaith, interracial, and same-sex relationships, the creative teams for many shows have given their audiences new opportunities...

The simple act of questioning whether organized religion makes people stupid is bound to provoke a heated response. On one hand, there are people who claim to live in faith-based communities who attribute every event in their lives to the will of God. On the other hand, there are those...

In his recent article entitled "The Illumination Business: Why Drama Critics Must Look At and Look After The Theatre," John Lahr contrasted a critic's responsibility to the art form as opposed to a reviewer's responsibility to boost box office receipts. As an arts critic, one quickly notices random...

Now that this year's Oscars have come and gone, this is as good a time as any to examine the degradation of Hollywood celebrity. What began nearly a century ago with the founders of United Artists (Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith) being hailed as Hollywood royalty...

Just as some people believe that "size is everything," there are certain audiences who assume that the bigger and flashier the production placed before them, the greater its artistic value. Unfortunately, such is not always the case. Large-scale theatre and opera companies have been known to fill their stages with...

In 1997, when James Cameron's blockbuster, Titanic, opened in theaters, one teary-eyed young woman exited a screening in a horrified state of shock and awe. Was she all torn up that Leonardo DiCaprio's character, the fictional Jack Dawson, had drowned in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic? Not in...

Those who work in the mental health field know that the auditory hallucinations suffered by their psychiatric patients seem dangerously real. Whether the voices inside their heads are telling them to kill their children, their spouses, or their president, these patients often see themselves as the mechanical means to a...

One of the more delicious quotes floating around the Internet claims that "Creativity is intelligence having fun." Whether one points to an elaborate Rube Goldberg type of contraption or the refined elegance of this handmade Cthulhu ski mask (made with 20 percent egg protein yarn), as the old Cunard Line...