In my past life as a political science professor, I was occasionally stumped by a question about American politics that I could not answer. At first glance, 46 senators voting against a measure with 90 percent public approval seems like such a question. But it's actually fairly easy to explain,...

Maybe you've been there as a playwright, as I have, many times. Maybe you've been there as an audience member. Maybe you've been there as part of a system of "new play development." Maybe it's been working against the creation of vibrant and exciting new theater. I am speaking of...

What would you give to have an intimate Skype encounter, a personal performance given directly to you, by three different actors from around the world? For the price of a decent New York City lunch, you can have that experience from Feb. 5 to the 28 at Manhattan's Gershwin Hotel,...

There are two ways to change behavior: punishment and reward. The International Centre for Women Playwrights has chosen the latter route in it's first ever 50/50 Applause Awards. As many active in making theater have realized recently, plays written by women are often a scarce commodity on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and...

Dear Mr. President:

We are all rooting for you to keep moving the economy forward. You've been recently turning up the heat on Congress, by making more campaign-style events with real people. Using the "Bully Pulpit' of the presidency to get your message out. Trouble is, your message could be...

Leave aside, for the moment, the standard cul de sac arguments that sound so much like angry children in the back seat of a car, appealing to the parent for permission to punish the one who "started it first." Many an academic tome has been produced on the history of...

Here's a big question: why were Republicans so blindsided by the Obama victory? Answering this question will lead us to an even bigger Republican nightmare: a chance that the Democrats are on track to create a New Democratic Party Majority, and end divided government for a generation. The answer is...

Underneath the underhanded, backhanded, ham-fisted mudslinging of this year's presidential campaign is a choice as a simple as a Texas two-step. Do you believe we would all be better off with much less government, or not?

Recall the twisting of President Obama's statement, that if you built a business you...

Dear Undecided:

I know what you're looking for today. Something that will help you make up your mind that is not about mudslinging or some trivial gaffe a candidate made, or a quote taken way out of context. I respect that you are still thinking about things, and looking for...

There is all sorts of bloviating and diatribing around the blogosphere about the Newest New New Mitt, the one who does not, under any circumstances, favor the wealthiest 1 percent. We know he doesn't favor the rich, because, why, he said so! His lips moved, the words came forth, and...

Among the many jaw-dropping moments in the first presidential debate, this was the one where my jaw bounced on the floor a couple of times before bouncing back into my head. Mitt the Right-Wing Zealot had etch-a-sketched himself back to Mitt the Moderate, and he used his success as governor...

The flop sweat is bursting the banks of the river Romney these days. Their campaign strategists are reduced to combing the Internet in a desperate search for footage of Obama as a teenager, smoking weed. Perhaps they will discover some damaging note written in a high school yearbook: "Keep on...

Poor David Brooks. Poor angry, frustrated, David Brooks. He argued in a New York Times column that the Mitt Romney on the infamous hidden videotape is not the real Mitt. Brooks opined that Romney's problems stem from his lack of authenticity, because he is "faking" an ideological campaign when in...

What do you think when you hear the title Dirty Paki Lingerie? Perhaps a reality series about sexy belly dancers, or the Real Housewives of Islamabad? But this is not television, it's a solo show at the All for One Theater Festival in New York. Expecting to see an anti-immigrant...

In any presidential campaign, numbers will be flung, percentages will be used as weapons of war and the word "statistics" becomes permanently paired with the political modifier "misleading." When voters ask for substance, politicians will often offer them numbers. Numbers seem solid, real. Somewhere, Herman Cain is still repeating his...

In a brazen attempt to wrestle masculinity away from President Obama, Mitt Romney is using the deaths of foreign service officers to spit in the eye of the very mission they gave their lives to save. Way to go, Mitt. The way I see it, you need to go on...

When I first began writing these blog posts from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I promised a David and Goliath story. Well, here it is. Goliath is not a bad metaphor for the Edinburgh Fringe, because the Fringe is a behemoth, the largest arts festival in the world, with over 2,600...

One of the bravest titles in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival surely must be Jennifer Jajeh's one-woman show about discovering her deeper Palestinian identity, "I Heart Hamas." Her poster shows her wearing a tee shirt with that ubiquitous tourist design, but this one cries out for further explanation. It is much...

You'd think that the World Day of Action for Pussy Riot, held on the day of their sentencing (no one ever imagined they wouldn't be convicted by the Russian court), would bring a crowd of outraged artists at the world's largest Fringe Festival into the streets. After all, there are...

If theater is important to you, it's because you've had that moment in a theater, when something absolutely stunning and unexpected comes roaring at you like an artistic freight train hell-bent for perfection. It makes your eyes pop open, or your jaw literally drop; maybe the hair on the back...