Forums: Drama Desk Award For Outstanding Costume Design

A show that divides America politically plunges into its fourth season. Mad Men is a show about an unbending generation on the cusp of dissolution; Matthew Weiner, the show’s head writer, has often said that the majority of America in the early ’60s was still, by and large, living in the domestic ’50s. Weiner, a Baby Boomer, has a conflicted relationship with this time period. Because it is the generation of his parents, he wants to explore it and pore over it; because it’s the generation that, through Weiner’s specific political prism, reflects a hypocritical façade, he’d like it to...

NBC's "Friday Night Lights" wants to tackle more than football players. In a bold move for scripted dramas, which usually shy away from taboo issues, the July 9 episode of the network drama featured a high school-aged character deciding to have an abortion, declaring it was "the right thing to do." The plotline earned praise from many in the media. Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker praised "Friday Night Lights" for delivering "one of its finest hours ever." In a July 10 blog post, The Atlantic's Tony Lee noted that he was impressed by the "nuanced, apolitical manner" that the writers used...

Dutch Country Educational Drama Malcolm A. Kline, June 22, 2010 Call it a mystery with a moral but first-time novelist John DeFrank delivers both with stunning success in Condemned to Freedom, set in a public school in the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. It should be noted that in this case Freedom is both the name of the fictional town and county the book takes place in as well as an allegorical reference to the responsibility that goes with the state of being. It is a milieu DeFrank knows well, having spent three decades plus as a teacher/counselor/administrator in the Lebanon County...

Like "Band of Brothers" nine years ago, HBO's World War II miniseries "The Pacific" is a massive achievement. And like its Europe-set predecessor, it's at its best when it focuses on the small things as a way of reflecting the huge story it's telling. The 10-part miniseries, which premieres at 9 p.m. ET Sunday (March 14), follows U.S. Marines as they advance across the Pacific theater of World War II, beginning with the landing on Guadalcanal in 1942 and continuing until the war's end in 1945. It's told principally through the eyes of three enlisted men: John Basilone (Jon Seda),...

A play which was first discovered nearly 300 years ago has been credited to William Shakespeare. The work, titled Double Falsehood, was written by the playwright and another dramatist, John Fletcher. Theatre impresario Lewis Theobald presented the play in the 18th century as an adaptation of a Shakespeare play but it was dismissed as a forgery. But scholars for British Shakespeare publisher, Arden, now believe the Bard wrote large parts of the play. Researchers think the play is based on a long-lost work called Cardenio, which was itself based on Don Quixote. "I think Shakespeare's hand can be discerned in...

Came across this on our diocesan website today - I saw Leonardo Defilippis perform The Gospel of John awhile back at a nearby parish church - it was awesome! It was a word-for-word recitation of the Gospel of John, with him doing costume changes and 'becoming' various people in the Gospel. It just bowled me over - I thought I'd pass along the info that he's now touring as Vianney. (I'm not connected in any way to the production - it was just amazing and I expect the new production will be also)

Bear in mind that some of the following actually did air on Christmas days past. But if you're any kind of old-time radio nut---and I am, certifiable, glazed, and dry-roasted---you have got to love the cornucopia of surviving Christmas-themed radio shows. (No, Virginia, this nice Jewish boy does not have a problem with what amounts to saying "Happy birthday!" to a nice Jewish boy!) You could consider the survival of these shows something of a miracle in itself. (When you consider that a lot of the original sponsors and even network outlets saw fit to trash several thousand shellac discs...

According to a report in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Brett Favre is staying retired. The report says that coach Brad Childress called a writer at the newspaper and said that he was informed the former Green Bay quarterback was not returning to the NFL. Vikings training camp begins on Thursday.

Sarah Palin learned a lot of things in her time as John McCain's running mate -- about the savagery of the media; about the duplicity of politicos; about her own gifts as a politician. But she did not learn the most important lesson of 2008: no drama. The passing months show how right Barack Obama's critics, starting with Hillary Clinton, were about his inexperience. But his supreme overconfidence prevents the caution humility would suggest. The waves are well over the bow of the ship of state now, yet Obama's White House seems to change course almost hourly. What hasn't happened...