notanotherbookreview

The Paragon Hotel by Lindsay Faye (Putnam) and A Hairpiece Named Denial   (Pelekinesis) by S. Sal Hanna are very good novels with strange affect, where humor and identity take turns you can't anticipate. Stranger yet, both have heroines named Alice. As  The Paragon Hotel  opens, Alice, also known as Nobody, is a young flapper on the run from Prohibition Harlem's mafia gang wars. Wounded and bleeding heavily, she boards a train where Max, a concerned porter, spirits her to Portland's Paragon Hotel, the only hotel for African Americans in a white city. A very skilled African-American doctor saves her life but then Alice, who uses invisibility to survive,finds herself a prominent, unwanted guest. She has to convalesce and the hotel is a perfect hide-out, yet her presence generates outsize fear, unmitigated by the cash in her bag. Suspicious residents shun her until a protector emerges. The charismatic Blossom, a wordly caberet performer, invites her to her room, curious...

LA COMMEDIA SOTTERRANEA DELLA MACHINA DA SCRIVERE, Swizzle Felt's FIRST FOLIO from the THE TYPEWRITER UNDERGROUND (Pelekinesis) Is this a put-on, precious satire, poetry, an infinite jest? Yes, as well as the first blast of  THE TYPEWRITER UNDERGROUND, a movement both radical and retro, reactionary and progressive, profound and silly--Marc Zegans, poet and spoken word artist, began this movement after publishing a collection of verse,  The Underwater Typewriter. The Typewriter Underground was originally inspired by an abandoned subway, boarded up and forgotten. Zegans imagined galleries, performance in such a space. His movement has attracted a group of like-minded artists making film, music, spoken word events. It's become an alt art movement. In the FIRST FOLIO he teams with Eric Edelman, a retro collage artist, to introduce fictional author, Swizzle Felt and his group of bohemian drop-outs, such as Edamame Phelps (his personal librarian), Clytaemnestra Litotes...

The Presentation at I.R.T. 3 nights Dec 2019, was to be the first step before a showcase.  With Covid, opportunities didn't exist. Now since Theater is back, I am open to a production of this play in hybrid or traditional theater forms. There are special videos not completed except for the final night, using the monitor that frames this story in our media world. There are marvelous puppets of Houdini in water closet and other magic moments that add a dimension of hyper reality to stage magic.  The play was without these elements and the story alone moved people. If your theater would like to explore work with this show, leave a comment here and I will contact you. The video below is edited from the original presentation which was about two hours in length.  Thanks, Susan I. Weinstein link to video of Ether presented in a Residency Workshop at I.R.T. Theater (copyright)    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56d8Qtjyu_U Script available on request, full-length or...

Written and Directed By Edward Einhorn  UNTITLED THEATRE CO. February 8 - March 2, 2019   at A.R.T./New York’s  Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre 502 W. 53rd Street (at 10th Ave) A new play examining the nexus between neuroscience, marketing, art, and love. With: Ashley Griffin*, Mick O’Brien*, Yvonne Roen*, Matthew Trumbull* *Indicates member of Actor's Equity Association Thu - Sat at 8pm Sun Feb 10 and 24 at 5pm; Tue Feb 12 and 26 at 7pm Here's the story. Amy, a lapsed artist and one-time artist's model, is married to Stephen, a neuroscientist investigating how emotions affect the brain. As the play opens, she's not been his only subject but his favorite, as he investigates the neurological impact of their relationship--their love. He speaks and she's not to answer. His words are a stimulus for her brain to register emotion. And when she's had enough she can exit by squeezing a bulb. As the story evolves, Stephen is ...

4/21, New York Times Book Review on NOTORIOUS BEN HECHT. Quite an even-handed look. CONGRATS to Purdue University Press and Julien Gorbach!!   https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/books/review/adina-hoffman-julien-gorbach-ben-hecht-biography.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-ae-ben-hecht-biographies-0331-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1I7Q0AECpxtvA3CkjHoVxoeOaL8441guvKrUNbKJcHWqKp33EXOsXIRFs Congratulations to Julien Gorbach on the publication of NOTORIOUS BEN HECHT on March 15, 2019. A wonderful in-dept look at a man whose career spanned reporting on corruption on Chicago, writing Broadway hits like Front Page i n NY, as a famous wit of the Algonquin Roundtable, winning an Emmyfor the invention of the modern gangster movie in Hollywood, where he wrote Scarface and Notorious, Hecht organized entertainers to save Europe's Jews and later joined forces with notorious gangster Mickey Cohen to fight for a Jewish stsate. Writer, thinker, famous in his time,...