The Sound of America: Jeanne Thornton’s Summer Fun

By Corinne Manning

JUL-AUG 2021 | Books

Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton is an epistolary novel that is as much mystery as cultural analysis and rewards the reader by never giving us what we expect or what we think we want.

Looking Back, and Forward, as Ma-Yi Celebrates 30 Years of Innovative Work

By Billy McEntee

MAR 2020 | Theater

The Obie and Lucille Lortel award-winning theater company started out in 1989 producing solely the work of Filipino American writers; while that has evolved, so has the theater’s definition of what a “Ma-Yi play” is. And that’s a strength: in a company whose ethos and blessings are fortified by its creators, each new playwright brings with them—to Ma-Yi’s numerous productions and artistic programs—their own world and experiences to expand and delight the company’s evolving landscape of thought-provoking, envelope-pushing American plays.

Joan Snyder: The Summer Becomes a Room

By William Corwin

OCT 2020 | ArtSeen

Snyder wraps this body of work in an overwhelming sense of acceptance and gratitude for the cycles of nature: the seasons, life and death, day and night, morning and dusk. Overall this seems a positive reckoning; her palette is bright and harmonious, and it’s hard not to get a boost from looking at it.

Grace Notes: Pam Tanowitz and Simone Dinnerstein’s New Work for Goldberg Variations

By Rachel Stone

FEB 2020 | Dance

The ushers at the New York City premiere of choreographer Pam Tanowitz and pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s New Work for Goldberg Variations at The Joyce Theater warn me that the program is 75 minutes—75 minutes!—with no intermission. It’s possible they have to tell me this, but either way, the length of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” (which, apocrypha alleges, he composed in 1741 as an anti-Scheherazade to help an insomniac count finally sleep) intimidates.