I don't always believe that validation for one my opinions is necessarily required, but when something I've caught flack for over the years is posited as correct in the New York Times, I feel the need to point it out.
So, as I was reading the Arts & Leisure section today (print version, 'cuz that's the pretentious way I roll when art and leisure are concerned ... and I find someone's used copy on a table at a coffee shop) I was more than a little heartened by Jason Zinoman's article on the cover. Here's a link to the article so you can check it out for yourself, but the gist of it is that our big-budget love of Shakespeare -- Zinoman gives numbers, so I won't bother -- isn't healthy for theater. Like eating too much of any one food group, too much Shakespeare is malnourishing the body theatrical.
Even worse, Shakespeare isn't just crowding out other food groups. He has become something of a sometimes tasty fast food, poisoning the body and masking that act by pretending to be food at all.
It may be going too far to ban The Bard from our diet completely (al la "Ban Big Cola") but really, we need to show some self-restraint.
So, as I was reading the Arts & Leisure section today (print version, 'cuz that's the pretentious way I roll when art and leisure are concerned ... and I find someone's used copy on a table at a coffee shop) I was more than a little heartened by Jason Zinoman's article on the cover. Here's a link to the article so you can check it out for yourself, but the gist of it is that our big-budget love of Shakespeare -- Zinoman gives numbers, so I won't bother -- isn't healthy for theater. Like eating too much of any one food group, too much Shakespeare is malnourishing the body theatrical.
Even worse, Shakespeare isn't just crowding out other food groups. He has become something of a sometimes tasty fast food, poisoning the body and masking that act by pretending to be food at all.
It may be going too far to ban The Bard from our diet completely (al la "Ban Big Cola") but really, we need to show some self-restraint.