Authenticity and a passion for the subject remain the hallmarks of this well-designed, intimate look at theaters and...
A theater lover chronicles actors’ backstage lives.
For her new book, Blake (Captured, 2014) took her camera to six small-town community and professional theaters in New England, Pennsylvania, and Florida. She documented what John Shea, artistic director emeritus of the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket, describes in the foreword as “the critical and intimate moments of transformation when the actor gives birth to the character.” The author’s fascination with this “metamorphosis” that actors undergo to become a conduit for the stories they will present on stage is clear in her casually evocative color photographs. More than 60 in number, crisply framed by white space, they draw the eye with their slice-of-life scenes of actors—male and female, older and younger—getting into costume, applying a mustache, straightening a wig, brushing on makeup, taking a coffee break, sharing a laugh, or running lines. Accompanying many of the photos are well-curated quotes by actors who speak of their roles and give considered, often ardent thoughts about what being involved with the theater has meant to them. Accessible to a wide range of readers, smartly designed with a deft balance of text and pictures, the volume spotlights each theater with its own section, introduced by Blake’s lively narrative relating the origins of the institution’s founding, a brief history of the productions staged there, and an insider’s anecdote or two. Other photos in the book show theater exteriors and backstage environments (a shelf of jumbled props, utilitarian dressing rooms, makeup tools, costumes) when the players are absent. The author adds further interest and visual appeal with informational tidbits about each theater in framed boxes integrated into the photographic layout. These well-preserved moments are informed not only by Blake’s skill with a camera, but also by her past as part of the theatrical community, a pursuit, she writes in her eloquent preface, kindled by her own early experiences as an audience member.
Authenticity and a passion for the subject remain the hallmarks of this well-designed, intimate look at theaters and performers through a camera lens.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: IB Publications
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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