A five-star experience

Theatre critic Michael Billington explains why he stepped out of his comfort zone to try his hand at directing some of Harold Pinter's most challenging works.

"Colleagues have variously described me as mad, foolhardy or brave to step out of the critical comfort zone. But I don't quite see it like that. It seems to me absurd that people driven by a hunger for theatre should be confined to little boxes from which they can never escape. The roles of the director and critic overlap. In both cases, the prime task is to discern an author's intention and to interpret it as clearly as possible. The big difference is that the critic does it with words, whereas the director engages in a collaborative process with actors, designers, and lighting and sound experts. What we are all trying to do is get to the root of the text."

Article in The Guardian.

Why I Blog

by Andrew Sullivan

For centuries, writers have experimented with forms that evoke the imperfection of thought, the inconstancy of human affairs, and the chastening passage of time. But as blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that’s enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. Its truths are provisional, and its ethos collective and messy. Yet the interaction it enables between writer and reader is unprecedented, visceral, and sometimes brutal. And make no mistake: it heralds a golden era for journalism.

Article here.