Recent Stories with tag essays

We're only one episode into Season 4 of Mad Men, and already I can't wait to see where things are headed. Like, how will the Surgeon General's 1964 report on the dangers of smoking (and the subsequent required warning on cigarette packs) affect the fledgling ad firm's biggest client, Lucky Strikes? Will we ever see our old pals Kinsey and Cosgrove again? And wherefore art thou, Joan's terrible husband and Roger's terrible wife?

And what better way to kick off the new season than with Natasha Vargas-Cooper's new book?  Born of her recurring series on The Awl, Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America is a look at the show via mini-essays that make pointed, witty observations on the cultural context of the early '60s. So you can quickly read all about what Betty's suburban decor says about her and her family, how the writers of the time--John Cheever, Helen Gurley Brown, Mary McCarthy, Frank O'Hara--inform the series, and why the character of Don Draper is the careful combination of traits found in Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, and John Wayne.  That's a near-deadly admixture of sex appeal.

To celebrate the return of Mad Men, The SunBreak has three copies of Mad Men Unbuttoned to give away. Enter below for your chance to win a copy. We'll be drawing three winners' names Friday at noon....

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There was a great sigh of relief Sunday night all across the land to accompany the Season 4 premiere of Mad Men. It was so good to see all our old friends again, especially how they've all changed in the past year of television time: Peggy grew out her bangs! Don likes it rough! Betty's unhappily married! JFK is still dead.

And what better way to kick off the new season than with Natasha Vargas-Cooper's new book?  Born of her recurring series on The Awl, Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America is a look at the show via mini-essays that make pointed, witty observations on the cultural context of the early '60s. So you can quickly read all about the great real-life ad men of the time, the Rothko painting in Bert Cooper's office, what Peggy likely did and didn't learn in secretary school, and just how easy it was to procure an illegal abortion. Fun facts for the whole family!

To celebrate the return of Mad Men, The SunBreak has three copies of Mad Men Unbuttoned to give away. Enter below for your chance to win a copy. We'll be drawing three winners' names Friday at noon....

(more)

Paul Mullin. Photo by Karen Odyniec.

Paul Mullin, the 2008 Stranger Genius Award winner for theatre, is known as much as a pugilist as a playwright. Mullin's got strong opinions on everything that's wrong with the theatre, and is more than willing to share them.

His most recent project, It's Not in the P-I: A Living Newspaper About a Dying Newspaper, failed to find a home in any professional or fringe theatre in town, so Mullin produced it with the drama department at North Seattle Community College. When the play drew extensive local and even national attention, Mullin lobbed a broadside back at the artistic directors of Seattle's large theatres by way of a media alert that read in part:

If this coverage by NPR proves one thing it’s this: the rest of the nation actually does give a damn about what we do in this city.  They actually do care what happens to our newspapers, and they actually do want to know about what kind of original theatre we’re doing here, what stories we’re telling, uniquely, as Seattleites.

What they don’t care about, what they will never care about, is how carefully and exquisitely we craft a restaging of some chestnut from the canon, or the play that knocked ‘em dead off-Broadway last year.  And this isn’t because those stories aren’t good, it’s because those stories aren’t uniquely ours.  Seattle theaters that dedicate themselves exclusively to craft and the canon and providing a local outlet to New York’s latest exports are museums.  And Seattle will never have as good museums as New York, Chicago or LA.

Mullin's bullish support of his own work is just the latest in his ongoing battle to turn Seattle into a "world class theatre city," a challenge he placed on his own plate when he accepted The Stranger Genius Award (he even claimed it could be done in just five short years). And now, to that end, he's launching a new website with a planned series of essays laying out--and strategizing how to overcome--the obstacles. In the introductory essay, "Towards a World Class Theatre," Mullin explains the purpose and limitations of the project:

Potshots of prose alone cannot go any significant distance toward making theater better here in Seattle or anywhere. Only making great theatre will make theatre great here. This series will be about sharpening my arguments and placing them in a public place, where they may serve to convince or be dismissed, or maybe even dismantled and built into something more useful. I am done bitching in bars. I am pushing my stakes on the table and I encourage my colleagues, especially those who disagree with me, to do the same.

As someone who knows the high- and low-points of Seattle theatre all too well, I sincerely help Mullin manages to force others to step up to the plate.