Terry Teachout
Terry Teachout
Terry Teachoutis an American critic, biographer, librettist, author, playwright, and blogger. He is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, the critic-at-large of Commentary, and the author of "Sightings," a column about the arts in America that appears biweekly in the Friday Wall Street Journal. He blogs at About Last Night and has written about the arts for many other magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times and National Review...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth6 February 1956
CountryUnited States of America
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I am, as it happens, a baby boomer, but not one who feels any broad-gauge nostalgia for the '60s and '70s. My attitude resembles that of my parents, who were born in the '20s and lived through the Great Depression and World War II.
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The contemporary notion that it's somehow inherently bad for a film to be 'talky' has done grave damage to the culture of American movie-making, enough so that a growing number of people, myself among them, have all but given up on Hollywood.
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I'm not rigid about directorial changes: I judge them on a case-by-case basis. In the case of a play whose text is widely familiar, I'm open to drastic changes that may alter the author's meaning, perhaps even considerably. If the results don't work, then I say so.
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I learned more in the rehearsals for 'The Letter' than I have ever dreamed of know in the theater as a critic. If it doesn't make me a better critic, I'm an idiot.
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In addition to giving comfort and joy, art also has the miraculous ability to let us live in other men's skins, to test our perceptions and beliefs against theirs, and perhaps to be changed as a result. It does this by portraying the world creatively, heightening our perception and enriching our understanding of things as they are.
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In 2004, the iPod was a novelty, and tablet computers were a dream. Now we take for granted that we can see whatever we want whenever and wherever we want to see it, be it 'Grand Illusion' or 'Duck Dynasty.'
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The first play I ever saw - I was in junior high school - was a high school production of Noel Coward's 'Blithe Spirit,' which seemed to me absolutely magical.
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All history, and most especially the history of the 20th century, argues against placing ideas in the saddle and allowing them to ride mankind. Too often, they end up riding individual men and women into mass graves.
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Ai Weiwei, who is both a widely admired conceptual artist and a fearless human-rights activist, has been on the bad side of the Chinese government for years.
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You don't have to know anything about the Shakers to appreciate Mr. Copland's score for 'Appalachian Spring' any more than you have to know who William Randolph Hearst was to understand 'Citizen Kane.'
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The digital apocalypse continues to blight the lives of television producers, music-industry executives and newspaper publishers, all of whom are scrambling to figure out how to reconfigure their business models in such a way as to allow them to make an honest buck.
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I believe deeply that jazz is still a very vital music that has much to say, not just to eggheads, or whatever the musical equivalent of an egghead is, but to ordinary people.
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I know that luck has a way of happening to people who shoot high, who never sell themselves short.
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EXTREMELY FUNNY! A SUPER-VIRTUOSO! I expected to enjoy 'The Two and Only,' but I didn't expect to be touched, much less to find my eyes growing moist.