Brace yourself, theatergoers: This is a lot more “Mother Courage” than “The Drowsy Chaperone.” The Tower Players enraptured their audience in Markel Auditorium last night with their opening performance of Arthur Miller’s 1949 masterpiece “Death of a Salesman.” The play, which runs through Sunday, is one of the greatest and best-known works of American theater....
Category: Culture
Synesthete sees life in full color
‘When Sara Pezzella has a stomach ache, she feels yellow, not green. The color has nothing to do with nausea. Pezzella is a synesthete: she often perceives pain and emotion as color. “Being a synesthete helps me look at things a little differently and work with colors a little differently,” the senior art...
Pullmann cuts through Common Core
Bad things, sometimes, take time. The Ed Sullivan-era musical satirist Tom Lehrer enjoyed shocking his audiences with piano-driven ditties about educational experiments describing “new math,” a teaching method where students are encouraged to focus on concepts over practice. After singing a complicated word problem to his audience, Lehrer would grin and declare, “It’s so simple,...
Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize in Literature is right and noble
Bob Dylan just won a Nobel Prize in literature. It’s exactly the kind of lifetime achievement award such an endlessly inventive and prolific artist as Dylan deserves. Of course, everyone is mad about it. In The New York Times, Anna North laments that the selection committee passed over “writers who have made significant innovations...
Iconoclast and cultural icon: the religious legacy of H.L. Mencken
Idolized by some for his wit, though demonized by others for his provocative rhetoric, H.L. Mencken remains a controversial figure for conservatives today. Visiting Assistant Professor of History Darryl Hart will present his book published earlier this month, “Damning Words: The Life and Religious Times of H.L. Mencken,” at 7 p.m. Thursday in Dow...