In the 1910s the American theater, long dominated by melodramas, dictatorial producers (most of whom were artless magnates), and an audience more drawn by stars-preferably Britishthan good scripts, was finally ready to establish its own identity. The cha...

In the 1910s the American theatre, long dominated by melodramas, dictatorial producers (most of whom were artless magnates), and an audience more drawn by stars--preferably British--than good scripts, was finally ready to establish its own identity. The...

"I want to be an artist or nothing," wrote aspiring playwright Eugene O'Neill at the age of twenty-five. He pursued his goal relentlessly, and when he died forty years later he had written more than fifty plays, won the Nobel and several Pulitzer prizes,...

God Is Not Great The delusional tragic heroes of Mountain Goats songs are as doomed as ever John Damielle's songs operate with the grace of a slasher movie: precise in their depiction of messy situations (and vice versa), triumphant even in desperation,...

"God, what a shit God is!" Randolph Churchill exclaimed when forced to read the Bible all the way through. Theologians prefer to call it the problem of evil. How can a loving God produce Aids, Auschwitz, childhood cancers and so on? The problem ca...