Email Author Jim Lillie

1997 Stories by Jim Lillie

• Amen to That

  published December 25, 1997

  The violence that engulfed America shortly after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy is well-documented. What isn't... More >>

• Hayley's Comet

  published December 25, 1997

  Suppose you have a few million dollars to invest in The King and I. Naturally, you want to create a touring production of the highest quality, but... More >>

• The Pizza Man Cometh

  published December 18, 1997

  No matter how hard playwright Eugene O'Neill tried to distance himself from his anguished past, the personal demons of his family life continued... More >>

• The Dead Zone

  published December 18, 1997

  The closing moments of CityStage Ensemble's production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead are ripe for a rendition of "God Rest Ye Merry... More >>

• Wishing Upon a Star

  published December 11, 1997

  Actor's Studio founder and Broadway director Robert Lewis wrote in his memoirs about a 1931 exchange he had with a then-unknown Katharine Hepburn.... More >>

• Dead Reckoning

  published December 11, 1997

  Plays about death understandably are not very popular. True, the occasional one does stimulate some thoughtful discussion among theatergoers. And... More >>

• A Good Joe

  published December 4, 1997

  Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is an ideal microcosm of the contemporary Broadway musical. It's based on a story written by someone... More >>

• Wedding Bell Blahs

  published December 4, 1997

  Thirty years ago, Richard Schechner created the Performance Group in New York, an avant-garde company whose shows were riveting because of their... More >>

• Lone Rangers

  published November 27, 1997

  Give Barbara Walters credit. Or maybe it's Sigmund Freud who deserves the accolades. While we're at it, let's not forget the hordes of celebrities... More >>

• Supreme Beings

  published November 20, 1997

  When A Chorus Line first splashed onto the Broadway stage in 1975, its creator, Michael Bennett, was routinely hailed as a genius, an innovator,... More >>

• McHale's Navy

  published November 20, 1997

  "But what I really want to do is direct!" reads a T-shirt popular among actors. Even though performers always aspire to creative control,... More >>

• Back to the Futurist

  published November 13, 1997

  The term "Orwellian" is often used to refer to situations in which authority figures like police or even employers poke their noses into people's... More >>

• Play It...Again?

  published November 13, 1997

  Maybe it's because it touches on hot-button issues that haven't yet vaporized, as so many talk-show topics do. Maybe it's because it's a... More >>

• Color Commentary

  published November 6, 1997

  In 1965 a young African-American actor, Douglas Turner Ward, produced two one-act plays he had written, Happy Ending and Day of Absence. The... More >>

• Honor Students

  published November 6, 1997

  Outstanding theater programs have a way of thriving in the face of adversity. Nowhere is that more true than in academia, where the general rule... More >>

• High Flyer

  published October 30, 1997

  The always opinionated George Bernard Shaw once challenged the so-called Father of Modern Drama, Henrik Ibsen, to explain "if he can, why the... More >>

• Class Clowns

  published October 30, 1997

  How did you respond in school when you were told by the teacher that the day's learning was going to be "fun"? Did you imagine that you'd be... More >>

• Do Not Adjust Your Seat

  published October 23, 1997

  Veteran Madison Avenue ad exec Marshall Karp moved to Los Angeles in 1987 and garnered modest success writing for such TV shows as Amen, starring... More >>

• Short Circuits

  published October 23, 1997

  The one-act play is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. Shakespeare evidently never wrote a one-act play to encapsulate his feelings and... More >>

• Running Away With the Cirque

  published October 16, 1997

  What did it all mean? That was the lingering question many audience members pondered one recent Saturday afternoon after Cirque du Soleil... More >>

• Something Old

  published October 16, 1997

  Classical theater, like classical music, is often regarded as something that must be tolerated, if rarely enjoyed. Many theater-goers routinely... More >>

• Dying Declaration

  published October 9, 1997

  In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, an old woman has left the impersonal confines of a city hospital for the warmth of her remote cabin so... More >>

• Fiends and Relations

  published October 9, 1997

  The first act of Sam Shepard's play Buried Child might have you wondering if the playwright wrote his drama shortly after watching the cult... More >>

• Tex Nix

  published October 2, 1997

  If you're like most people, chances are there's a situation from your past, oft-told at small gatherings, that has always seemed worthy to you of... More >>

• Immigrant's Song

  published October 2, 1997

  "I want to yell things in newspapers," one character says in Leslie Ayvazian's play Nine Armenians. The granddaughter of a prominent minister who... More >>