Wednesday, August 03, 2005

August 3, 2005 @ 8:15 pm A short personal note, possibly of interest to no one but Tucsonans. There is a new theatre company in town, The Rogue Theatre. What a nifty name. It is roguish in the sense of "playfully mischievous" or in the sense of "being in an unusual or unexpected place." The unexpected place is a troublesome and unruly esthetic space where it dares to push the dramatic envelope beyond what is sometimes found in Tucson. This is an exceptional theatre town. We have a number of small theatre companies and are home to Arizona Theater Company, the state theatre. ATC produces wonderfully polished and mounted productions but some of them are excruciatingly commonplace. Necessarily, I suppose, when you have a multi-million dollar budget and have to play to an older audience with little taste for challenge. In the interest of full disclosure let me say that I’m a member of the Rogue company’s first show, Jean Genet’s "The Balcony." From time to time I’ll let you know what’s up. 8:40:08 PM    comment []

August 3, 2005 @ 6 am Everything old is new again. The following quotation from the Communist Manifesto opens John Gray’s review of NY Times Columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s Book "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of The Twenty-first Century." All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with his sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country…it compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word it creates a world after its own image. This, if I understand him, is essentially Friedman’s view. The world, if not flat already, will soon be as economic globalization levels the economic playing field. The unregulated free market (what Marx and Engels would have called the bourgeois world view) is the key to freedom and prosperity. Wanta bet? 6:02:45 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Arthur Jacobson.