Scene4 Magazine | letters to the editor

Your comments are well taken and hit the mark. Rock and rap and hip-hop is all about the Show, it's never been about the Music.

Timothy Harrou

read Les Marcott's column

Many thanks to Kathi Wolfe for her remembrance of Adrienne Rich and for her own sensory-provoking poetry. She's a wonderful writer.

Naomi Rubenstein

read Kathi Wolfe's column and
read her poetry in this issue

Ashley Judd anyone? What's the thinking or does it just pass on into the daily mush of politics?

Michael Aptrow

read the earlier post

I can't begin to tell you how important Nathan Thomas' words are regarding the gender-stricken "Method". Since acting and the creations of acting on the stage and on the screen have such a profound effect and influence on the behavior of persons and what they do with their lives and the lives of others,Thomas gets to the heart and core of it and opens it up. It needs to be dug into deeper and further.

Michael Aptrow

read Nathan Thomas' column

David Alpaugh's poem, Death of Aeschylus, is super and so well written! I am so pleased I continue to see his work in Scene 4.

Connie Post

read David Alpaugh's poetry

Great cover page. It's great to see the Nagel women again in all their chilling glory and those eyes. I don't think the iphone flickr crowd really knows how much he's influenced what they see and do. RIP Patrick, you're still with us.

Bill Rasterbaum

read the article on Patrick Nagel

Miles Moore's review rightfully pinpoints the massive failure of this film: "misshapen, wrongheaded and vague". It's the script. I've just seen another Abi Morgan penner, "Shame" and it's the same vague meandering mess. And she's an award-winning playwright to boot. However does she come to write such porridge? And however do they come to ever produce it?

Pel Porter

read Miles David Moore's reviiew

Scene4 does not have a "feminist orientation toward the arts and media". It has a number of writers, both women and men, who support feminist issues regarding the arts as well as other issues including, on occasion, contra-feminist views. It is an international magazine of arts and media with a multi-cultural readership in over 102 countries. It has no stated political or philosophical editorial policy, only its adherence to the highest journalistic standards it can achieve and maintain.

The Editors

read the original 'Ashley Judd' post below

Many thanks for your display of Supawat. His paintings are beautiful and I long to buy one soon.

Chendewan

read Janine Yasovant's article

I guess shite-meister Beck took Ned Bobkoff's eulogy to heart. He's gone for good. Thanks Ned.

Phil Bankler

Who was Jack Kerouac then and who is Jack Kerouac now? That's the question. And does it matter?

MM

read Gloria Steiner's article

I would hope that Scene4, with its feminist orientation toward the arts and media, will explore and address the critical issue raised by Ashley Judd's conflict with the press and other media over their derogatory portrayal of her and women in general. This is a very important issue and I look forward to reading your views on it.

Sylvia Rathold

One point--you talk about touring as a "young person's game". It's truly an "actor's game" young and old. The bus&truck, the roving Band of Players, even the circus and carnivals--these marvelous adventures for both performers and audiences have been lost in the U.S. not just because of the swamp of mall-entertainment but also because of the overreach of unions and the tax-man. You should advise your young actors--if you want to tour and tour you should, go to Europe, go to Canada, even Australia. It's still there!

Michael Aptrow

read Nathan Thomas' column

A couple of points--there was a rise of the kind of musical theatre that you and Barker seem to endorse alongside the rise of the Nazis in Germany in the 1920's and 1930's, a glorious and provocative rise of the form that attracted large audiences along with the marvelous Voksbuhne (People's Theatre) in Berlin. If it hadn't been exterminated by the Nazis, the musical theatre in the post-war U.S. would have been markedly different even for Agnes deMille and her groundbreaking "Oklahoma!"

Your citing of Sondheim--a second-rate composer and second-rate lyricist who egged his way into the vacuum left by the demise of Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Robbins. His success and popularity is a stinging example of what happens when the press adulates and creates an idol, just like Lady Gaga.

Michael Aptrow

read Michael Bettencourt's column

Dear Les Marcott, you're a wizard! And I've got just the thing for you to wiz with. It's a speech-jammin smartphone. It's so crazy, it works! We can make a fortune. Contact me, before the black ops guys do.

Anonymous (not the hackers!!)

read Les Marcott's column

I have to agree with Laird's view of the recent Gate2 conference in Los Angeles. It was another one of those self-serving, self-congratulatory, self-promoting confabs of the Hollywood movie club. The only way that American film is going to honestly promote positive, life-changing scenarios is when the U.S. finally establishes a nationally funded cinema like the U.K. and Canada and others. That's as likely to happen as the establishment of a national theater, a true national healthcare program, a non-ideological Supreme Court and a color-blind political system. One can only hope.

B. J. Davis

read Arthur Kanegis article

Jon Rendell is a magician, a superb craftsman and a master of "perspective." And Ms Bennett, who shoots like that at 16. If I could have shot like that at 16 I wouldn't be the snapper that I am today. Thanks for these wonderful displays in your great magazine!

Arthur B. Morris

visit Perspectives

What a noisy and exciting eight-ring circus your time in Chicago must have been! Delightful write-up.

Elisavietta Ritchie

read Karren Alenier's column

It's almost as if O'Neill wrote this play last year. His indictment of the military-industrial complex and corporate politics is scathing and so very timely. It would make a blockbuster movie today. I also agree with the writer's opening indictments of our "dumb" presidents but I love Bob Dylan. He is the great poet of the 20th century.

Maria Einhorn (truthsayer)

read Arthur Meiselman's column

I have one of his paintings from a few years ago. It's enchanted you know, it keeps changing every time you look at it. Good writeup about him.

Toma Sendgrue

read Janine Yasovant's article

Feldman wherever you are your stuff is so funny and you're such a crazy SOB. But I want to tell you, stay away from my family. My Grannie and Grandpa were the best. Yours should have thrown out your Old Man ten minutes after his Bar Mitzvah.

Jack G.

see Elliot Feldman's comics

Rendell is a wonder in how he captures my beautiful hometown, the most beautiful city in the U.S. I only wish that Scene4 was twice as large so the photos can be seen with every nuance. I guess I need a larger monitor. Thanks for showing this beautiful photography.

Peter Suzmann

see Jon Rendell's photography

The last thing I ever thought was that Kerouac was a writer. A scribbler, yes, but hardly a writer. And goodbye to all the Beat so-called writers and the whole time. It's long gone and should stay that way-one of the greyest, dullest periods in recent history.

RJ

read Griselda Steiner's article

It's all very nice and reassuring that the Beverly Hills folk want to acknowledge the power of their product and use it to make the world healthier, happier and wise. That's not going to happen despite Jim Carrey's cute little aphorisms. The film industry is totally market-driven, always has been. The only difference between the sequel-franchise Hollywood of today and the so-called "Golden Days" is that back then the studio system allowed for the production of films, doomed to be box-office losers, that "should" be made. The moguls had a lot to feel guilty about, it was part of their heritage. Today, there are no moguls, no studio system, and not a stain of guilt anywhere. There's only the unabashed cult of celebrity and the unabated wallow of money. Good luck to the conferees at GATE, at least you're trying.

Laird

read Arthur Kanegis' article

That's why there isn't anybody like him writing today, on a roll of paper wasn't it? And there probably won't ever be another Beat-like writer again.

Turin

read Griselda Steiner's article

I don't know if this is drama or poetry or as Kopal calls it: a self-dispossessed illusion (great phrase!). What I do know is it kept me up last night!

Laird

read Iri Kopal's writing

What I miss most about Jack Kerouac and the Beats is that he and they wrote at a time before the Kindle and the Internet and Amazon Books and 'Facegook'. You had to be a writer to write, not just a word processor.

Laird

read Griselda Steiner's article

SS.Burrus is one of those hidden treasures in American art and especially in Native American art. She's probably better known in other parts of the world than she is here in her Native land. Thank you much for displaying her beauty.

M. Rindasas

see SS. Burrus' painting

Hilarious ain't the word, Les. I couldn't stop laughing, man. It's like right out of a Reality Show. And can I relate to it. Hey, I wish I had this speech a couple of years ago in Spokane. Same deal, same situation, same crazy. You nailed it, brother!

T.J. Michael

read Les Marcott's monologue

Hope Mohr is a lovely and sometimes breathtaking dancer and so with Dusan Tynek's dancers but the Cunningham oeuvre has always left me flat, cold, uninvolved. I saw much of Merce in his early days and less when he danced less. He, as a dancer, was the inspiration. But the choreography? I never thought of it as choreography.

Judy Moritz

read Catherine Conway Honig's article