Osburnt: Dispatches From a Life Seared by the Arts

  • Sleep No More

    Sleep No More

    I was one of those lining up on Memorial Day night to see Punchdrunk’s SLEEP NO MORE in the Chelsea gallery district. The Scottish play as nightmare is an old trope, well founded in the text. So to deconstruct it as a sort of haunted house theme park and fragment its episodes in the manner…

  • Age of Consent • The Tempest

    Age of Consent • The Tempest

    I came to Norman Lindsay’s witty, wise and wily novel AGE OF CONSENT through the effervescent film of the same name that the great Michael Powell directed in 1969. Some have spotted a connection to Shakespeare’s The Tempest in the plot, which concerns a painter struggling to find inspiration on an isolated Australian isle accompanied…

  • Festival de otoño en primavera

    Festival de otoño en primavera

    I saw three shows at Madrid’s eccentrically named FESTIVAL DE OTOÑO EN PRIMAVERA (Fall Festival in Springtime), which brought a plethora of international theater to the Spanish capital in May and June. My listening comprehension of Spanish is what it is, so I would not pretend to have followed every thread of the multiple plots…