Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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The lights of Broadway

A is for Audra: Broadway’s Leading Ladies from A to Z by John Robert Allman

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While browsing Facebook awhile back I found a recording of one of my fellow Cannonballers reading A is for Audra: Broadway’s Leading Ladies from A to Z.  I am sorry to say, I forgot to write down your name! Therefore, please consider this my official Thank you! That was fun and appreciated. I do not know about other people, but there is something about being read to that is comforting. Even when you are an adult. Of course, it might be less appropriate to have […]

“To know how it ends, and still begin to sing it again as if it might turn out this time”

Working On A Song: The Lyrics of Hadestown by Anais Mitchell

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BINGO – Flora Anais Mitchell has been very, very busy over the last ten years. Her journey began with writing a folk opera album based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice while touring with Bon Iver. The culmination of this journey is Broadway production Hadestown that garnered 14 Tony Award nominations and 8 wins including one for Mitchel for Best Original Score. Getting to that point was not easy or quick. In Working On A Song Mitchell walks through the various stages of each song […]

The play is the thing….but life is more complicated than that (or is it?)

Please Come Off-Book by Kevin Kantor

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Please Come Off-Book is an interesting metaphor for life. If you are not familiar with the term (I think I had heard it, but also was not completely familiar with it at the same time) it means that when you are in a play, do not have your script and come having memorized your lines. In other words, my interpretation of Kevin Kantor’s use here means, “Live your life without a script, but of course, we do that anyways, but boy do we really need […]

Strindberg mansplains it all

Miss Julie by August Strindberg

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In the last season of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the popular lowbrow comedienne Sophie Lennon, played by Jane Lynch, wants to prove her acting chops by starring in a theatre play of Miss Julie.  Despite rehearsal performances that are nuanced, in the actual performance Lennon plays Miss Julie as a variation on her lowbrow alter ego, to crushing reviews.  It turns out that this highbrow/lowbrow collision is one of the main themes of Miss Julie, so Lennon’s portrayal might actually have been a novel approach. […]

Reading the rainbow for CBR Bingo

Butterflies are Free by Leonard Gershe

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Written by Leonard Gershe, who also wrote the script for the Audrey Hepburn film Funny Face, Butterflies are Free is a play that premiered in 1969 with Blythe Danner (Gwyneth’s ma) in one of the starring roles. It was adapted into a 1972 film starring Goldie Hawn and Eileen Heckart, the latter of whom won an Oscar for best supporting actress.  Who knew?!  My background prior to the google search that provided that info was that my parents went to college for performing arts in […]

“We all recognize a likeness of Shakespeare the instant we see one, and yet we don’t really know what he looked like. It is like this with nearly every aspect of his life and character: He is at once the best known and least known of figures.”

Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

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There is a lot to say about Shakespeare, but there is not a lot to know. Bill Bryson, everyone’s favorite kindly uncle, lays the facts bare while gently chiding all of the (mostly bonkers) “hopeful suppositions” that have been presented as facts by well-meaning and often obsessed fans, historians, and scholars. Bryson, himself an acolyte at the altar of Shakespeare, paints a bright and brisk portrait of the man that we know to be Shakespeare. We know very few things about him; there are only […]



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