“Putting Your Shame Out There”: How a Booming Instagram Account Wields Comedy, Mimicry, and Advocacy

By Cam Cronin

NOV 2020 | Theater

Jonathan Hoover may have started his Instagram account @inappropriatepatti for kicks—when you have the singular ability to parrot Broadway legend Patti LuPone, why not share it with the internet? But a talent for mimicry, like his booming account, has evolved into something greater: a source for comedy in dark times, and more importantly the vehicle for raising funds for justice. Here, Cam Cronin dives into the person and persona of Jonathan Hoover and how artistry is inextricably tied to activism.

Tragedy with a Chewy Comic Center: MADELEINE GEORGE with Matt Longabucco

FEB 2019 | Theater

Madeline George's real ambition to connect with people through writing and stage the conversations that animate her formidable mind, helps show me (and many) what a principled and truly evolving practice can and should achieve.

Erin Carlson's I'll Have What She's Having: How Nora Ephron's Three Iconic Films Saved the Romantic Comedy

By Colin Laidley

DEC 19-JAN 20 | Books

The endless parade of anecdotes is intermittently entertaining and interesting. Ephron’s fantasies were painstakingly crafted; “Nora had to completely OK every single look, down to the cut of the shoes,” Tom Hanks recalls. Stories of deciding on certain minor details like Kathleen Kelley’s tousled hair or Harry’s chic bohemian loft provide a window into both Ephron’s vision—troublingly elitist—and her character as a filmmaker—collaborative, but self-assured and obdurate. Unfortunately, they do not get the commentary they deserve, and cumulatively these stories amount to neither a portrait of Ephron nor an appraisal of her legacy.

Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind

By Joseph Peschel

NOV 2020 | Books

Rumaan Alam, a Brooklynite himself, begins his third novel, Leave the World Behind (2020), as if it were a domestic comedy of manners about a Brooklyn family on vacation in Long Island. Alam transforms the story, with its serious and witty commentary on social class and race relations, into a psychological thriller—a dystopian tale about the end of the world.