BOMB Magazine | Sarah Ruhl

The theater’s rich intellectual inheritance serves as a buffer to society’s recrudescent stupidity. Upholding this legacy seems a more vital role for a critic than operating as a tour guide of commercial entertainments. The survival of our democracy depends on the recovery of our critical thinking skills.

In the past, when I’ve made the case for cri... See more

She quotes Viktor Shklovsky: “habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war... and art exists so that one may recover the sensation of life.” Then she goes on: “ the trick in writing/life... is to figure out how to import a chunk of the past into the present, so your present self can feel all the things you’ve fo... See more

Contemplative space is hard to define. Contemplation is generally not a practice that offers immediate jolts of anything. There’s (well, usually) no chatty/ethery response from on high, no neatly cleared path unfurling after a good long think. In fact, more often it feels like “nothing” at all is happening in that open space. The “soft” characteris... See more

Our business in living is to become fluent with…life…and art can help this.” And elsewhere: “Art…is not self expression but self alteration.” Artmaking isn’t just something we do for the outcome; it’s something we do for the process, which includes the process of becoming the person with the taste, knowledge, sensitivity, agency, and ambition to pr... See more