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My Favorite Objects

 In my childhood, I had a coffee table book about the history of Broadway. The part that stunned me was a segment on Hal Prince.


Having taken on "Cabaret," Prince constructed massive mirrors--mirrors that would "confront" the audience. Thus the members of the audience would stare at themselves throughout the night. Prince was saying: "Don't think you can detach yourself. You likely would have been complicit in history--if you were wearing Sally Bowles's shoes."

Twisted little boy that I was, I also felt drawn to "Night, Mother." Every evening, Kathy Bates would announce her intention to commit suicide. Two hours would pass. Then, Bates would commit suicide--the end of the evening was (also) the end of her life.

I had this book before I "found" Sondheim. Something in the DNA told me, You should just pay attention to this information about Liza Minnelli and Pearl Bailey. And the stats about Zero Mostel.

If you're very young, everything new carries a small shock. For a long while, I had not known that coffee table books were "a thing." Here was one--so much better than "normal" books. This is like the moment when my daughter discovered her first indoor wave pool. I could almost literally see each of her inner lights switching to "on."

I don't have the book anymore, but I continue to think about Kathy Bates. The idea of elapsed time in a theater--a story's climax should feel so weighty, it should feel as if you're watching the end of a life. That's something I admired in "Kimberly Akimbo" and in the recent production of "Oedipus."

I continue to gobble up theater books--highlights include Patti LuPone's memoir, the Frank Rich memoir, the Michael Riedel volumes, the history of "Big: A Musical," the astonishing story of "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark." I'd recommend these to anyone. They are among my favorite objects in the world.
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