Porgy and Bess
Within all reach, this is the Grand and only Grand Opera in American music. Composed by George Gershwin, libretto by Dubose Hayward, it is a theatrical  and musical experience as magnificent as Verdi and as lyrically lush as Puccini. It was not well received in 1935. Black artists and commentators objected to its portrayal of "Negro" life. The dour and self-aggrandizing critic of the New York Herald Tribune, Virgil Thomson, dismissed it with venom. A recipient of many awards for his writings and theatrical work, including a Kennedy Medal ( but hey, so did Elvis Presley) Thomson was a part-time pedantic composer who wrote lyric melody with the flavor of a melon gone bad. In 1942, with the successful revival of Porgy and Bess, he took umbrage with himself and praised it. Gershwin didn't live to see this embracing of his "labor of love." He died in 1937 at the age of 39. Yet in the short span of his creative life he fused the core of the American Song Book paralleled by Cole Porter and singularly redefined American theatrical music as Eugene O'Neill had done with American theatrical literature. His genius, as is all genius, was a mystery. From his first childhood encounter with a piano when he simply sat down and played it (a lá Mozart) to the scathing beauty of the aria "My Man's Gone Now", Gershwin was and is unfathomable.

Martin Scorsese
His best film: The Color of Money". His worst: The Last Temptation of Christ. He should have been driven out of Hollywood for the latter the way Michael Cimino was for  Heaven's Gate. But "Marty" is a player and he knows how to politic and promote even to the point of getting in front of the camera as one of the world's worst film actors just below Sydney Pollack and Quentin Tarantino.

Nathan Thomas
This veteran theatre creator has provided a series of pithy, pointed columns on the Art of Acting for Scene4 for the past five years. In this issue, he asks: "Who will think of acting in a new way?" It's a question I've fussed with for 30 years. If I run into another "Anne Bogart mystique" or "Humping Your Way Through Emotional Stage Moments by Xavier Untmiller", I do believe I will sound the call for an "American Peace Corps for Actors". I think Nathan might join me.

The Trouble With Harry
The trouble with Harry is that he is getting old, not tired, old. He has slogged in the acting trenches of New York for many decades, earning enough to survive and just... act! He's been on Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off Broadway, unBroadway, to the North of Broadway, away from Broadway on television, in movies, in documentaries, in industrials, in product presentations, in showcases, on cruise ships, in children's theatre, seniors theatre, ethnic theatre, gender theatre, cross-gender theatre, unknown gender theatre, unknown theatre theatre... just acting! I won't tell you his last name, it's silly. He's enjoyed his acting life and he's been fulfilled. One of these days, he'll close his eyes and there will be a Blackout with nothing further. Before that time, he would like to know if he is a good actor. I told him he was - after his first paying job on stage, he never waited on tables in a restaurant again.

Thai Performing Arts
Exhilarating and frustrating, provocative and numbing, sublime and mundane, exquisitely beautiful and laughably cartoonish. Sound familiar? Pick your culture, pick your arts. With the posting of this column, I'm diving back into Talos' Thai performing project. It's the sun, and the mangoes, and that wonderful ease in the eyes and smiles... tsunamis be damned!