Month: May 2015

‘Follow the Future,’ Coogle Gallahan Tells Caregivers

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By Bruce Apar
When Bruce The Blog Listens, People Talk

Boy Genius + Internet Illionaire Coogle Gallahan

News Item: Boy Genius + Internet Illionaire Coogle Gallahan became the first 11-year-old commencement speaker in the Milky Way when he addressed graduates of YouTube Youniversity. Master Callahan’s remarks were live-streamed in a private feed from his bunk bed directly to the device of choice watched by graduates, families and Hackers Anonymous! (HA!). Following are highlights of the historic happening…

“Graduates, Parents, Relatives, Other Viewers, Honorable Voyeurs… As I lay before you today, milk and cookies bedside, I am reminded of the immortal word of that great non-American, Justin Bieber, may he rest a piece: “Believe”… what I am about to say.

“For, truly, what choice have you? My generation is the future, and yours, whatever your inappropriate age, is either the present or (spoiler alert: here comes the shade) is clip-clopping like a tired nag into the sadly setting sun. Oh, you still have some skin in the game, to be sure, but it is rapidly being dappled to death by liver spots. C’est la mort.

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Heroin Is Not a Fact of Life

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Bruce caricatureBruce the Blog
By Bruce Apar
When Bruce The Blog Listens, People Talk

heroin-addictionAs a teenager, I lay awake in bed, listening with dread to the vague, cold clanging of apparatus being prepared in the bathroom I shared with my two older brothers, Stephen, the eldest, and Robert, our middle sibling.

Like the popular ’60s TV situation comedy with Fred MacMurray as paterfamilias, we were our dad’s “My Three Sons.”

But, on the eve of the 1960s, our family life was about to become situation tragedy.

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Ruhl Breaks the Rules in ‘Dead Man’s Cell Phone’ at Axial Theater

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Bruce caricatureBruce the Blog Reviews Theater By Bruce Apar When Bruce The Blog Listens, People Talk

When a play’s title — “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” at Axial Theater — is a dead giveaway to what otherwise could have been a big reveal in the opening scene (that guy sitting slumped in his cafe chair whose phone keeps ringing didn’t doze off, he died off ), you have to wonder what the writer has in mind.

Author Sarah Ruhl has a lot on her fertile mind as she goes about creating her own rules. She is one of today’s most celebrated, cerebral dramatists, lavished with awards and critical praise, a finalist for the Pulitzer and Tony awards, and a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius” grant. In other words, unlike the unfortunate man we espy at the play’s outset, it’s safe to say she’s no slouch.

Siobhan McKinley as Jean gets a lift from boyfriend Dwight Gottlieb (Duane Rutter). Photos by Leslye Smith

Neither is the high-minded director, Rachel Jones, who selected this work for the prestigious Axial Theatre, where it runs through Sunday, May 17 (Click here for more info).  Axial is one of an elite group of Hudson Valley theater companies that consistently mount top-quality, tightly disciplined productions that give audiences more than their money’s worth. Continue reading