John Baker’s Blog

Chekhov was the first dramatist to realize that, on stage and in life, what is not said explicitly is often the decisive dramatic ingredient. In The Cherry Orchard, Lopahkin fails to declare his love for Vanya by getting himself tied up in a redundant conversation about lost galoshes.

But it was the job of the [...]

Expressionists were amongst the most interesting of the Modernists. They believed that modern industrial capitalism had hijacked the human spirit, had somehow increased the ability to manipulate the external world by appropriating the inner life of the individual and the community. The spirit, which had always been free, was now forced into the service of [...]