Textual

Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen and a few others foolish enough to write for the theater would have flunked Mark Medoff's "volleyball course" in playwriting. The "gang" theory of disemboweling the playwright's work began with the Group Theatre and was further refined by the theatrical Talmudist, Lee Strasberg. "The Method" encourages extra-textual and sub-textual tampering by actors, resulting in massive distortion and eventual demolition of the original work. Improvisation is now the device of the actor and director who believe they can "improve" a play.

'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess' (PS Classics) Gershwin purists, this "Porgy and Bess" is probably not for you, even though its official title is "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess. " The cast album of the current Broadway production is a streamlined version of a score that can run longer than three hours when done in its entirety. This two-disc recording is not just shorter, but it also takes liberties that have rankled traditionalists. "Summertime" is performed as a romantic duet; sections of recitative have been converted to spoken dialogue; and the orchestra has been scaled down for a Broadway house.

I would like to thank Thomas Curwen for his imaginative approach to the story about Edward Gorey ("Light From a Dark Star," July 18). The skeletal "Mystery" woman who, just before fainting, screamed her way into my family room every Sunday evening remained nameless until I happened upon Curwen's piece. His treatment of the story of this artist was most provocative, especially the manner in which he injected into the textual information vivid descriptions of Gorey's work. It was written as if Gorey himself had sketched it. Kathleen Clary Miller San Juan Capistrano

"Changing the Focus: Latin American Photography 1990-2005" doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive survey. Thankfully. It's not an act of curatorial acrobatics that forces disparate works together through conceptual stretching and contextual twisting. Instead, it's a moderately scaled sampling, thoughtful, but not oppressively thought-out. Anchored by familiar names (Alfredo Jaar, Vik Muniz, Gabriel Orozco) and leavened by lesser-knowns, the show -- at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach -- doesn't strain to make a case for itself.

Regarding Charles Champlin's Feb. 8 column on who wrote Shakespeare's works: A group of graduate students, under my direction, have unearthed several dust-covered documents and pursued various phililogic and textual theories that have revealed an historic fact: Charles Champlin does not exist. One of my students has drawn up a lengthy article that shows, upon philological and semiotic analysis, that much of "Champlin's" articles are but a compilation of others: a snippet of Michael Wilmington's attitude, a graft of Kevin Thomas' esoterica, a collocation of Sheila Benson's critical vengeance.

Re "To Dems, It's 1974 Forever," Commentary, April 22: David Gelernter has it a bit wrong when he says the Republicans and the Democrats have pulled the "Big Switch." Rather than this neat little "swap" of philosophies, what has happened is what I like to call the "Continental Drift" theory of American politics. Over the last 40 years both parties have steadily, yet nearly imperceptibly, drifted to the left. Today, if we took a satellite snapshot of the political landscape and compared it with one taken in the early to mid-'60s, we would notice that the Republicans are in a position today that was occupied by the Dems then.

Euripides' "Medea" taps into primal emotions that frighten and fascinate us in equal measure. Try as you may to interpret the tale of a wife who, having sacrificed everything for her husband, murders their children to punish him for his unfaithfulness, there's a mystery, a strangeness at the heart of this shocking crime that is ultimately irreducible. That strangeness is taken to a new level in UCLA Live's whirligig production, which opened Wednesday at the Freud Playhouse with an unsteady Annette Bening in the title role.

David Mitchell came to Los Angeles because of an 8-year-old book. Thanks to the movie by Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, Mitchell's novel "Cloud Atlas" has landed on American bestseller lists -- right behind the decidedly less literary trilogy "50 Shades of Grey. " Mitchell sat down with the L.A. Times' Carolyn Kellogg -- in this extended interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, he talks in detail about his writing process, what makes a book last and the "Cloud Atlas" adaptation.

'The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess' (PS Classics) Gershwin purists, this "Porgy and Bess" is probably not for you, even though its official title is "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess. " The cast album of the current Broadway production is a streamlined version of a score that can run longer than three hours when done in its entirety. This two-disc recording is not just shorter, but it also takes liberties that have rankled traditionalists. "Summertime" is performed as a romantic duet; sections of recitative have been converted to spoken dialogue; and the orchestra has been scaled down for a Broadway house.

Whoever heard of David Gordon? Not many San Diego dance buffs, judging from the sparse audience on hand Friday night for the local debut of Gordon's Pick Up Co. More's the pity, since this doyen of post-modern dance and his sleek New York-based ensemble offered a strikingly free-flowing sneak preview of "United States," a huge patchwork quilt of a piece scheduled to be premiered at Kennedy Center in September. And, unlike most imported dance works, this evening-long mix of movement, words and music, had ties to San Diego.

Euripides' "Medea" taps into primal emotions that frighten and fascinate us in equal measure. Try as you may to interpret the tale of a wife who, having sacrificed everything for her husband, murders their children to punish him for his unfaithfulness, there's a mystery, a strangeness at the heart of this shocking crime that is ultimately irreducible. That strangeness is taken to a new level in UCLA Live's whirligig production, which opened Wednesday at the Freud Playhouse with an unsteady Annette Bening in the title role.

Re "To Dems, It's 1974 Forever," Commentary, April 22: David Gelernter has it a bit wrong when he says the Republicans and the Democrats have pulled the "Big Switch." Rather than this neat little "swap" of philosophies, what has happened is what I like to call the "Continental Drift" theory of American politics. Over the last 40 years both parties have steadily, yet nearly imperceptibly, drifted to the left. Today, if we took a satellite snapshot of the political landscape and compared it with one taken in the early to mid-'60s, we would notice that the Republicans are in a position today that was occupied by the Dems then.

I would like to thank Thomas Curwen for his imaginative approach to the story about Edward Gorey ("Light From a Dark Star," July 18). The skeletal "Mystery" woman who, just before fainting, screamed her way into my family room every Sunday evening remained nameless until I happened upon Curwen's piece. His treatment of the story of this artist was most provocative, especially the manner in which he injected into the textual information vivid descriptions of Gorey's work. It was written as if Gorey himself had sketched it. Kathleen Clary Miller San Juan Capistrano

Question: What do the new edition of "Huckleberry Finn," the top-selling recording in the country and the director's cut of "Pulp Fiction" have in common? Answer: They all reflect America's growing obsession with outtakes. These days, it's not enough to enjoy a work of great art, whether it be a landmark American novel, an anthology of Beatles tunes or a smash-hit Hollywood film.

Regarding Charles Champlin's Feb. 8 column on who wrote Shakespeare's works: A group of graduate students, under my direction, have unearthed several dust-covered documents and pursued various phililogic and textual theories that have revealed an historic fact: Charles Champlin does not exist. One of my students has drawn up a lengthy article that shows, upon philological and semiotic analysis, that much of "Champlin's" articles are but a compilation of others: a snippet of Michael Wilmington's attitude, a graft of Kevin Thomas' esoterica, a collocation of Sheila Benson's critical vengeance.

Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen and a few others foolish enough to write for the theater would have flunked Mark Medoff's "volleyball course" in playwriting. The "gang" theory of disemboweling the playwright's work began with the Group Theatre and was further refined by the theatrical Talmudist, Lee Strasberg. "The Method" encourages extra-textual and sub-textual tampering by actors, resulting in massive distortion and eventual demolition of the original work. Improvisation is now the device of the actor and director who believe they can "improve" a play.

"Changing the Focus: Latin American Photography 1990-2005" doesn't pretend to be a comprehensive survey. Thankfully. It's not an act of curatorial acrobatics that forces disparate works together through conceptual stretching and contextual twisting. Instead, it's a moderately scaled sampling, thoughtful, but not oppressively thought-out. Anchored by familiar names (Alfredo Jaar, Vik Muniz, Gabriel Orozco) and leavened by lesser-knowns, the show -- at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach -- doesn't strain to make a case for itself.

Question: What do the new edition of "Huckleberry Finn," the top-selling recording in the country and the director's cut of "Pulp Fiction" have in common? Answer: They all reflect America's growing obsession with outtakes. These days, it's not enough to enjoy a work of great art, whether it be a landmark American novel, an anthology of Beatles tunes or a smash-hit Hollywood film.