Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Can I be a drag queen when I grow up?

The Art of Drag by Jack Hall, Sofie BIrkin, Helen Li and Jasjyot Singh Hans

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Unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably seen something about the world of Drag.  Maybe it was RuPauls Drag Race (or one of the spinoffs), maybe it was Drag Queens reading to kids, maybe it was at a local drag show. But did you ever stop and think about the history of that?  When I told a friend I was reading The Art of Drag by Jack Hall, Sofie BIrkin, Helen Li, and  Jasjyot Singh Hans they thought it was up […]

Shakes Fear

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

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I’ll say this much for If We Were Villains: I finished it. Might sound simple but in this moment, that’s not easy to do. I’m not finishing much these days. If it doesn’t grab me off the bat, I’m probably going to sulk with it for a while. And it took me three full tries to get into this one. But it kept me going to the end (an end I hated but hey! I finished it!). I will give credit where credit is due: M.L. […]

The most daring stage directions I’ve ever read

Cleansed by Sarah Kane

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CW: mental illness, drug use, suicide, bodily mutilation I read this play because a friend of mine issued an open casting call for auditions. This is not the first Sarah Kane play that this theater has put on in the last few years, so I wanted to see why there was such a focus on this playwright. If this play is any indication of Kane’s other works, the best word to describe her writing is “daring.” Between the characters, plot points, and stage directions, Kane […]

The lights of Broadway

A is for Audra: Broadway’s Leading Ladies from A to Z by John Robert Allman

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While browsing Facebook awhile back I found a recording of one of my fellow Cannonballers reading A is for Audra: Broadway’s Leading Ladies from A to Z.  I am sorry to say, I forgot to write down your name! Therefore, please consider this my official Thank you! That was fun and appreciated. I do not know about other people, but there is something about being read to that is comforting. Even when you are an adult. Of course, it might be less appropriate to have […]

“To know how it ends, and still begin to sing it again as if it might turn out this time”

Working On A Song: The Lyrics of Hadestown by Anais Mitchell

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BINGO – Flora Anais Mitchell has been very, very busy over the last ten years. Her journey began with writing a folk opera album based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice while touring with Bon Iver. The culmination of this journey is Broadway production Hadestown that garnered 14 Tony Award nominations and 8 wins including one for Mitchel for Best Original Score. Getting to that point was not easy or quick. In Working On A Song Mitchell walks through the various stages of each song […]

The play is the thing….but life is more complicated than that (or is it?)

Please Come Off-Book by Kevin Kantor

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Please Come Off-Book is an interesting metaphor for life. If you are not familiar with the term (I think I had heard it, but also was not completely familiar with it at the same time) it means that when you are in a play, do not have your script and come having memorized your lines. In other words, my interpretation of Kevin Kantor’s use here means, “Live your life without a script, but of course, we do that anyways, but boy do we really need […]



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