Feb 15th. To Cuba. NB: I have made wonderful friends in Cuba. Their real names do not appear in what follows. Perhaps I’m being ridiculously paranoid, but… better they be safe from criticism and me not sorry. I land in Havana from MexCity at 7:30 pm. Customs takes longer than anywhere I’ve been in recent… Continue reading Cuba in February (1)
Author: kennethattheatrepublic
Playwright, actor, director at THEATrePUBLIC, an Alberta-based Canadian theatre company. Retired from a 31-year career teaching at college/university. Now devoting myself to world travel, music, wide writing, and freelance theatre work
Mexico City in February
FEB 5: Mexico City On the fifth, Stewart, Pat, the teens and I ride Dario’s truck down into Taxco and breakfast together, then part affectionately and I enjoy the downhill walk to the bus terminal. I sit playing my little guitar, which impresses the locals just a little (the fact that a gringo sits playing,… Continue reading Mexico City in February
Up In The Hills above Taxco
Taxco/Tetipac The bus trip lands me at El Norte, the Northern bus station of Mexico City, and I blow 175 pesos on a cab ride to the Southern Station, which turned out to be a foolish expense, since the traffic crawled through the vast city so slowly that I would have proceeded much faster on… Continue reading Up In The Hills above Taxco
The New Year in Mexico: San Miguel de Allende
San Miguel After another lengthy bus ride (this one not ridden by hangover), I arrive after dark at San Miguel de Allende, one of the homes of the Mexican independence movement. I am overjoyed to see my friends David and Marlene, two of the most extraordinary cultured and kind people I’ve ever met. The Wilsons… Continue reading The New Year in Mexico: San Miguel de Allende
Mexico in 2014-15: Puerto Escondido, Vallarta, Gaudelajara
MEXICO IN 2014/2015 Dec 26-27 The landing in Cuidad de Mexico is harsh, having red-eyed it to Toronto from Edmonton, spent a worried hour in the departure lounge, where they boasted individual tablets at each seat in the absurdly costly cafeteria, none of which connected effectively with the Net. Then onto the plane at 8:30… Continue reading Mexico in 2014-15: Puerto Escondido, Vallarta, Gaudelajara
What Widgets This Way Come? -3D printing
The 3D printer (after watching the documentary Print the Legend.) It will become increasingly clear over the next few years that three-dimensional printing is a shift in industrial process as important as the move from wind and water power to steam. I make this assertion as a technological innocent, a sixty-year-old who has trouble keeping… Continue reading What Widgets This Way Come? -3D printing
American Sniper–Let God Sort Them Out
In writing about the film Fury, I praised it for its disinclination to engage in the usual false geopolitical assertion that America Saved The World from Nazism in 1945. Failing to speculate geopolitically is not a virtue in the case of Clint Eastwood’s new biopic American Sniper. Although told with a cool efficiency that has… Continue reading American Sniper–Let God Sort Them Out
The Unexpected Virtue of Theatre
Michael Keaton is not an actor who’s easy to love. He famously blew his career out the window, or perhaps up his nose, and then made a gradual recovery through not particularly memorable roles, his one stop in Shakespeare a travesty of misunderstanding of Dogberry, one of the funniest roles in English drama. Emma Stone… Continue reading The Unexpected Virtue of Theatre
The Big Red Leap: Baumgartner’s Step Into Space
Red Bull versus Apollo I’m of that vintage that, as I type, I can still remember the muscular effort it took, the particular mechanical, as it were pianistic feel of typing an essay on a portable Remington. The medium I’m typing on now also served as an information delivery system for the much-distributed video of… Continue reading The Big Red Leap: Baumgartner’s Step Into Space
Interstellar: We ARE in Kansas!
Interstellar, by Chris Nolan We ARE in Kansas, Dorothy By Kenneth Brown Notwithstanding Matthew (“I’m my own god”) McConaughey’s excellent work in this film, I could barely keep myself interested, or indeed even awake at certain moments, in spite of the earsplitting volume at which Hans Zimmer’s baldly programmatic score was blared at us every… Continue reading Interstellar: We ARE in Kansas!
Reasons to see “Fury”
Inglorious Tank Fury, directed by David Ayer This just in—Shia LaBeouf can act. That’s the first in a string of good things I have to say about the serious Tank Movie that is Fury. This may be my favourite American war movie ever. It’s the war movie that I’ve been hoping some American would make… Continue reading Reasons to see “Fury”
“Samsara” film essay
"Samsara" a film by Ron Frick, on Netflix Samsara by Ron Frick The musical direction of this film, as stunning as the visuals, literally entrances us as Ron Frick’s visuals take us traveloguing through some of the most striking landscapes and manscapes of the planet. The beauty of the film, shot in 70 mm in… Continue reading “Samsara” film essay
Ken’s Asian travels-fall 2014
TRAVEL BLOG- Asia 2014 Having arrived at the undeniable later part of my life, I have chosen to abandon those things that are habitual and familiar and to spend as much of the rest of my time as I can traveling and learning. I have taught drama and performed plays for the last 31 years,… Continue reading Ken’s Asian travels-fall 2014
