Doug Eacho
@dougeacho.bsky.social
asst prof of theatre and performance studies at the national university of singapore. 🇺🇸/🇨🇦. writing a book about automating theatre (surrealism, cybernetics, backstage tech, ai) in which i discover to much astonishment that it was capital all along.
current draft of readings for the "Drama in the 20th Century" undergraduate course I'll teach this winter. my attempt at narrating a global (with many caviats) canon. some essays and interviews will be added. i am also not 100% committed to which brecht to teach.
checked out the letterboxd of my favorite film today (Hou's THREE TIMES, 2004) and the most liked review quotes Barthes and Badiou and ends with "love is a dialectics" i guess all the romantic theoryheads are suckers for this one together
as someone teaching at one of the intl institutions that supposedly benefits from these sorts of stories, let me be clear: this is another major blow to the global production of new knowledge in all fields. there is no peer to what top US PhD programs have been.
Ben Allen@evodynamics.bsky.social · 3w agoCongrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...
I terribly regret that I will be visiting in-laws in Florida instead of talking intoxication in Adelaide, but if you are luckier than me perhaps you can go to this:
Modernist Studies in Asia (MSIA)@modernism-asia.bsky.social · 6mo agoWe are excited to join forces with the Australasian Modernist Studies Network for: "Toxic Modernism / Modernist Intoxication" Hosted at U Adelaide, Nov 19-21; proposals due 24 July. Please spread the word and join us!
with my melbourne trip behind me i am pleased to announce my updated World Coffee City rankings. many places yet to see etc etc but : 1. Tokyo 2. Melbourne 3. Seattle 4. New York City 5. Vienna ... 96. Montréal 97. Rome 98. Cologne 99. Atlanta 100. Paris
I watched this live at cruising altitude along with a solid third of this morning's Singapore to Melbourne Economy class, and people were *captivated* by this team and that incredible game. my god
Sam Freedman@samfr.bsky.social · last mo.Cabo Verde holding the European and World champions to draws in normal time with a team of journeymen pulled from across the diaspora has to be one of the all time great world cup performances.
i think it is out of fashion so it may be worth stressing that reading "absalom, absalom!" is one of the most profound artistic experiences you can have, especially if you happen to be an overeducated american with 19C ancestry (IYKYK). its horrifying, doomed despair... well yes that's just it.
Doug Eacho@dougeacho.bsky.social · last mo.three novels, 1. Absalom, Absalom! 2. Beloved 3. Mason & Dixon and three plays. 1. The America Play 2. The Iceman Cometh 3. Hip Hop Waltz of Euridice.
three novels, 1. Absalom, Absalom! 2. Beloved 3. Mason & Dixon and three plays. 1. The America Play 2. The Iceman Cometh 3. Hip Hop Waltz of Euridice.
the point of vineland, quite unlike OBAA, was that the 60s revolutionaries had their faults but those would pale before the media-coddled narcissism of their children
Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · last mo.My dear lord. lareviewofbooks.org/article/dang...
showing my receipts -- there is one "Modern and Contemporary Drama" anthology in print, from Routledge (2016), ed. Maggie Gale and John Deeney. It's provocative in some ways I sympathize with, but it is 95% European without being labelled as such. (and the USA choices are, um, eccentric.)
Doug Eacho@dougeacho.bsky.social · last mo.facing yet another year of teaching a modern drama class without there being a single anthology of global modern drama in print. publishers are captive to the tastes of US or UK undergrads and sign up scholars willing to distort our collective heritage to pander to two national narratives.
facing yet another year of teaching a modern drama class without there being a single anthology of global modern drama in print. publishers are captive to the tastes of US or UK undergrads and sign up scholars willing to distort our collective heritage to pander to two national narratives.
getting to the point in my writing where when i pause to get ready for a conference i simply do not know how to say anything in less than 7K words. do folks have advice?
happy father's day to any and all playing 007: First Light on our Playstation Fives. a true masterpiece of the Dad Media genre; playing it makes you Honorary Dad
IMO the "what happened to RW art" puzzle is anglosphere specific, which supplies the answer: art holds little importance or power in these societies so the right has little need for it.
Elizabeth Sandifer@eruditorumpress.com · 2mo agoYes, great conservative art is obviously possible. Hell, great fascist art is possible—Pound, yes, but also Griffith or Vikernes, both of whom are plainly good at art even as they make monstrous things. What’s impossible is great, or even good anti-intellectual art. Art must be interested in art.
captivating, fetishistic, clever. again and again surprising but at end the oldest and most familiar story there could be. postmodernism isn't dead yet. "Oh dear oh dear oh dear!"
family update: 3yo has learned that grown-ups can not just *read* stories, but make them up. and change them via his demands. 3yo has further learned that mommy is much better at this than daddy. years of dad and mom sharing-by/alternating bedtime labor... now worthless
look i keep telling people this is my favorite book and i am not kidding!
largest rodent@capybaroness.bsky.social · 2mo ago(reading Against the Day) huh, that name sounds like Pajitnov, like Alexei Pajitnov, the inventor of Tetris (one paragraph later) oh my fucking god
finally writing up my take on Appia's 1913 Orfeo (pictured: the Act II underworld, perhaps the single most influential work of set design ever produced?). if anyone wants to share references to critical interpretations of the orpheus myth - right now i'm working w/ Blanchot's - please do share
at the national gallery of singapore today, and as usual in this country, having my mind blown. astonishing heights of postcolonial modernism. posting for now, will add alt text captions later.
thoughtful thread, and I like the "rather than insist on our value, we should ask valuable questions" framing. but for decades humanists have explored valuable questions (like those mentioned) and have found institutions increasingly hostile to our answers.
it's when bradford cox (as atlas sound) covered My Sharona for an hour out of spite from a shouted request. has it all: the post-08 psych-punk sound, anxiety about performance, gender, fury, irony, and that goddamn chord and octave beat just never ever ever ends
huck mason@tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 3mo agohad a debate last night about the definitive millennial song. some contenders: mgmt’s “kids,” yeah yeah yeah’s “maps,” kanye’s “all of the lights,” arcade fire’s “wake up,” postal service’s “such great heights,” animal collective’s “my girls,” lcd soundsystem’s “all my friends,” stroke’s “last nite”
kiki imagines she will be a logistics worker of modernity but discovers she is a postmodern service labourer and she doesn't like it
@lastpositivist.bsky.social · 3mo agoWeird Take that I am quite passionate about: the rich girl in Kiki isn't actually so bad, her being received so negatively by Kiki is a reflection of Kiki's internal state rather than anything she'd done. She's a bit insensitive to a service worker having a rough day, but whomst amongst us etc
four months of singaporean bilingual preschool and our 3yo now sings happy birthday in mandarin when throwing a party for one of his stuffies
Robert Wilson’s career really became an indictment of the avant garde in the 21st century. Making coffee table book shows with the same four recycled gestures, sucking up bajillions in German taxpayer dollars, feeding wealthy Brooklyn audiences the same shit sandwich over and over.
the costs of this disaster will primarily be born by poor asians and somewhat by all europeans and less so by poor americans, and trump simply does not care about any of those groups. ideas that he will be put to reason by midterm concerns or by Xi are fantasies. reason will not come to save us.
David Burbach 🇺🇸@dburbach.bsky.social · 3mo ago1. Certainly possible Iran will have to back down first, but seems unlikely be quick and oil prices will stay high 2. Will be curious to learn insider positions (and Israel) on blockade-and-wait vs resume bombing www.wsj.com/world/middle...
teaching a class on popular performance at NUS means students sharing shit with me past what my weak millennial american mind can comprehend. behold Wang Sulong's "ROMANCE CITY" concert at Bird's Nest (capacity 100K), complete with floats, mascots, transparent LED displays, ceiling projection... 😶
roger caillois is my fave right-wing thinker of the 20th century bc in opposing cultural pluralism he insisted that the best cultures were the Incas and the Tang Dynasty and that humanity would never get that good again. i cannot agree with this position but i must respect it
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 4mo agopersonally I agree that we should indeed reject the hollow pluralism of pretending that we shouldn't judge Klan, Nazi, and sparkling eugenicist subcultures according to what they have historically produced, and would enthusiastically endorse rejecting inclusion of them in public life
the nyt refusing to call the One Piece flag a One Piece flag seems symptomatic of a whole set of crises: of journalistic style, of generational divisions, and especially of an american liberal order that cannot speak (let alone understand) what the world has become
