Email Author P.b. Miller

1996 Stories by P.b. Miller

• Lost souls

  published June 27, 1996

  Don't ask why, but about two years ago I found myself on a tour of a hospital located at the base of the Appalachian mountains. The hospital's... More >>

• Love puzzle

  published June 20, 1996

  It's one of the enduring enigmas of great literature. Why did Archie have such a fixation on Veronica, and such little regard for Betty, when the... More >>

• Acting on the fringes

  published June 13, 1996

  When I die, let me come back as a guest in an English country home as depicted by Noel Coward or P.G. Wodehouse. Let there be plenty of potty... More >>

• The dude is all right

  published June 6, 1996

  Cecil O'Neal, director of Kitchen Dog Theater's pressure-cooker production of Oleanna, proclaims in the playbill that "no one is right in this... More >>

• Manson family values

  published May 30, 1996

  Back in the '60s there was a TV show called The Time Tunnel about two guys with military haircuts who get hurled through a time-space-continuum... More >>

• Reality bites

  published May 23, 1996

  It's a debate that dates back to at least Plato's time. What is reality--that which we can objectively perceive and quantify with our senses, or... More >>

• Hide and seek

  published May 16, 1996

  The one thing we all have in common is our separateness. Once launched from the womb, we are all so many Ishmaels seeking connection to a... More >>

• A hard Fall

  published May 9, 1996

  What is it with Texas actresses and product endorsements gone wrong? First Brenda Vaccaro rasped about the absorbent properties of tampons,... More >>

• Gross out

  published May 2, 1996

  Short of dropping your pants, there's no better way of exposing yourself than by writing a work of fiction. A novel or a play is just an author's... More >>

• Hanging by a string

  published April 25, 1996

  Flinty-eyed realists--men and women to whom cant is a four-letter word--will tell you Broadway musicals are generally limp, lachrymose affairs... More >>

• Existential stage left

  published April 18, 1996

  Coffee houses have made a comeback. Could Jean-Paul Sartre be far behind? The Nobel prize-winning author, if not directly responsible for... More >>

• Necessary angels

  published April 4, 1996

  The realists of this world have the romantics by the balls, but the romantics refuse to cry uncle. Instead, they produce epics like War and... More >>

• No more jelly roll

  published March 28, 1996

  Leather dildos, oral sex, untamable erections.These are the kinds of objectionable subjects that right-thinking Americans want to bar from their... More >>

• Last laugh

  published March 14, 1996

  Social scientists and cultural engineers are, even as you read, racking their brains to determine why sketch comedy has reached rock... More >>

• Disarming

  published March 7, 1996

  George Bernard Shaw had a neat response for those critics who thought his plays were talky affairs full of nothing but words. "My plays were all... More >>

• Street of dreams

  published February 29, 1996

  Should a play, like a poem, not "mean" but "be"? Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams posed that question in his preface to Camino Real, in... More >>

• She's got you

  published February 22, 1996

  Got any out-of-town friends, relatives, clients or other cadgers coming to visit in the next few months? If so, consider taking them to see... More >>

• Beating of wings

  published February 15, 1996

  If plays were judged by the number of literary allusions they contain, The Swan would rate high. This elliptical, enervating drama by... More >>

• Cracker kingdom

  published February 8, 1996

  For most baby boomers, Tobacco Road was one of those books which, if encountered at all, was found in dad's dresser drawer buried beneath the... More >>

• Revenge of the bourgeoisie

  published February 1, 1996

  To update, or not to update? That is the question facing directors today who wish to stage classic plays. Stay true to a classic's setting,... More >>

• Scenes from the class struggle

  published January 25, 1996

  Before Stanley and Blanche and George and Martha, there was Julie and Jean. The leads in Swedish playwright August Strindberg's gripping... More >>

• Dead serious

  published January 18, 1996

  Let's apply a little Queer Theory to the Harry Hunsacker plays. Before beginning this instructive exercise, however, it's necessary to... More >>

• Boo, hiss

  published January 11, 1996

  The first recorded theatrical performance, according to anthropologists studying Paleolithic cave paintings in Lascaux, France, was an... More >>

• Theater was alive in '95

  published January 4, 1996

  Is the theater really dead? Not in Big D. In fact, a quickie look at area productions in the past year shows that theater in the... More >>