At-A-Site Theater

03/24/2024

Meg vs. Beth Known as the sizzling hot sister, Meg March specializes in getting good looks and her outside game is unstoppable. She moves well with...

03/20/2024

The US National Science Foundation will be running a Total Eclipse Livestream on April 8. So if you are not able to be in the wondrous Path of Totality, you can enjoy this peaceful and amazing process visually.

The link below will go live on April 8.

Learn about the Sun's corona, hear from solar physicists, watch the 2024 total solar eclipse from across the country.

03/10/2024

If you are in Asheville, please come by the Battery Park Book Exchange, Grove Arcade, 1 Page Ave, today, Sunday, March 10 between 2pm-3:30pm for my At-A-Site Theater 2024 annual remembrance of the life and accomplishments of Zelda Fitzgerald.

You will be invited to choose from a printed Menu of brief two-to-four minute selections of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald's writings. These include excerpts from her short stories, her novel, "Save Me the Waltz", her magazine articles, and her letters to F. Scott Fitzgerald. I will read your chosen passage in an intimate, one-to-one performance.

If you are in a hurry, you can choose a "Random Quote" card that I will read to you. Afterwards, you will receive a tiny 'program' to keep that includes a quotation from the writer.

From The Laurel of Asheville
"The annual remembrance of the life and accomplishments of Zelda FitzgeraldMonika Gross, during which individualized readings from Zelda’s writings will be paired with epicurean tastings. “I think it will surprise and impress listeners to learn that Zelda was herself such a strong and sure-handed writer with a unique voice whose work unfortunately has been overshadowed by the celebrity of her husband and the overly melodramatic narrative built up about her life since her death,” says Gross, artistic director of At-A-Site Theater."

01/01/2023

Happy New Year!

Here are some January 1 Birthdays to CELEBRATE.

And remember - when you write words down they can be shared into the afterlife. WRITE!!!

QUOTES

Maria Edgeworth (born January 1, 1768)
— What a treasure, to meet with anything a new heart-- all hearts, nowadays, are secondhand at best.

EM Forster (born January 1, 1879)
— We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Gina Berriault (born January 1, 1926)
—It’s over me like a ton of water, the things I don’t know.

Joe Orton (born January 1, 1933)
— Cleanse my heart... Give me the ability to rage correctly.

Olivia Goldsmith (born January 1, 1949)
— It was considered very bad form to wish authors on their birthdays 'many happy returns.’

01/01/2023

Holbrook Jackson was born December 31, 1874. He was a British journalist, writer, and publisher and is recognized as one of the leading bibliophiles of his time. His works include The Anatomy of Bibliomania, The Reading of Books, and The Fear of Books.

QUOTES

— Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today.

— Man is a dog’s idea of what God should be.

— Your library is your portrait.

— Patience has its limits. Take it too far and its cowardice.

George Holbrook Jackson (31 December 1874 – 16 June 1948) was a British journalist, writer and publisher. He was recognised as one of the leading bibliophiles of his time.

12/30/2022

L.P. (Leslie Poles) Hartley was born December 30, 1895. He was the author of over twenty volumes of fiction, the best known of which are The Go-Between (1953), which is regarded as a modern classic and was adapted into a 1971 film directed by Joseph Losey, and theEustace and Hilda trilogy (1944-47). Hartley was also an accomplished author of supernatural and macabre tales.

QUOTES

— The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

— If my twelve-year-old self, of whom I had grown rather fond, thinking about him, were to reproach me: 'Why have you grown up such a dull dog, when I gave you such a good start?’ ... - what should I say? I should have an answer ready. 'Well, it was you who let me down, and I will tell you how. You flew too near to the sun, and you were scorched. This cindery creature is what you made me.' To which he might reply: 'But you have had half a century to get over it! Half a century, half the twentieth century, that glorious epoch, that golden age that I bequeathed to you!'' Has the twentieth century,' I should ask, 'done so much better than I have? When you leave this room, which I admit is dull and cheerless, and take the last bus to your home in the past, if you haven't missed it - ask yourself whether you found everything so radiant as you imagined it. Ask yourself whether it has fulfilled your hopes. You were vanquished, Colston, you were vanquished, and so was your century, your precious century that you hoped so much of.’

— To see things as they really were – what an empoverishment!

https://www.studysmarter.us/explanations/english-literature/novelists/lp-hartley/

12/29/2022

Vera Brittain was born December 29, 1893. She was a British writer, feminist, and pacifist. She is best remembered as the author of the best-selling 1933 memoir Testament of Youth, recounting her experiences during World War I and the beginning of her journey towards pacifism.

QUOTES

— So many people seem to imagine that because the actual tools of writing are easily accessible, it is less difficult than the other arts. This is entirely an illusion.

— There is still, I think, not enough recognition by teachers of the fact that the desire to think – which is fundamentally a moral problem – must be induced before the power is developed. Most people, whether men or women, wish above all else to be comfortable, and thought is a pre-eminently uncomfortable process.

The reputation of Vera Mary Brittain, named a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1946, centers on her achievements as an influential British feminist and pacifist and on her famous memoir of World War I, Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900­–1925. That work ha...

12/29/2022

Manuel Puig was born December 28, 1932. He was an Argentine novelist and motion-picture scriptwriter who achieved international acclaim with his novel "El beso de la mujer araña" (Kiss of the Spider Woman) in 1976. Puig learned English as a child by seeing every American film he could. He spent his childhood in a small village on the pampas, but moved at age 13 to Buenos Aires, where he pursued his high school and university studies. He had hoped that Buenos Aires would prove to be like life in the novels, but the city’s reality, with its repression and violence, disappointed his expectations.

QUOTES

— Teaching is a good distraction, and I am in contact with young people, which is very gratifying.

— Ironically, Latin American countries, in their instability, give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed.

  Readers of Argentine writer Manuel Puig have come to expect certain constants from this highly versatile novelist: innovative narrative techniques, dark comedy, and a preoccupation with the effects of popular culture, particularly film, on the human spirit. He was born in 1932 in General V...

12/29/2022

Cokie Roberts was born December 27, 1943. She was one of the "founding mothers" of NPR, covering Congress there and in her weekly Morning Edition analysis segment. Born Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs Roberts, her older brother Tommy couldn't pronounce Corinne, so he gave her the nickname "Cokie” and it stuck. “But when she first came to NPR in 1977, she heard that President Frank Mankiewicz wasn't wild about having an on-air reporter named Cokie. In response, she signed off her story using all seven of her names. Point made. Don't mess with Cokie Roberts.”
— quoted from an article in Forbes by her husband, Richard Harris

QUOTES

— Our civic society is really all we have by way of nationhood.

— I always wanted children, but not until they were actually a part of my life did I realize that I could love that fiercely, or get that angry.

— We were told we should not pay any attention to John Roberts’ views and religion and now we are told that opinions and religion do matter. I believe there is a degree of s*xism here. . . and ivy league prejudice going on here.

https://www.npr.org/people/2101090/cokie-roberts

12/26/2022

Jean Toomer was born December 26, 1894. He was born in Washington, DC, the grandson of the first governor of African-American descent in the United States. A poet, playwright, and novelist, Toomer’s most famous work, Cane, was published in 1923 and was hailed by critics for its literary experimentation and portrayal of African-American characters and culture. As a child, Toomer attended both all-white and all-black segregated schools, and from early on in his life he resisted being classified by race, preferring to call himself simply American.

QUOTE

"I am no particular race. I am of the human race, a man at large in the human world, preparing a new race.
I am of no specific region. I am of earth.
I am of no particular class. I am of the human class, preparing a new class.
I neither male nor female nor in-between. I am of s*x, with male differentiations.
I am of no special field I am of the field of being."

An important figure in African-American literature, Jean Toomer (1894—1967) was born in Washington, DC, the grandson of the first governor of African-American descent in the United States. A poet, playwright, and novelist, Toomer’s most famous work, Cane, was published in 1923 and was hailed by....

12/25/2022

Rod Serling was born on December 25, 1924. He was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator. He was well known for his science-fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. He won a 1955 Emmy Award for his script Patterns, a 1957 Emmy for his script Requiem for a Heavyweight, and a 1959 Emmy for The Twilight Zone. He was also co-author of The Planet of the Apes. He taught dramatic writing at Ithaca College in New York.

QUOTES

— "Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized. Ideas are probably in the air, like little tiny items of ozone."

— "Hollywood’s a great place to life... if you’re a grapefruit."

— "For civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized."

— “Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible.”

Who is Rod Serling? Rodman Edward Serling was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, narratorm and more

12/24/2022

Juan Ramon Jiménez was born December 24, 1881. He was a Spanish poet who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956.

QUOTES

— "The greatest assassin of life is haste, the desire to reach things before the right time which means overreaching them."

— "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way."

A prolific Spanish poet, editor, and critic, Juan Ramón Jiménez won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1956. He was born in Moguer i Andalusia, an area that he depicted in Platero y Yo (Platero and I, 1914) a collection of prose poems about a man and his donkey. Jiménez’s other books of poetry.....