BALM Open House (October 13, 2019)

Born Again Labor Museum October 13, 2019

Featured

Apr 29, 2024

Controversy Stage Left: The Tragedy of Edward Bond

Apr 29, 2024

Edward Bond died on March 3 a cumbersome cultural figure. Always controversial, but celebrated in the 1960s and 70s, no major British stage has taken on a new work from him in decades. He died as Israel inched into its fifth month of its massacre in Gaza. And he died at a time when theatre matters less than it has at probably any point in human history.

Alexander Billet

Apr 29, 2024

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Editorial

Feb 12, 2025

Fascist Pizza

Editorial

Feb 12, 2025

American fascism has a plastic shopping mall nostalgia. It is the fascism, not of a young empire thwarted, but an empire in decline. It is, at one level, a photograph of an abandoned Pizza Hut with the caption “This is what they took from us.”

Editorial

Feb 12, 2025

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Alexander Billet

May 15, 2022

The Case for Critical Irrealism

Alexander Billet

May 15, 2022

In the face of this, appeals to normality are, in essence, the toxic optimism of American exceptionalism, the belief that America is somehow above time, above consequence. And though the reality of President Joe Biden has breathed some new life into this myth, make no mistake, it nonetheless wobbles like a drunk trying to walk a tightrope.

Alexander Billet

May 15, 2022

Alexander Billet + Adam Turl

Mar 21, 2022

Critical Irrealist Reading List

Alexander Billet + Adam Turl

Mar 21, 2022

A single mother is driving past an abandoned factory on her way home from a low paying job. She is hungry. Above the factory a billboard floats in the sky advertising a succulent feast. But it does not strike her — or us — that this is odd, that her hunger has manifested itself above the factory ruin in an image of unavailable food. When we step outside ideology we see this absurdism for what it is.

Alexander Billet + Adam Turl

Mar 21, 2022

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Adam Marks

May 11, 2024

In the Marshes

Adam Marks

May 11, 2024

“It snatched a dog two days ago, in Drapers Fields,” Detective Constable Habib explained back at the station to her superior, “right in front of its owner. They found its entrails wrapped around a lamppost on the High Road. It’s head was…”

Adam Marks

May 11, 2024

Alexander Billet

May 11, 2024

An Attic in Prague, 1939

Alexander Billet

May 11, 2024

Even in this cacophony, it’s the silence that unsettles most. If only because it won’t be long until it’s pierced again. Screaming, shouting, tires screeching, panicked footfalls, sporadic gunfire. If there were ever a silence that could threaten, a kind of quietude that, for a few seconds or several minutes, promises to split the skull of whomever steps in its way, this is it.

Alexander Billet

May 11, 2024

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