Thoughts on Beauty
Two thoughts on beauty from last night's reading in The Dramatist, the journal of the Dramatist's Guild of America.
"[Cultural diversity policies] deny the possibility of developing common standards for judging art, and see culture as merely a collection of disparate individual preferences. The difference is that the left saw these preferences as personal identities; the right saw them as market choices. ... The concepts of beauty, sensitivity and skill have all but vanished."
Josie Appleton, Spiked (April 7, 2004)
In response to a question about the importance of romance in his plays, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz (Anna in the Tropics) had this to say: "In my plays, I try to arrest beauty. Beauty is an important element of art, as important as in nature. For instance, a flower draws the attention of an insect by its vibrant and beautiful colors and through that insect is able to reproduce. It's the same with art, with theater. You need a certain amount of beauty to draw in your audience, before they can reach that cathartic place and make a connection with the depth of your work."
Nilo Cruz, The Dramatist (September/October, 2004)
7:14:47 AM 
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