By Shamrock McShane, December 2008
Dark Night of the Soul Party
“In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire with good old folks and let them tell the tales of woeful ages long ago.” —  Shakespeare, Richard II
This is when the days are shortest and the nights are longest. Stonehenge appears to have been constructed so as to line up with the sunset of the winter solstice. People didn’t know if they’d live through the winter. The cattle were slaughtered, so they needn’t be fed. The beer and wine that had been fermenting was finally ready to be drunk. This might be the last party ever. Read the rest of this entry »

By Shamrock McShane, November 2008
Let us now, in the manner of the great humanists, give thanks to ourselves. The reason that Satellite is “The Finest Arts and Culture Magazine in North Florida” is that Gainesville is the finest arts and culture city hereabouts. Read the rest of this entry »

By Shamrock McShane, October 2008
The theater is a temporal art. It’s not like a book or a painting with which you can console yourself in the middle of the night. You can only see the play at 8 o’clock when the players put it on.
The live political theater of the presidential election is a temporal art, too. And the clock is ticking. Read the rest of this entry »

By Shamrock McShane, September 2008

John Murrell’s Waiting for the Parade, running now at the Acrosstown Repertory Theatre, is a play about war. Having read Ernest Hemingway’s Men without Women is scant preparation for Women without Men. This play shows how war really hits home.

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By Shamrock McShane, August 2008

There are always two plays going on at once. There’s the play on stage – what you see while you’re sitting in the audience - and there is the play backstage - where the players are.

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By Shamrock McShane, July 2008

College is not just a time of life; it is a state of mind.

There is the first freedom and the loneliness that goes with it. Then to realize the difference between loneliness and being alone, and that you can hate one and love the other.

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By Shamrock McShane, June 2008

Redbelt is David Mamet’s new movie. He’s the writer, the director and the star, even though he’s not seen in the movie. The same way Ingmar Bergman is the star of a Bergman movie and Godard a Godard movie.

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By Shamrock McShane, May 2008

McShane reviews local play The Pursuit of Happiness, which is playing at the Hippodrome State Theatre.

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By Shamrock McShane, October 2007

Gainesville’s thriving poetry and spoken word scene has found a new home:  Bar One for The Word is Spoken — the Friday Night poetry jam hosted by David Maas. Read the rest of this entry »

September 2007 

Three crooks in a junk shop plot to rip off a coin collection in this award-winning drama. American Buffalo, by one of America’s greatest playwrights, David Mamet. Read the rest of this entry »