Inside A.C.T.

Underneath the Lintel playwright Glen Berger came to A.C.T. on Nov 16 for a special discussion and Q&A with  Lintel  director Carey Perloff and star David Stratharin.  Click below to watch the recording. Click here to buy tickets and learn more about  Underneath the Lintel .

By Dramaturgical Publications Fellow Shannon Stockwell Outside a closed American Red Cross in London, 1946, Mr. Chad asks, "Wot, no Yanks?" In Underneath the Lintel , playwright Glen Berger emphasizes the singularly human need inside all of us to leave a mark on the world, something that will endure long after our inevitable deaths. One of the ways in which he discusses this need is through graffiti—the unsanctioned, uncensored defacement of public property—and few examples of graffiti have ever reached quite such a memetic status as a little man called Kilroy. Kilroy is a simple cartoon drawing, a man seen peeking over what appears to be a wall with the words "Kilroy was here" next to it. He seems to have originated and became popular during World War II, appearing in unusual places, including the top of the Statue of Liberty. A famous tale claims that in July 1945, during the Potsdam Conference to discuss the end of World War II, Stalin had the us...

By Publications Manager Dan Rubin Playwright Glen Berger writes, "Though we rarely recognize the place, underneath the lintel is where we stand every day, every moment, of our life." In this passage, the wordsmith is exploring the idea of the lintel in relationship to the word sublime, which means a sense of awe in the presence of vastness and can be broken down into sub ("under") and limen (which is derived from "lintel"). Accordingly, we are emotionally "underneath the lintel" whenever we are overcome with a sense of the sublime. The Temple of Horus at Edfu is an example of Egyptian architecture, including the post-and-lintel doorway seen at the center of the photo. But in a more literal sense, we pass underneath lintels every day. Lintels are the top beams of most entryways, although they have become less structurally essential in modern architecture. Lintels are the limit of the threshold, which is defined not only as the space...