I should have posted this last earlier but I've been lazier than I like. At the New York Public Theater on Lafayette Street there's a politically important, funny, brilliant questioning one man show which we all should see.

Performance artist Danny Hoch has "Taking Over" a 90-minute one may show about gentrification (set in Williamsburgh) shows off Hoch's brilliant writing and acting. The show poses troubling questions without any canned sloganeering solutions. As a result, it's moving and thought provoking. When I was there, a panel of politicians, planners and (gasp!) community organizers (Including Assembly Member Joseph Lentol and Pratt Center Director and City Council Candidate Brad Lander.

Tickets at $60 are priced, out of my range, but --- I have a trick. The Public has $20 rush tickets which they give out at the box office one hour before curtain time. When I went, people who lined up at 5PM were the very first to get great cheaper seats.

I'm supremely unqualified to be a theater critic. But I do suggest that if you have some extra dollars lying around, take them, and run, don't walk, to go see August: Osage County. The play won the Tony for Best Play and a Pulitzer Prize, and when I saw it tonight, on a Tuesday shortly before Labor Day for a three-hour performance, there were, maybe, ten empty seats, and a standing ovation at the end. It really is that good.

I am moved, perhaps too much, by the deaths and lives of people who were more or less of my parents' generation. Grace Paley, Ralph DiGia [I went to Ralph's send-off Saturday: Hundreds of friends, family, photos, food, booze, schmooze, (true?) stories. See some on his website.], blacklisted film-maker Jules Dassin (More about Dassin's remarkable life and work here), Spanish Civil War Veteran Abe Osheroff . (More about Osheroff here.)

In addition to feeling of loss, reports of the deaths of people in my own cohort bring also the sound of "time's winged chariot hurrying near." Hanon Reznikov,57, who died a few days ago, following a stroke in April, was a long-time co-director of TheLiving Theatre. A long-time lover of Judith Malina, he married her on the 1985 death her husband, Living Theatre co-founder Julian Beck. The May 9, NY Times obit is here (See also this obit , This story from the Villager about The Living Theatre's new home on Clinton Street, this interview with Reznikov and Judith Malina and this YouTube of the two of them.