Workshop: Art and the Cocktail
It wasn’t long after the first cocktail was created--somewhere in the United States sometime in the early 1800s — that the distinctly American invention and the theater met as friends. Actors have historically been great tipplers, as have playwrights, who have honored their favored elixirs by featuring cocktails, spirits and bars prominently in their works, therefore perpetuating drinking’s role in society. With the dawn of the cinema, the same pattern was perpetuated by screenwriters. Eric Simonson, the Oscar-winning and Tony-nominated filmmaker, playwright and director, and his brother, Robert Simonson, drinks reporter for The New York Times and author of several cocktail books, will examine the symbiotic relationship between alcohol and the arts. This diverting and amusing class will divide its time between plays, films, cocktail demonstrations and maybe even a field trip. (We’re not saying we might go to a bar, but…)
