Short of discovering a long-lost Shakespeare play, Mike Bartlett's King Charles III is about as close as one can hope to get to a modern-day Shakespearean drama.

Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank, who created the iconic photographic study The Americans, has been hailed as a latter-day deTocqueville for his visual chronicling of American life in the 1950s.

If you are a Star Trek fan, you can easily visualize this: A fleet of Klingon star ships decloaking and landing in a dry riverbed in the middle of a beautiful city. Because, to my eye at least, that is just what the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain looks like (the star ships are benign, of course!).

Writing about the arts seems light-weight at the time of extreme violence. I cannot sit silently anymore regarding the tragic events of the past few days in San Bernardino, Paris and elsewhere.

I'm an introvert, often mistaken for an extrovert. I can talk a lot, I'm not afraid of large parties, I have zero problems being the centre of attention and new places or experiences make me really happy.

Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 (ABMB) got off to an impressive start this week. Hard to believe it has been 14 years since its debut in 2001. This year's ABMB art fair includes a whopping 267 galleries and 4,000 artists all on display under one roof at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

My heart goes out to the families who have lost their loved ones. It is up to us to shift our human consciousness. Change will not occur by focusing on violence.

Unexpectedly, it was my recent relocation to Mexico from London, England, that forced me to re-evaluate that very old tradition I hold so dear to my heart, portrait painting.

In the upper spheres of the art world, notably the Louvre Museum's shimmering branch in Lens, the very heart of Le Pen country, it's back to the libertine frolics of 18th Century.

When American Conservatory Theater first announced plans to renovate the Strand Theatre on Market Street, its Artistic Director, Carey Perloff, was bubbling over with ideas about what a second performance space could do for the company.

I love the work included below, and I am happy to have the opportunity to share it, and my thoughts about it, with you. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that your upcoming holiday of choice goes very well.

Capturing intense moments is something all photographers aim to do. In sports photography, those intense moments can be more elusive because the action happens so quickly. The core of athletics is movement.

You may recall that Brecht's great masterpiece Mother Courage and Her Children was situated during that conflict. Originally Brecht had written it as a thinly veiled allegory about the totalitarianism sweeping Europe, but one wonders if using Haass's analogy it might not tell us something about the economics of terror.

I couldn't believe I was going to a music festival honoring the famous Billy Strayhorn at the Auditorium Theater of Roosevelt University in Chicago -- "Lush Life: The Music of Billy Strayhorn." It felt as if I was attending a homecoming of sorts.