Brodner’s Cartoon du Jour: Pitmen

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Christopher Connel as Oliver Kilbourn in the remarkable play Pitmen Painters at the Manhattan Theater Club. A true story of working-class artists: English coal miners who transcended their circumstances through art. Some of it cuts so beautifully to the core of things you just want to frame the speeches. I suspect I’ll be reading a few to future classes of mine. A highlight is when the Kilbourn character becomes, almost against his will, more connected to what happens in art than his own instructor. That moment in the play gives chills. First-rate stuff…and it really happened. And the art they made is beautiful. The point this makes, that everybody can create and can find passion for what they make, is a breath of air in the consumer dungeon.