The author of nine full-length plays, most of which are taught at drama schools across the country, and one of the founders of a wave of multilayered, historically aware, and linguistically complicated theatre, she aims to defeat what she calls "the Theatre of Schmaltz"—"the play-as-wrapping-paper-version-of-hot-newspaper-headline".
New technology had already spelt the end of the 150-year-old "hot metal" newspaper production system; but even on such papers as The Sunday Times, when the latter part of the process was replaced by "paste-up" – a halfway house to the digital make-up used today – unionised linotype operators continued to set the type at Gray's Inn Road.
Others were 10-cent scissors-and-paste reprints of strip cartoons, the older, more compact (and also largely American) pop narrative form that William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer both exploited, with stunning effectiveness, to hot-wire newspaper circulation.
Throughout the wickedly hot French summer, newspaper columnists, television commentators and radio shows have been debating Mr. Labbé's heretical claim.
The lawsuits failed, the planetarium is open and the Beresford is now protesting plans for a monument honoring Alfred Nobel on West 81st Street, saying the block is already too crowded with a hot dog stand, newspaper boxes, a subway station and a bus stop to also accommodate tourists gawking at a 19-foot statue.
But a group from the Beresford, the exclusive co-op at Central Park West and 81st Street, and from the 81st Street Block Association objected, saying the area was already crowded, with a hot dog stand, newspaper boxes, a subway station and a bus stop.
Still, he enjoyed, key lime pie in the morning (well, around noon, anyway) accompanied by hot weather, the newspaper and good music.
That makes them a hot ticket for newspapers and broadcasters, and that gives journalists a challenge.
Prices start from £99pp per night in a shared Petite Double (usually £125) and include breakfast, a three-course evening meal, entry to the spa and use of the heat experience facilities, plus morning hot drinks and newspapers.
It is an experience only slightly more stirring than a spell in a real waiting room, though without the advantages of hot coffee and a newspaper.
The ink and linotype machines of her father's newspaper "turned hot metal into words — something I'm still trying to do today," she said of her metal jewelry at a talk at SOFA, the art and design expo, in Chicago last month.
