Salon.com > Heidi Kriz

Theater for the absurdly rich

Mon, 23 Oct 2000 18:13:00 +0000

Scenes from a dot-com dynasty family gathering:

Scott (ex-son-in-law of the family's wealthy patriarch): "Far be it from me to try to be included in a family discussion. I learned my place long ago ..."

Dorothy (ex-wife of Scott): "You also ruined any chance of being a part of this family a long time ago."

Scott: "Well, Dorothy, I am ready. Let 'er rip. Give it your best shot. I am ready for my tongue-lashing."

Dorothy: "Who is the new 11-year-old you are fooling around with now?"

Scott: "Actually she's 5 years old and her name is Gametech.com."

Outtakes from a new prime-time, Silicon Valley soap, implausibly populated with "Baywatch" beauties and pumped programmers? Dialogue downloaded from an Internet sitcom? Nope. Scott and Dorothy are actors in a scene from "Grandpa's Little Secret.com," a play conceived with a very special audience in mind: the families of the superwealthy.

Not what one might have expected from David Kersnar, director, playwright and co-founder of the famed Lookingglass Theatre Company. But in an era in which national funding and patronage for the arts have been all but gutted by Bible-thumping senators, Kersnar has come up with a way to continue doing what he and his partners are good at, and still keep his family out of the poorhouse: Shaking the Tree -- a company formed specifically to produce plays for the viewing pleasure, and instruction, of wealthy family audiences.

Business reporting is hot! Hot! Hot!

Wed, 20 Sep 2000 19:00:00 +0000

A decade ago, business writing had the reputation as a refuge for geeks and freaks.

Now, I'm one of those scribes tethered to Dow Jones, a Palm Pilot and P.R. harassment on my cellphone. Yikes.

At least for me, it happened by accident. I washed up on the shores of San Francisco after being a freelance writer in South Africa for four years. My then-boyfriend -- a freelance photographer -- was in tow, but two freelancers under one roof made for shaky financial times. One of us had to get a job. And since my ex didn't have a green card, the risumi-sending task fell upon me.

Soon enough, I found a job at Wired, one of two national magazines in town at the time. It seemed like an amusing place to the work, even though at that point, I barely knew what the Web was. When fellow staffers called me a "newbie," I had to ask what the word meant.

But it was at Wired where I absorbed the "business of the Web," the locomotion behind the new economy. When I started to freelance again, I found that subject had become my specialty.

Chicks who click

Mon, 17 Jul 2000 19:45:00 +0000

Quick: What comes to mind when you think "day trader"?

A paunchy kid just out of college, boasting about all the dough he's raking in? A salt-and-pepper ex-Wall Streeter with a taste for slick action? Or maybe even, as with a recent true-to-life case, an imbalanced fellow whipsawed into a murderous rampage by the market's mercurial behavior?

How about a 69-year-old retired grandmother in Florida?

"It's why I get up in the morning," says the 18-month-long trading enthusiast, who prefers to be known as "Harriet." Harriet spends at least six days a week, 12 hours a day, on the bucking e-ticket ride that is electronic day trading, where fortunes are made or lost on percentages of a point within a matter of seconds.

Harriet rises every morning at 5:30 to do some market research before she begins trading at the Street's 9:30 opening bell. After the market closes at 4 p.m., she's usually still online, ferreting out data for the next day's session. "I love it because it keeps my mind sharp and alert," says Harriet, who says she's making good money after a rocky start, though she won't say how much. "I plan on doing it until the day I die -- or until I've lost my ability to reason and concentrate."

“Pass the virtual champagne, please”

Thu, 01 Jun 2000 19:39:00 +0000

A few days ago I found myself running late for a book party. In the old days, the punishment for such tardiness would have been a tapped-out open bar and canapes curled up like toes.

But tonight's book blowout was an altogether different affair. If I turned up late to this party, my punishment would be far more serious: I'd be turned away... from the chat room.

On May 16, the tweedy world of publishing changed yet again as AOL's The Book Report hosted the world's first online book party. The guest of honor: self-published author extraordinaire M.J. Rose, an ad exec turned erotic-novelist.

Last year, Rose proved that rejection in the Internet age is hardly the final word. After traditional publishers deemed her book "Lip Service" too racy, she started aggressively promoting electronic and print versions on various erotic and romance sites.

Rose quickly generated buzz that attracted the attention of the Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild, which listed "Lip Service" in their print catalog. Eventually, the e-publishing poster girl snagged a high five-figure deal with Simon and Schuster's Pocket Books; recently, she found herself added to Susie Bright's Best American Erotica 2001 and #4 on Barnes & Noble's list of best-selling e-books.