Showing posts with label theater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theater. Show all posts
"James McLure Dies at 59; Wrote Garrulous Plays."
"Obituary headline to die for," emails the irrepressible RLC.
"The Most Feminist Place in the World."
You know it's got to be Iceland.
[A]ctivists from Stigamot, the rape crisis center in Reykjavik, gave Knut Storberget, Norwegian justice minister, black boxer-briefs with the words I Am Responsible written down the crotch....
Feminism, or at least the notion of gender equality, has so infused politics that, a couple of years ago, women members of Parliament performed The Vagina Monologues....
There are also new feminine spaces in the economy. As the economy went into overdrive, Kristín Pétursdóttir and Halla Tomasdóttir, who had been warning of disaster from her position at the Chamber of Commerce, founded Auður Capital, a “financial service company emphasizing feminine values and social responsibility.”...
3 Madison things.
1. We're having a blizzard. Classes canceled tomorrow. Meade's watching the basketball game on TV — the Badgers are playing downtown tonight. The announcer explains the cheer from the crowd: They just saw the news that classes are canceled tomorrow.
2. Eating in Madison A to Z put up its review of the new restaurant 43 North, and Meade and I went along with JM and Nichole for that one.
The dialogue between the lefty grad students and these conservative adversaries is also about as subtle as a flying mallet. These conversations are the heart of the play and lead to the murder of four of the five grotesque conservative thugs; only a seventeen-year old girl promoting abstinence is deemed too young to kill (kind of like not imposing the death penalty on minors, I suppose)....
2. Eating in Madison A to Z put up its review of the new restaurant 43 North, and Meade and I went along with JM and Nichole for that one.
There were rolls served with butter and oil in three square glass dishes. The rolls were also squarish, with a very airy crumb and a shiny, leathery crust that was especially hard on the bottom. The butter was from Wolf Ridge (if we recall correctly) and came in two forms: slightly chilled and set, or powdered with tapioca flour. The oil was also served as a powder. Ann nailed it: the lipids were the Dippin' Dots of bread toppings.3. Larry Kaufmann lambastes that play we were talking about the other day:
The dialogue between the lefty grad students and these conservative adversaries is also about as subtle as a flying mallet. These conversations are the heart of the play and lead to the murder of four of the five grotesque conservative thugs; only a seventeen-year old girl promoting abstinence is deemed too young to kill (kind of like not imposing the death penalty on minors, I suppose)....
"[T]hink a play about a bunch of conservatives getting together each week to kill a lefty (and then maybe having second thoughts) would get such a favorable review?"
"Or get produced, by any theater company, anywhere?"
The first comment following a positive review of a play called "The Last Supper," on stage here in Madison, Wisconsin. First line of the review: "It's almost eerie that a play about extreme political rhetoric and vitriol would open just two weeks after the terrible shootings in Tucson."
The first comment following a positive review of a play called "The Last Supper," on stage here in Madison, Wisconsin. First line of the review: "It's almost eerie that a play about extreme political rhetoric and vitriol would open just two weeks after the terrible shootings in Tucson."
Young Ezra Klein found himself in a strange predicament.
He'd said something utterly banal. It's what everyone around him has been saying for years. He must have expected that people would either ignore him or shrug him off as a man with no original or interesting ideas. And suddenly he's getting derided, called an idiot or worse. How can that happen?!
The banal thing was that reading the text of the Constitution doesn't get you to the answers to the difficult questions that arise today. The text must be interpreted, and political preferences will tend to pull people along toward the interpretation they want.
Don Surber says (via Instapundit):
And now we see the value of this notion of reading the text out loud on the House floor. It sets up a trap for people like Klein to say things that let conservatives — like Don Surber — rail against the lefties.
Does that mean that I, like Klein, think reading the Constitution on the floor of the House is a "gimmick"?
I wouldn't use the word "gimmick" for what the GOP has proposed. But, like stripping, it is theatrical. It's a performance. A performance of belief. I think of the point in the church service when everyone reads the Apostles' Creed out loud. Obviously, many people say it who don't believe it, and you could keep silent and still believe it. But don't mock the ritual unless you're good at predicting the reaction and how you'll respond to that and you have some good reason for wanting the exchange.
Back to Surber:
ADDED:
The banal thing was that reading the text of the Constitution doesn't get you to the answers to the difficult questions that arise today. The text must be interpreted, and political preferences will tend to pull people along toward the interpretation they want.
Don Surber says (via Instapundit):
Ezra Klein made the biggest mistake that can be made by a liberal — progressive — socialist — communist — no labelist — whatever the heck they call themselves on the 31st of the month.Now, Klein walked right into that criticism. He stated the banality with an off-handed, wise-guy flippancy. That was red meat for the kind of conservative who likes to stress the constitutional text.
He was being honest.
He does not believe in the Constitution.
He is cynical about it and he projects that same cynicism onto those who disagree with him.
And now we see the value of this notion of reading the text out loud on the House floor. It sets up a trap for people like Klein to say things that let conservatives — like Don Surber — rail against the lefties.
Does that mean that I, like Klein, think reading the Constitution on the floor of the House is a "gimmick"?
In marketing language, a gimmick is a unique or quirky special feature that makes something "stand out"... [T]he special feature is typically thought to be of little relevance or use.... [A] gimmick is a special feature for the sake of having a special feature. It began... as a slang term for something that a con artist or magician had his assistant manipulate to make appearances different from reality.In the musical "Gypsy," the experienced strippers advise young Gypsy Rose Lee that she has to get a gimmick:
I wouldn't use the word "gimmick" for what the GOP has proposed. But, like stripping, it is theatrical. It's a performance. A performance of belief. I think of the point in the church service when everyone reads the Apostles' Creed out loud. Obviously, many people say it who don't believe it, and you could keep silent and still believe it. But don't mock the ritual unless you're good at predicting the reaction and how you'll respond to that and you have some good reason for wanting the exchange.
Back to Surber:
For 8 years, the Left’s railed against Bush shredding the Constitution, a phrase which came to mean nothing....See how much Surber is like Klein? He's accusing the other side of saying the words, but not really believing. But Surber has done better at picking his fight. He's got he hypocrisy angle: All those times you lefties acted all aghast at what Bush was doing? You must admit that was all theater, right?
ADDED:
The "unmitigated disaster" of Broadway's "Spiderman."
"'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,' the Broadway show currently in previews in New York, aspires to redefine the genre with music from Irish rocker Bono and death-defying aerial stuntwork."
It's been death-defying so far, but not injury-defying. When you're watching a movie, you know that if somebody died making that stunt, they wouldn't show it. Remember Brandon Lee?
Which raises other questions: Why are Broadway shows aimed at children in the first place? Why did they move into the special-effects/adolescent domain that movies dominate? Remember when theater was aimed at adults, and the more snobbish adults would look down on things like "Carousel" and "South Pacific" as too middle-brow? Now, the heights of "Carousel" and "South Pacific" seem unreachable — except in revivals of "Carousel" and "South Pacific."
Broadway, it's all wreckage.
It's been death-defying so far, but not injury-defying. When you're watching a movie, you know that if somebody died making that stunt, they wouldn't show it. Remember Brandon Lee?
The mysterious death of Bruce Lee's son was sure to achieve a cult status all its own. The story goes that actor Brandon Lee was shot on the set of his final film, The Crow, in the middle of filming a scene; and that his death was left in the final cut of the movie....But if someone gets killed in a live-theater stunt, the audience witnesses the death. It's supposed to be part of the entertainment that the stunts look risky, but if you are not confident that the actors and stuntmen are perfectly safe, deriving pleasure from watching that feels wrong — or it should. And taking a child to the show becomes utterly unacceptable.
Brandon Lee was indeed shot while filming. It was a tragic accident involving a gun firing blanks. A fragment of a dummy bullet, from a previous scene, was lodged in the gun and fired into Lee, fatally wounding him. Some mystery remains surrounding the film of the incident, with some saying it was destroyed, and others saying it was confiscated by police. It was not used in the movie. The scene was rewritten and reshot using a double, and the manner of his death is different than what happened in the fatal accident.
Which raises other questions: Why are Broadway shows aimed at children in the first place? Why did they move into the special-effects/adolescent domain that movies dominate? Remember when theater was aimed at adults, and the more snobbish adults would look down on things like "Carousel" and "South Pacific" as too middle-brow? Now, the heights of "Carousel" and "South Pacific" seem unreachable — except in revivals of "Carousel" and "South Pacific."
Broadway, it's all wreckage.
"When Mr. Miller informs you that he’s going to burn the California and American flags onstage... you know he’s not going to do it."
"And if he did, would anyone mind? Flag burning was much, ahem, hotter during the George H. W. Bush administration, when Tim Miller was known as one of the N.E.A. Four..."
Ah, it's late in human history to be a performance artist. But one must soldier on.
Ah, it's late in human history to be a performance artist. But one must soldier on.
"... Sinatra was a singularly fluorescent vocal phenomenon."
No, of course that's not what the NYT review of that new book about Frank Sinatra says. It says "Sinatra was a singularly incandescent vocal phenomenon."
Do you see my point? Incandescent means something. There is feeling and beauty in the concept that is missing — to the point of comedy — in the word "fluorescent."
Or maybe you are on the extreme end of the spectrum that has feeling and sensitivity to aesthetic details at one end and whatever it is you are on the other — logical, medicinal, remorseless. Maybe you are like those people who want to take away my incandescent light bulbs. What will it take to convince you that your perceptions are not the same as everybody else's?
Bonus literary reference:
Do you see my point? Incandescent means something. There is feeling and beauty in the concept that is missing — to the point of comedy — in the word "fluorescent."
Or maybe you are on the extreme end of the spectrum that has feeling and sensitivity to aesthetic details at one end and whatever it is you are on the other — logical, medicinal, remorseless. Maybe you are like those people who want to take away my incandescent light bulbs. What will it take to convince you that your perceptions are not the same as everybody else's?
***
Bonus literary reference:
Look, Mother, do you think I’m crazy about the warehouse? You think I’m in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that - - celotex interior! with -- fluorescent tubes?! Honest to God, I’d rather somebody picked up a crow-bar and battered out my brains -- than go back mornings! But I go! Every time you come in yelling that Rise and Shine! Rise and shine!! I think how lucky dead people are! But I get up. I go! For sixty-five dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever!
"By instinct and archetype, comedy is usually phallic..."
"... Chaplin has his cane, Harpo his horn, Groucho his cigar, and Dame Edna her gladioli, with which to poke, probe, and goose the world. Pee-wee, by contrast, is the comedian of non-phallic fun."
IN THE COMMENTS: Deborah said:
IN THE COMMENTS: Deborah said:
Unless Pee-wee himself is a phallic symbol. Of sorts:Yeah. Good point. The name too. Pee Wee. Wee wee. Pee pee.
"Now, as then, Pee-wee is a round-shouldered, knock-kneed picture of arrested development. His voice is high and strangulated, his laugh shrill and affectless, a sound that comes from the throat, not the belly. He occasionally lets out a scream of fear or a wail of loathing; when he throws himself on the floor in a tantrum, he adopts a kind of fetal position."
"If you’ve got, so to speak, the devil inside the elevator, press the call button. Call Otis."
"You’re trying to make this fun, I can understand that. But I’ve never heard of anything like this."
"Okay, what if one of your fellow passengers bites you?"
"Smack the person across the face."
Elevator expert is questioned a propos of this movie trailer:
Oh, I see. All our ridiculous primal fears about elevators are going to be exploited. IF... and I stress if... we subject ourselves to another M. Night Shyamalan movie.
It seems silly to make big expensive wide-screen movies about a few people stuck in a small space. Such things would do better on a theater stage. Like "No Exit." Or, even better, on TV. Like "Five Characters in Search of an Exit." ("Twilight Zone" video begins here.)
I truly loathe the movie techniques used in that trailer — music, swooping shots, editing — to try to make something inherently small fill the big screen. Our fears are in our heads. Put us in touch with that. Don't hurl screenfuls of flashing lights in our face and blast us with cheeseball music. That just makes me feel bad, and then I get angry. To scare me, you must be subtle.
Just a barrel, a dark depository where are kept the counterfeit, make-believe pieces of plaster and cloth, wrought in the distorted image of human life. But this added, hopeful note: perhaps they are unloved only for the moment. In the arms of children, there can be nothing but love. A clown, a tramp, a bagpipe player, a ballet dancer, and a major. Tonight's cast of players on the odd stage known as the Twilight Zone.
"Okay, what if one of your fellow passengers bites you?"
"Smack the person across the face."
Elevator expert is questioned a propos of this movie trailer:
Oh, I see. All our ridiculous primal fears about elevators are going to be exploited. IF... and I stress if... we subject ourselves to another M. Night Shyamalan movie.
It seems silly to make big expensive wide-screen movies about a few people stuck in a small space. Such things would do better on a theater stage. Like "No Exit." Or, even better, on TV. Like "Five Characters in Search of an Exit." ("Twilight Zone" video begins here.)
I truly loathe the movie techniques used in that trailer — music, swooping shots, editing — to try to make something inherently small fill the big screen. Our fears are in our heads. Put us in touch with that. Don't hurl screenfuls of flashing lights in our face and blast us with cheeseball music. That just makes me feel bad, and then I get angry. To scare me, you must be subtle.
Just a barrel, a dark depository where are kept the counterfeit, make-believe pieces of plaster and cloth, wrought in the distorted image of human life. But this added, hopeful note: perhaps they are unloved only for the moment. In the arms of children, there can be nothing but love. A clown, a tramp, a bagpipe player, a ballet dancer, and a major. Tonight's cast of players on the odd stage known as the Twilight Zone.
Sarah Palin and the teacher.
Here's your background reading. I just want to say that it's stupid as hell to say that someone working on the terrific musical "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" is "a singer in a transvestite band." What tastes like red meat to some people mostly makes you look small-minded, nasty, and uninformed. And going after Kathleen Gustafson on the ground that she's "not a teacher" when she works in some capacity in a school is like going after "Joe the Plumber" because he wasn't a licensed plumber. What you've got, in both cases, is an ordinary citizen who encountered a politician in a way that yielded some viral video. That revealed whatever it revealed about the politician. Trashing the private citizen is mean-spirited and likely to backfire.
"Everywhere you look there are jokes... I mean, my life is just... jokes."
A clip from the excellent documentary "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work":
We saw this movie last night at Sundance in Madison. I have a special love for the documentaries in this niche. Show this new one as a triple feature with "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" and "Grey Gardens." Here's the trailer for "Joan Rivers." Watch for the insult to Wisconsin, which got a huge laugh here in Wisconsin.
There was a line I tried to memorize, for me, the most interesting line in the movie. It was something like: "I am an actress — an actress playing the role of a comedian." When she was in high school, Joan was in all the plays. We see her in Shakespearean costume. She still sees herself as an actress. She says: You can say anything about her as a comedian, but don't criticize her acting. That's the one thing that hurts. That may seem very odd, because do you think of her as an actress (other than in the sense that when she's doing her comedy she may conceive of herself as playing a character that isn't really her)? She had a dramatic role in the movie "The Swimmer" (with Burt Lancaster)? And in the 90s she starred in (and co-wrote) the Broadway play "Sally Marr ... and Her Escorts" (a play about the woman who is mostly famous for being Lenny Bruce's mother). The NYT said:
Note to commenters: Please say something more interesting than that you don't like her surgically destroyed face. We can take that as a given. Don't be boring. It's worse than being ugly. Around here.
We saw this movie last night at Sundance in Madison. I have a special love for the documentaries in this niche. Show this new one as a triple feature with "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" and "Grey Gardens." Here's the trailer for "Joan Rivers." Watch for the insult to Wisconsin, which got a huge laugh here in Wisconsin.
There was a line I tried to memorize, for me, the most interesting line in the movie. It was something like: "I am an actress — an actress playing the role of a comedian." When she was in high school, Joan was in all the plays. We see her in Shakespearean costume. She still sees herself as an actress. She says: You can say anything about her as a comedian, but don't criticize her acting. That's the one thing that hurts. That may seem very odd, because do you think of her as an actress (other than in the sense that when she's doing her comedy she may conceive of herself as playing a character that isn't really her)? She had a dramatic role in the movie "The Swimmer" (with Burt Lancaster)? And in the 90s she starred in (and co-wrote) the Broadway play "Sally Marr ... and Her Escorts" (a play about the woman who is mostly famous for being Lenny Bruce's mother). The NYT said:
Is Ms. Rivers also a great actress? No, she is not. But she is exuberant, fearless and inexhaustible. If you admire performers for taking risks, then you can't help but applaud her efforts. "Sally Marr" asks her to dig down deep and dredge up some elemental emotions. Ms. Rivers backs off from none of them. In her portrayal of a gutsy woman who has hit the skids more than once in her 80-odd years, there is a childlike sincerity that exerts its own spell in the end. Between Ms. Rivers and Ms. Marr an understanding obviously exists.....So is she an actress, and if so, who is the real person? I don't think you get the answer in the "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work." There's a scene where she's doing a radio promotion for her new book — "Men Are Stupid . . . And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman's Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery" — and the interviewer goes on about how, whatever a woman does to herself to try to look beautiful, she must, in the end, want to be loved as the person she really is. Joan's response: Who is the real me? Perhaps when the real person is an actor, there is a hollowness that must be filled with a written character.
[E]arly on, when Sally goes into her theory of comedy. "You don't start with funny and make it funnier," she explains. "Comedy comes from pain."...
It is the play's contention that without Sally Marr... there would have been no Lenny Bruce. Her outspokenness blazed the way for his iconoclasm; from her hatred of hypocrisy sprang his. She was even there when he made his first tentative steps as an M.C. in strip joints to coach him on the intricacies of comic timing and lend him some of her material. "Lenny Bruce opened the door for every modern American comic, right?" she says, putting her checkered past into perspective for us. "So, in a way, you could say I gave birth to George Carlin and Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and Lily Tomlin and Robin Williams and Bill Cosby and Gilda Radner and David Letterman."
***
Note to commenters: Please say something more interesting than that you don't like her surgically destroyed face. We can take that as a given. Don't be boring. It's worse than being ugly. Around here.
Our beer taste test.
We're comparing:
1. St. Bernardus Abt 12, our classic favorite over the last year.
2. Trappistes Rochefort 10, the new upstart. New for us.
I tasted blind. Meade, having set up the test, was non-blind. Meade picked the St. Bernardus. I favored the Trappistes Rochefort, for its fascinating extra dimension of flavor. It's been made by monks at he Abbey of Notre-Dame de Saint-Rémy since 1595. "There are approximately 15 monks resident at the monastery. The monks are very secretive about the brewing process, and the brewery is not open to the public...." Good work, secretive monks! "[T]he beer is only sold in order to financially support the monastery and some other good causes." Well, then! I feel like a real humanitarian.
And no jokes, please, about us (or me) being blind drunk. We attended a play last night, and, in that play, blindness was batted about:
1. St. Bernardus Abt 12, our classic favorite over the last year.
2. Trappistes Rochefort 10, the new upstart. New for us.
I tasted blind. Meade, having set up the test, was non-blind. Meade picked the St. Bernardus. I favored the Trappistes Rochefort, for its fascinating extra dimension of flavor. It's been made by monks at he Abbey of Notre-Dame de Saint-Rémy since 1595. "There are approximately 15 monks resident at the monastery. The monks are very secretive about the brewing process, and the brewery is not open to the public...." Good work, secretive monks! "[T]he beer is only sold in order to financially support the monastery and some other good causes." Well, then! I feel like a real humanitarian.
***
And no jokes, please, about us (or me) being blind drunk. We attended a play last night, and, in that play, blindness was batted about:
I am blind.
Perhaps he can see into the future....
I woke up one fine day as blind as Fortune. Sometimes I wonder if I'm not still asleep.
And when was that?
I don't know.
But no later than yesterday—
Don't question me! The blind have no notion of time. The things of time are hidden from them too.
Well, just fancy that! I could have sworn it was just the opposite....
Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.
"... concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice of sports such as tennis football running cycling swimming..."
"... flying floating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of all kinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winter winter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicillin and succedanea in a word I resume flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis of all sorts in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham Peckham Fulham Clapham namely concurrently simultaneously...."
We got [l]ucky and went to the theater last night. Waiting for the show to begin, we ate popsicles on the patio, overlooking the woods...
... and Meade saved me from a tick.
Later, the next morning, we reminisced and danced The Net. You know the new dance craze, The Net? You dance as if you are entangled in a net.
We got [l]ucky and went to the theater last night. Waiting for the show to begin, we ate popsicles on the patio, overlooking the woods...
... and Meade saved me from a tick.
Later, the next morning, we reminisced and danced The Net. You know the new dance craze, The Net? You dance as if you are entangled in a net.
"... a capella (for those of you who don't speak Italian, that means singing with a mouthful of capers....)"
"(... It creates a kind of warbly tone while at the same time encouraging guests not to sit too close to the stage.)"
Ha. I hate getting hit by stray bits of food. I once sat in the front row of a play that had a small refrigerator right in front of where I was sitting. There was a lot of talk of food, and much opening and closing of the refrigerator, putting things in. As might have been predicted, the climax of the show involved stuff coming out of that refrigerator.
Dialogue that I've never forgotten from that play:
Ha. I hate getting hit by stray bits of food. I once sat in the front row of a play that had a small refrigerator right in front of where I was sitting. There was a lot of talk of food, and much opening and closing of the refrigerator, putting things in. As might have been predicted, the climax of the show involved stuff coming out of that refrigerator.
Dialogue that I've never forgotten from that play:
What's that smell in here?Do artichokes roll when they hit the pitched floor of a stage? Yes, so don't sit in the front row.
Artichokes.
Artichokes, huh? Smells like stale piss. Never was big on vegetables myself. I'm a steak man. "Meat and blood," that's my motto. Keeps your bones hard as ivory.
Madison street theater: The Madtown Liberty Players depict the history of war in Afghanistan.
In less than 4 and a half minutes:
Today on the Capitol Square in Madison, Wisconsin.
Today on the Capitol Square in Madison, Wisconsin.
"See that man over there? He's a movie star, and I get to sleep with him every night."
Catherine Zeta-Jones "can't believe [she] said something as crass as that," which she did, looking gorgeous and genuinely surprised, as she accepted the Tony award she won last night.
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