tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87189214723440349872024-02-07T22:19:23.808-05:00Stuff I Like to Think AboutJenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.comBlogger281125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-29173633376850693502022-10-24T13:43:00.000-04:002023-02-14T13:43:31.015-05:00For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday<p><i>For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday</i> </p><p>By Sarah Ruhl</p><p>This play has been on my to-read list for an embarrassingly long time, and I'm so glad one of my students finally gave me the nudge I needed to finish reading it.</p><p><i>For Peter Pan</i> is a three act play that follows five grown siblings as they hold vigil in their dying father's hospital room (in the first act, anyway). He finally does pass at the end of the first act, and the second act takes us back to the family home where the siblings snack and reminisce and argue about politics, all while the ghost of their father putters about, mostly unnoticed by his children. Finally, in the third act, in true Ruhl-ian fashion, the characters transform into Peter Pan and his Neverland crew, where "I won't grow up" crashes head long into the inevitability of age.</p><p>I probably should have known better than to read a play that Ruhl wrote as a gift to her mother in a public space, but read it in an airport I did. And there is nothing quite like openly weeping in front of a bunch of strangers. There is so much to love in this gorgeous, loving meditation on family and aging and youth and memory. As I myself age, I read a lot more plays that I am now too old for than I do plays I look forward to growing into, so this was a nice treat as an actor. But in invoking Peter Pan, one of the few truly magical characters of our canon, it is also a love letter to the possibility of theatre to keep us all a little younger and a little more full of wonder.</p>Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-54101264930265927512022-06-20T15:16:00.005-04:002023-07-06T12:17:28.644-04:00On the Exhale<p>I have completely lost any semblance of counting the plays that I am reading. I read SO MANY PLAYS this semester.</p><p>So.</p><p>Play #?</p><p><i>On the Exhale</i> by Martín Zimmerman</p><p>Content Notification: Elementary school shooting, self harm</p><p>I ordered this play after the shooting in Uvalde, when I was looking for plays that have dealt with shootings. Feeling that sort of powerless thing so many artists feel in the aftermath of yet another horrific and entirely avoidable tragedy. I'm a person who believes that art can change things. So I wanted to see what other people who believe that have done.</p><p>The unnamed protagonist of this one woman play begins by explaining an uncomfortably familiar anxiety in education these days - the fear that any one of us might be next. Specifically she is in higher education, which brings it close to home for me. For this character, however, her 1st grade son and his classmates turn out to be next. A single mother of a now deceased child, she struggles with how to find any tangible connection to her son and what happened - since all the witnesses are also fatal casualties of the attack. She is surprised to discover that she finds connection in an impulse purchase and subsequent firing of the exact same type of automatic rifle that killed her son. The character wrestles with the ugliness of the act and the strange allure of the instrument of death. But when she testifies in front of a bored congress, she finds herself unsatisfied with shooting ranges and teeters dangerously on the edge of another kind of catharsis.</p><p>This is an interesting play, and for about the first two thirds, I think it does what it is doing very well. The plot that unfolds once she zeros in on a heartless and disinterested senator near the end feels a bit too contrived for my taste, especially in a play that feels so grounded and truthful until that point. I would be curious to see how this plays out on stage. I'm attracted to its horrifying relevance, but am not convinced that it ends up earning its place. It's hard to say.</p><p>One interesting tidbit worth noting is that the playwright specifies that the gun itself should not appear onstage; rather the actor must "use her body to suggest the weapon." Remembering back to the Tony Awards performance by the cast of <i>Hamilton</i> the weekend of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, I remember the power of their absent weapons that night. We all know what a gun looks like. I think the playwright is right that the trauma of staring at an automatic rifle onstage in front of us might just be too much. We can fill in the blanks, and the horror is still all too real.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-51734782731232411182022-02-02T14:42:00.004-05:002022-02-02T14:42:43.487-05:00Am I Blue?<p>I read plays 1 & 2 for 2022 as part of my participation in the Hedgepig Ensemble's Expand the Canon project, so I can't post anything about them. So that leads me to...</p><p>Play #3</p><p><i>Am I Blue?</i> - Beth Henley </p><p>A student of mine is interested in directing this one-act as part of her senior seminar, so I needed to give it a read. It's classically Beth Henley - dark and sweet and strange. John Polk is drinking himself drunk enough to indulge in the birthday gift he received from his frat brothers - a night with a sex worker - when Ashbe rushes over to his table, having just stolen ash trays from a bar down the street. Both of them are too young to be in this bar, so they both get kicked out and end up back at Ashbe's apartment where they talk about jealousy and anger and coming of age and sex and affection. And eventually, they simply dance the night away. </p><p>It's a dated piece, set in 1968, but there is also a timelessness to the youth of the two characters. Henley is always so good at constructing melancholy and the glimmer of hope that lies just beyond the edges. And those edges, in this play at least, are not as far away as the characters might hope. There are a few little persnickety things from the time period that contemporary audiences might balk at - mentions of "the Orient" and referring to the sex workers as "whores." But the core of the piece is smart and sweet and oh so human. There's a lot of charm in these few pages.</p>Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-54156505149976156312021-12-29T19:54:00.000-05:002021-12-29T19:54:03.599-05:00Spiderman: No Way Home - SPOILERS<p>I went to see a movie today - and that was weird, because I haven't really done that much in the last two years, what with the pandemic raging on and on. But for the sake of Marvel (and my husband's sanity), we strapped on our N95s and sat far away from everyone else for 2 1/2 hours of Marvel-tude that people have been crowing all over facebook is one of the best Marvel movies of all time and, well... </p><p>Meh.</p><p>Oh, by the way, from here on out, there be spoilers. So allow me to post this picture of my cat if you need time/space to escape from the spoiler-palooza below.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgR8ovXh4N3gWOBJQleOjzSU8E_L6Am2c8WvlPtL88NUbj4Ks2wU8krednSonOqgifm55_krONm_aGKiTQHS1dIm5eMEdk7BKtL3MyKjvgA1xNFiF6Nn2FGI9s72C9ZYAyUnkszxet4iSRUtbRNSUWXPKcaKMF1UdJnzV9ICzdJVQRj0psyrElXCqED=s820" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="810" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgR8ovXh4N3gWOBJQleOjzSU8E_L6Am2c8WvlPtL88NUbj4Ks2wU8krednSonOqgifm55_krONm_aGKiTQHS1dIm5eMEdk7BKtL3MyKjvgA1xNFiF6Nn2FGI9s72C9ZYAyUnkszxet4iSRUtbRNSUWXPKcaKMF1UdJnzV9ICzdJVQRj0psyrElXCqED=s320" width="316" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tilly judges me for all the spoilers I am about to lay down.</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Okay - here we go with the spoiler-rich content:</p><p>No really. This is ALL SPOILERS.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Don't say I didn't warn you.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I started off more or less on board with this movie. We joined the action immediately where the previous movie left off and were thrown headlong into the forced celebrity of the now-outed Peter Parker. The stakes were high and clear, and particularly hard on a 17-year-old boy, which it is always easy to forget that he is. He enlists the help of a fairly selfish and sometimes sophomoric wizard in the form of Dr. Strange, and of course the spell goes wrong. So far, so good. Bad guys from alternate spider-verses start to turn up and wreak havoc, but we have the means to collect them and send them back to their timelines. It all makes sense (even if, like me, you skipped all the Andrew Garfield movies). But when they realize that all of these baddies were taken just before they died, and sending them back will surely sentence them to that very same death, Peter Parker balks. He can't just send them back to die! He can fix them! And why does he believe this? Because Aunt May tells him that it is his responsibility to fix them.</p><p>So, let's imagine that, at that point, everything goes exactly as he plans (which, of course, it won't, but for the sake of argument, let's just follow this out). He would have all these baddies, make them goodies, and send them back to the moment before their deaths... fighting with a Spiderman who doesn't know that they have been instantaneously re-good-ified. So, either they still die, now making their respective Spidermen outright murderers, OR they go back all fixed, magically survive, and completely rupture their extant timelines!</p><p>But, May insists, keeping these uber-evil baddies in Happy's apartment and playing mad doctor with them is totally the right thing to do. And we're supposed to just accept that because she still says it while standing in the rubble of said apartment and bleeding out from wounds inflicted by the Green Goblin... WHO NEVER BELONGED HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE.</p><p>This bizarre, forced, intractable morality espoused by Aunt May is a deeply flawed and, frankly, selfish version of selflessness. May was arguing for the complete destruction of numerous timelines with no sense of the possible implications of that, because... "we help people." And this oversimplified insistence on finite "death bad/help good" morality gave us a May who was, not to mince words, stupid. It was unfair to her as a character to make her so myopic and childish that she refuses (or is unable) to even consider the larger ramifications of altering multiple universes, even as Peter attempts to make that case to her along the way. In fact, though he tells her that they aren't really his responsibility, I would argue that it really <i>is </i>his responsibility, and it turns out that the most responsible thing to do - for everyone in all of these universes - was just to put everyone back where they came from. Imposing an external morality onto a bunch of people from realities they can't possibly understand just because Aunt May is really nice seems... well... dumb.</p><p>So, while the movie certainly had its moments, and it was fun to see the three Spidermen playing together (though I still have no idea how Andrew Garfield is supposed to keep all that hair flat under his mask - do they cover that in his movies?), the fundamental conflict was so corrupted by the violence done to May as a thinking, intelligent person, that the rest of the movie became fruits of a poisonous tree for me.</p><p>The previous phases of the MCU were a huge undertaking - highs and lows to be sure - all leading up to a truly satisfying Endgame. As we shift into this new phase, there are bound to be growing pains, and I will try to chalk this movie up to that. But if I am going to avoid what would be very understandable Marvel fatigue over the course of the next 20-some-odd projects they have and haven't announced, I'm going to need them to treat their characters (and surprise - particularly their women characters) with a little more nuance and respect.</p>Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-73379565376890160262021-09-22T13:11:00.004-04:002022-02-02T14:44:21.534-05:00A Doll's House, Part 2<p>It has been 3 years since I posted one of these... so many plays I have read in that time, that I know I wish I had a zippy little paragraph about to reference. Ah well - here we go again!</p><p>Play #137 </p><p><i>A Doll's House, Part 2</i> by Lucas Hnath</p><p>I haven't had much time to read plays these days - everything is moving at some absurd, breakneck pace, and my ability to focus on much beyond the task in front of me has definitely been hindered. That said, a week or two ago, when I was discussing <i>A Doll's House</i> with an independent study student I'm working with this term, we started talking about Lucas Hnath's sequel, and it suddenly bothered me that I hadn't read it. So, in a fit of focus that I really must find a way to find more regularly, I sat down and read it in an afternoon. And I am really glad I did!</p><p>The play takes place 15 years after the end of Ibsen's story, with Nora coming home to ask her husband to make their divorce official - something he failed to do in her absence, and that is now potentially creating significant legal difficulties for her. In her time away from her family, Nora has created a successful life for herself as a revolutionary feminist writer, and a man whose wife was inspired by Nora's writing to leave him has threatened to undo everything she has achieved. On her return, she has to reckon with Torvald, of course, but she also comes to terms with how her departure and return affected her nursemaid Anne-Marie, and her daughter Emmy - who is now grown and engaged. I found the humanization of Torvald welcome and still complex enough not to turn it into a story about a man who was wronged. Nora saw herself in her daughter and was willing to make some real sacrifices to keep Emmy from treading a path that Nora knew all too well. It felt stylistically in tune with Ibsen's original, while also managing to feel contemporary. It complicates Nora's actions without taking the wind out of her strength. I found it an interesting intellectual exercise with the potential - in the hands of the right actors and director - for genuine emotional insight. And I'll just say it: I want to play Nora, like, right this instant. </p><p>Also - there are some pretty good monologues in here, so a play of many applications!</p>Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-41970467119209596302021-08-10T19:55:00.000-04:002021-12-29T19:56:01.189-05:00Felt Fragile<p><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Here's an uncharacteristically emotionally candid post from me, posted on my blog where it's unlikely that anyone other than a stray bot will read it. So, wandering code beast, if you're not up for wallowing in the misery of planning for classes in a Covid world, feel free to drop your awesome offer on Ray-Bans or ED medications in the comments and skip on by. Don't worry - I'm sure I'll post a cat picture on my instagram in a few minutes and the algorithms will right themselves once more.</span></span></p><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="fat7o-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fat7o-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="fat7o-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;">For this fall, I'm prepping a class that I last taught during Spring 2020. Going back through my daily class notes, I have just arrived at Mar 9, 2020 - the day when we started having conversations with our students about how things might change if the situation got bad. "This is all out of an abundance of caution," my notes copied from the faculty emails said, and we were so hopeful that none of these contingencies would end up being necessary. A week later, we sent all our students home.</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="6nd5f-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="6nd5f-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="6nd5f-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="dhkl8-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dhkl8-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="dhkl8-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;">Here we are a year and a half later, with almost less certainty than we had back then. We have vaccines, but we have variants. And how long until the hateful, willfully ignorant hordes incubate for us a fancy new variant that skirts the few defenses that we have? How many people will be sacrificed to the egos of our stubborn politicians and our myopic neighbors?</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="c6mu2-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="c6mu2-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="c6mu2-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="5p63k-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="5p63k-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="5p63k-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;">What will classes look like? What do we do for the students who are forced to miss class due to a 2 week quarantine? (In a lecture based class this is one thing - but I'm teaching Improv!) What do we do if WE are forced to miss class due to a 2 week quarantine? What of the plays we've already started designing? What of the students who are looking to a theatre industry whose position is so precarious that it's hard to conceive of what world we are preparing them for?</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="4ens3-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4ens3-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="4ens3-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="fhg1a-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="fhg1a-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="fhg1a-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;">My natural cynicism already has me believing that things are going to get worse before they get better... but how much worse? </span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="egvld-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="egvld-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="egvld-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="4l7qd-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="4l7qd-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="4l7qd-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;">I'm angry. I am so so angry right now, and I don't know what to do with all of that anger (aside from my daily ritual of shaking it up in the cocktail mixer of my psyche, along with my festering anxiety, and a little fear zest as a garnish).</span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="f2n3-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="f2n3-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="f2n3-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br data-text="true" /></span></span></div></div><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="6cm8b" data-offset-key="dq3hj-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="dq3hj-0-0" style="direction: ltr; position: relative;"><span data-offset-key="dq3hj-0-0"><span style="font-family: arial;">So... that's a little text-based selfie from me. What's the instagram lingo? Felt fragile. Might delete later. IDK. I really DK. </span></span></div></div>Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-71182185339285139432018-07-23T16:31:00.002-04:002018-07-23T16:31:25.507-04:00Eat and You Belong to Us<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #136<br />
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<i>Eat and You Belong to Us</i> by MJ Kaufman<br />
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I honestly can't quite say what I thought of this play. I tried to explain it to my husband, and found that any sort of summary was woefully inadequate. The play centers around the family of wives Karen and Sally. Their teenage child Jamie is genderqueer and prefers that they alternate her pronouns between she and xe, as an expression of how much "she" Jamie actually is. The "she" part of Jamie's identity, xe insists, is part of xer connection to Joan of Arc, who xe suspects xe may have have some relation to. The final element of the family is Grands - Karen's parent (formerly her mother) - who, in xer 80s, has decided to undergo "gender affirmative" surgery (a term I have never heard, but one that I think is deeply important). Karen is having a hard time following all of these changes - calling her mother "Grands" or her parent instead of "Mom," and learning her daughter's preferred pronouns - but Sally is pushing Karen to try to find her way into accepting her family members as they ask to be. After a particularly frustrating argument, Jamie runs out to the field outside the family home where she is surrounded by a handful of Joan of Arcs who whisk her away to a battlefield in 15th Century France. There, like these other Joans before her, Jamie must take on the role of Joan - leading the army, facing up to patriarchal forces that surround her, and eventually even being burned at the stake. What starts out as a great adventure eventually gives way to the painful realities of the battlefield when a frightened young soldier she had comforted ends up being killed in battle. While Jamie is back in France, Karen and Sally fret for days about their missing daughter, while also starting to get to know the gay male couple from next door, Ted and Joe. Eventually, Grands and Jamie share their Joan of Arc moment and are able to return home.<br />
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The play deals with a lot of layers of identity, which is interesting and even a little confusing on the page, but I think that it would become a great deal clearer in performance. It asks a lot of complicated questions, and has a lot of fun with how we deal with expectations and ideals when they don't quite live up to what we had hoped. An interesting play that I probably need to read a few more times before I really have a strong grasp of it, but I would venture to say that it's probably worth the additional reads.</div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-34646022718231862872018-07-23T16:31:00.001-04:002018-07-23T16:31:17.184-04:00Hey Brother<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #135<br />
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<i>Hey Brother</i> by Bekah Brunstetter<br />
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I was kind of bummed out by this play, because I generally like the playwright's work a lot, but I did not enjoy this play. At the center of the play we have brothers Ben and Isaac who are living together in Ben's oceanside home in North Carolina. Isaac is a grad student who, it seems, is benefiting from his brother's wealth and stability, but that isn't really all there is to it. Ben goes out drinking... a lot... and Isaac is often left to pick up after him. It seems that Ben is not dealing well with the recent end of a long term relationship. As we go along, we also meet Kris, who is a young, Asian-American woman working on becoming a playwright. Her attempts at a historical drama often feel stilted as we encounter readings of it in her class (as performed by the same actors who play the main brothers). But when she meets Isaac online, her relationship with both brothers begins to influence her play as well as her personal behavior. The conflict between the two brothers is stirred up over time as Kris becomes infatuated with both of them, and eventually Ben throws himself in the sea in a gesture that may or may not have been some sort of poetic suicide attempt.<br />
<br />
I didn't really feel any emotional connection to these characters; I found them cold and selfish in a lot of ways, and wasn't really particularly interested in them. So I couldn't quite figure out why they were all so swept up in each other, because I wasn't. There might actually be some decent scene material in here, but in general, it was not a play that leaped up off the page and begged to be seen, in my opinion.</div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-64072534422142400512018-06-29T14:05:00.002-04:002018-06-29T14:05:26.008-04:00Love/Sick<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #134<br />
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<i>Love/Sick</i> by John Cariani<br />
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From the playwright who created the magical, charming, loopy little world of <i>Almost, Maine</i>, <i>Love/Sick</i> is another collection of short, related-but-unrelated vignettes about - you guessed it - love. This collection is less magical and uplifting than his previous piece, but I still found it really thoughtful and charming. All the scenes ostensibly happen on the same night, at the same time, in the same town, but they are all about different people. And we meet these different people at different stages within a relationship - from first attraction to first heartbreak to wedding day to just another day in a long marriage to exes meeting up long after their end... and other endings as well. There is still a degree of the weirdness that makes <i>Almost, Maine</i> so much fun, but this piece feels less optimistic. There is an inevitability to disappointment in this play, so that even as we chuckle at the "Obsessive Impulsive" characters or the wife digging around in the garage for a child's toy... and for "me," the chuckles cannot detach themselves from the melancholy present in each scene. I think that, on the surface, I don't enjoy this play as much as <i>Almost,Maine</i>, but there is something really wonderful and perhaps more mature about <i>Love/Sick</i> that I found really compelling. The scenes are clever, concise, and intelligent. And there is always a minus with a plus, a down with an up, a sick with a love. </div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-11026325765527280632018-06-13T16:06:00.004-04:002018-06-13T16:06:59.581-04:00Photograph 51<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #133<br />
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<i>Photograph 51</i> by Anna Ziegler<br />
<br />
This is a play about scientist Rosalind Franklin, whose work in crystallography helped to unlock the structure of DNA. Unfortunately, due to a combination of being a woman, not making it to publication first, and dying quite young of ovarian cancer (which was likely a byproduct of the equipment she used in imaging the genome), her name has largely been forgotten. This play feels like a cousin to Lauren Gunderson's play <i>Silent Sky</i>, but with one major difference: Rosalind's story is told almost entirely from the point of view of the men who surrounded her.<br />
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There is her unwilling partner, Maurice Wilkins; her assistant, Ray Gosling; a competing scientist duo of James Watson and Francis Crick; and a graduate student/love interest, Don Caspar. Science was (and still is) dominated by men, and there is even reference to the fact that, were she in America, she likely wouldn't even have access to the buildings where work like this was being done, let alone find herself leading it. But the play is structured as a memory play, and since Rosalind dies so young, all that seems to be left of her is the impressions that she made on the men around her. Franklin is a fascinating woman whose story is absolutely deserving of a play, but I never really felt much life to this particular telling. Perhaps I'm jaded by the beauty of Gunderson's play that I read so recently. There's nothing inherently wrong with this script, but there's nothing that really stands out about it either. And though Ziegler does manage to create some complexity for the woman whose memory these men regale us with, I think I would have found the play much more interesting if I felt I were seeing it from her point of view rather than from theirs. </div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-75743186261716079112018-06-13T14:35:00.001-04:002018-06-13T15:46:03.571-04:00Terminating<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #132 -<i> Terminating, or Lass Meine Schmerzen Nicht Verloren Sein, or Ambivalence</i> by Tony Kushner<br />
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<i>Terminating</i> is a short play (with a long title) from the collection <i>Love's Fire</i>, in which a number of badass playwrights were assigned a Shakespearean sonnet as inspiration. Kushner's is based on Sonnet #75.<br />
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The play begins in a psychiatrist's office where Hendryk is begging his former therapist Esther to take him back, though she is firm that they have terminated their doctor patient relationship. Hendryk is a fairly neurotic man who continually asks Esther to sleep with him - despite their both being gay. In fact, both of their partners are present in the room as well (Esther's partner Dymphna and Hendryk's, Billygoat), though it's a little unclear how corporeally they are present. Are they really there? Are they simply the specters of outside relationships hovering over the pair as they dance around their troubled relationship and troubled senses of self? The epic nature of the lovers' names adds to their mystical quality within the narrative, in which they hover around the edges.<br />
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Not much really happens in this play, but as it is by Tony Kushner, the language and ideas are complex and beautiful as Hendryk wanders through his insecurities, bouncing off of Esther's stoic exterior - her ambivalence, it may seem, but I am not so sure. Though it's not action packed, there is a lot happening for and between these people and their partners as they navigate the waters of love and self love.<br />
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On a practical note, there are a couple of short scenes and monologues that could be useful, though I usually steer clear from things this raw for my acting one classes.</div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-576069964792181802017-06-28T14:18:00.000-04:002017-06-28T21:01:51.312-04:00Black Super Hero Magic Mama<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #131 - <i>Black Super Hero Magic Mama </i>by Inda Craig-Galván<br />
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This was the first of the plays off <a href="http://thekilroys.org/list-2017/" target="_blank">this year's Kilroys list</a> that I happened to get my hands on, and it was (no surprise) a compelling script. The main character Sabrina Jackson is a single black mother who must deal with the death of her 14-year-old son Tramarion at the hands of a white police officer. Overcome with grief, she retreats inward into the world of the comic book hero The Maasai Angel - a character that had been created by her son and his best friend. Of course, family and news media and pretty much everyone have opinions about how she SHOULD be reacting to her loss - what she owes to the people, the movement, etc. And all these outside influences float in and out of her comic book fantasy, where she is actually able to vanquish them in their exaggerated, villainous personas. But all of her epic triumphs lead her closer to The Entity - the big bad that she must face, whether she is ready or not. <i>BSHMM</i> jumps back and forth between past and present, reality and fantasy, and concrete and abstract as it paints a portrait of a mother's suffering and strength in the face of the unthinkable, yet all too common.<br />
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It's a clever and heartfelt script that reminds me a bit of Qui Nguyen's <i>She Kills Monsters</i>, but with a much more pointed and mournful core - one that gives voice not only to loss, but to the swirling expectations that rise up after these kinds of tragedies (and yes, the fact that these occurrences are staggeringly plural is all too clear in this play), demanding that the people who have lost the most live up to some strange social responsibility. Without giving any spoilers, at first I thought that I wanted a little bit more from the ending - more resolution, perhaps? - but as I mulled over the vivid trajectory of the play, and the battles that Sabrina/Maasai Angel wages and wins, I think that the simplicity of the ending might be the point. In the aftermath of a shooting like the one in <i>BSHMM</i>, there is no magic battle that solves all problems and sets things right. Eventually there is just the day to day, the going on, the heroism of living. And Craig-Galván's play leads us on this deeply personal journey with action and heart.</div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-50304884509819103602017-05-10T14:56:00.001-04:002017-05-10T14:56:42.035-04:00The Taming<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #130 - <i>The Taming</i> by Lauren Gunderson<br />
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While I was administering my final today for History of Drama and Theatre, I took the opportunity to finally read this play, and it was exactly the delightful revolutionary lozenge my disillusioned mind needed on yet another day when the news was giving me heart palpitations.<br />
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<i>The Taming</i> is written for a cast of three women - Katherine, the current Miss Georgia with some pretty wacky ideas about governance; Bianca, the liberal activist blogger; and Pat, the ambitious chief of staff to a conservative Republican senator. The names and a few syntactical nods are really all of <i>Taming of the Shrew</i> that we get in this play, and that's just fine with me. On the eve of the Miss America Pageant, Bianca and Pat wake up in a hotel room unable to find their phones (or pants, in Pat's case), leave the room, or even remember how they got there. These two natural enemies argue about their situation and their rabid dislike for each other, doing a great job of playing up the absurdity of extremity, rather than absurdity of any one side of the partisan divide. This exchange is made all the more delightful by what is one of my favorite stage directions since "Exit, pursued by bear": (<i>Tense Sexy Partisan Pause</i>). Then, enter the beauty queen to explain her plans for fixing what is broken in the great American experiment. The other two women are, of course, hesitant to engage, and after an energetic discussion and even a good ol' farcical chase, we are transported back in time (sort of) to 1787 where James Madison (played by Pat) sweats over the Constitution, which is expected in front of the Convention for a vote any day now. George Washington (played by Katherine) and Charles Pinckney (played by Bianca) offer encouragement and antagonism, respectively. And the brief cameos by Martha Washington and Dolly Madison (both played by Katherine) are a hoot. Finally, after the Founding Fathers reach an "agreement" on what is, by all admissions, a deeply imperfect, if well-intentioned, document, we are back in the present day in our same hotel room as the three women have to decide what direction they will take.<br />
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I will admit to being a particular head space right now that predisposed me to love this play, but I really did love this play. It is energetic and silly, while still offering insight and ass-kicking where they are warranted. I look forward to using monologues and scenes from this in acting classes, and I would really love to do this show... pretty much now. Though it premiered back in 2013 before our present political maelstrom had emerged, it does such a great job of speaking to the problems of entrenched partisanship, and honoring the roots of the American experiment in such a positive, sassy way. </div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-5154202337013218832016-03-31T10:42:00.001-04:002016-03-31T10:42:21.560-04:00The Hungry Woman<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #129 - <i>The Hungry Woman: A Mexican Medea </i>by Cherrie Moraga<br />
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I am not as well versed in Latina writers as I would like to be, so I have been making a concerted effort to broaden my sphere or knowledge and seek out plays by different voices. And this one did not disappoint.<br />
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In Moraga's world, we are in a fluid time and place of some dystopian reality: "The near future of a fictional Chicana past." We observe Medea in a prison psychiatric hospital, and we also leap about through time, gathering glimpses of how she ended up there. At this time, the United States has been divided into Gringolandia and Aztlan - the white and Chicano sections of the country. In between the two is Phoenix, AZ - a sort of no-man's land (almost literally) that serves as a "dumping site of every kind of poison and person unwanted by its neighbors." In particular, as far as we are told in this play, those who are dumped here are largely lesbians. Medea and her lover Luna have been exiled here from Aztlan for the last seven years - since Jason discovered them in bed together. The women have with them Medea and Jason's son Chac-Mool (named Adolfo by his father). Now, however, Jason wants to marry a young Apache woman and reclaim his teenage son... and thus the familiar cycle of Medea's tragic choice continues. Surrounding Medea and the other characters are four Aztec warrior women - the Cihuatateo. According to Aztec tradition, childbirth was a battle, and women who went through it were seen as warriors. They act as a chorus - sometimes becoming characters, sometimes chanting and dancing, but always present.<br />
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The magic that floats through this world is palpable, and the power of the female body is central to the meaning made by the play. But at the same time, we see the ways in which that power is stifled by patriarchal demands and assumptions. Although this play is over twenty years old, the cry for respect for an intersectional identity is vivid and insistent. And the consequences of refusing to allow a person to be all the things she is, rather than just one of them, are all too real. </div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-84925882705059282952015-12-31T13:58:00.000-05:002015-12-31T13:58:26.608-05:00The Nether<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #128 - <i>The Nether</i> by Jennifer Haley<br />
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This is sort of a cool, unintentional circle of life moment: when I set myself the task at the beginning of 2015 to read one play for every day (a goal of which I have fallen quite short), I started with <i>Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom</i> by Jennifer Haley. So it seems quite fitting that I would finish the year with another play by the same writer.<br />
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<i>The Nether</i> takes place "soon" in two locations: an interrogation room and an online world called The Hideaway. In the world of this play, human existence has shifted in large part to the online realm. The real world still exists, but most functions - jobs, education, etc. - happen online. There are even people who make the decision to cross over permanently into the online realm, living offline via life support as their online lives become their real lives. Haley gives us Detective Morris who is investigating Mr. Sims for the online realm that he has created called The Hideaway. It is a place that replicates an 1800s home, and that gives people the opportunity to live without consequences - in particular, as they might pertain to certain proclivities towards children. Morris argues that the behaviors perpetrated there are unacceptable, whereas Sims claims that, since even the "children" are actually adults in the real world, there is no real impropriety.<br />
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The play is, like <i>Neighborhood 3</i>, an unsettling investigation of the implications of the intersection of real and virtual life. The twists and turns leave the audience wondering themselves where the boundaries of these worlds - and of human connection - truly lie. There are parts of this play that would, doubtless, be difficult to watch. It's interesting that Haley asks that the actress who plays the virtual girl actually be or seem pre-pubescent, rather than an adult actress playing young. While this might be upsetting for some, Haley argues that the presence of a young performer on stage will assure the audience that the production itself will not go over the line with this character - that the character will never be in real danger. Whereas, with an adult actor, that assumption might not be the case. I suppose she's right, but I also can't help imagining the squirming in our collective seats that might unfold. Luckily, I don't have to imagine! Woolly Mammoth is staging this show in April! I can't wait to see how the drained, technologically centered "real" world and the lush, sensuous "fake" world come to life on stage!<br />
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And though I didn't make it to 365... and though I didn't get a chance to do much reading of novels... I would say that 128 plays is not all that shabby!<br />
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Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-49510050558741957182015-12-02T19:42:00.003-05:002023-07-06T12:22:34.094-04:00Race<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #127 - <i>Race</i> by David Mamet<br />
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First things first: I've clearly fallen far afield from the whole "read a play a day" goal I started the year with. But still... 127 isn't bad!<br />
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Okay - full disclosure: I hate David Mamet. But I have this title for a paper that I need to write about him... and the title is too good... so I HAVE to write the paper... even if it means reading a bunch of this gruff, cynical, testosterone. Honestly, the only thing worse would be if I were writing a paper about Neil Labute. Seriously... ugh.<br />
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Anyway... I read <i>Race. </i>The story revolves around two male lawyers and their female assistant/intern, as they try to decide whether to take on the defense of a middle aged white man who is accused of raping a young black woman. And, of course, the circumstances surrounding the case just get uglier and uglier with each passing moment. It seems that Charles, the defendant, came to them after leaving his previous firm, in no small part because Jack and Henry - the partners at this new firm - are white and black respectively. They are not blind to the racial complexities of the case, and they spend a lot of time trying to come up with exactly the right legal tactic to get Charles off the hook. Much of this conversation is complicated by the presence of their assistant Susan who is, herself, a young black woman. The discussions are characteristically crass and cruel as they reflect on the dark, dirty world we live in. There is a manufactured ambiguity about the ending that doesn't seem entirely successful to me, as I don't think the play has built in enough benefit of the doubt for us to buy into the uncertainty. And I don't think the social commentary is as incisive as he would like to think it is.<br />
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There are a few scenes and monologues that, for exactly the right, sharp-edged person, could be useful. But overall, I feel like I would be turned off listening to anyone say these things in an audition room or in a theatre. </div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-6670532474711214202015-06-30T21:11:00.001-04:002015-06-30T21:11:28.934-04:00Blood Relations<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #126 - <i>Blood Relations</i> by Sharon Pollock<br />
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Okay, it's become pretty obvious that the whole "Play a Day" thing has fallen away. But I'm still going to try to read and blog about as many plays as I can. So there!<br />
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<i>Blood Relations</i> is a marvelous psychological thriller that brings us the infamous story of Lizzie Borden. You know:<br />
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Lizzy Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks.<br />
When she saw what she had done, gave her father forty one.<br />
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In this play, an actress comes to visit her friend Lizzie Borden, as she does fairly regularly, it seems. But today, she finally asks the question: Did you do it? Did you, Lizzie? Lizzie doesn't answer her per se, but lets her step into her shoes instead. The Actress goes on to play the role of Lizzie as she interacts with her father, her sister, her step mother, and her step uncle. And Lizzie herself steps into the role of the maid/narrator, leading The Actress through what might have happened in those days leading up to the death of her father and step mother. By the end, The Actress is pretty sure she has the answer, but Lizzie doesn't give us the satisfaction.<br />
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It's a very cool play (by a prolific Canadian playwright, which is also cool, eh!) with a wonderful sense of theatricality and the macabre. It does a great job of reviving this infamous mystery - and keeping it present and exciting. There are a lot of great roles for women, and the storytelling is clever. I look forward to working on this one some time!</div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-61311465962740460792015-06-24T17:57:00.002-04:002021-12-29T20:09:29.373-05:00A Midsummer Night's Dream<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For the last four summers, I've spent a month in Moscow seeing some of the most exciting theatre I can imagine. It's hard to explain exactly what is so magical about what we see over there, but a lot of it boils down to theatricality. They are not so tied down to "realism" as we are in the US. They are interested in imagination, in vivid visual communication, in using imagery at least as powerfully as text. There is an understanding that theatre is unique in its ability to make magic happen in front of our eyes.<div>
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That was what I saw in Julie Taymor's production of <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i>. It was broadcast as part of Fathom's series of live theatre in movie theatres, and the closest location for us was in Gettysburg, PA. So we drove two hours and sat in a nearly empty theatre waiting. Eventually we probably ended up with about 20 people. And those 20 people shared a remarkable evening together.</div>
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The film was preceded by a brief interview with Julie Taymor - sort of a full screen version of director's notes in the playbill. She talked about the way in which her Puck invites the audience to dream, and the ways in which the characters experience all the nightmares of love before embarking on their happy marriages. The images laid over her introduction, in my opinion, gave a little too much away, but they also elevated our expectations. We couldn't wait to begin.</div>
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The sheer inventiveness of the staging was a delight. The use of flowing white cloth as clouds, dresses, the bower, walls, a cyc... and whatever it needed to be was deliciously theatrical and so well choreographed. The fairies spoke in this beautiful, discordant almost-chant. They were mostly children, and Taymor used other performers in black or in fairy garb to move them around, allowing their movements to feel fluid and other-worldly. The forest was made out of bamboo and chorus members - it was something that the lovers had to negotiate in a very real way as they made their way beyond the gates of "civilized" society. The use of shadow and projections was discerning and powerful, taking every advantage of the technology and budget available, but without beating you over the head with it. The lovers were charming - particularly Helena. The way they slowly lost their clothes as they lost their minds was similar to the way things progressed in a production I was in several years ago - down to Lysander taking a good, sultry whiff of Helena's shoe. Bottom's donkey head was amazing! It was all out donkey, but it also retained the nose and facial hair of the actor, so it was sort of delightfully cartoony. Plus, the actor had two little hand pieces that controlled the mouth and lips of the head, which created such a realistic, but still delightfully theatrical effect! Puck was an amazing, double-jointed, slightly androgynous figure whose strangeness made our dear Robin Goodfellow a clear denizen of this dream world. Oberon was so beautiful - his fluidity of movement and resonant voice were out of this world. And his journey from gleefully tormeting his wife to growing tired of the silliness was articulated better than I have ever seen it before. Titania was sexy and powerful and had these awesome lights on her costume that kept her face constantly lit, so sometimes it seemed like her head was just floating. The mechanicals were Brooklyn workmen with personality and passion coming out their ears. The rotund black man playing Wall was a particular favorite for me (Greenville folks: Mr. Jason may well have a doppelganger!). And after all the hilarity of <i>Pyramus and Thisbe</i>, a moment that stopped me in my tracks was Thisbe's discovery of the dead Pyramus. It turned out that Flute could really act - and he had the audience on stage, in the live theatre, and in the movie theatre holding our breath. It was really beautiful. </div>
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This ended up being one of my favorite kinds of productions to see: it's one that gave me tons of ideas, but not necessarily the ideas that I saw. The imagery and interpretation were exciting - and I'm sure I'll end up stealing some things from this production one day. But much more exciting were the ideas I found myself coming up with. The production was inspiring. I found myself seeing things in this familiar script (one I've performed twice and seen... I don't know how many times) that I hadn't seen before, or that I was seeing in a new light. And I walked away with ideas of my own that had grown out of being so close to such excellent work. I love watching good theatre that makes me want to make good theatre.</div>
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Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-53860657771752683012015-06-20T16:39:00.000-04:002015-06-20T16:39:23.068-04:00Goodbye Charles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #125 - <i>Goodbye Charles</i> by Gabriel Davis<br />
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This is a weird little one-act about a woman named Jill whose husband Charles, after a year and a half of their distant marriage, has suddenly disappeared and demanded a divorce. The story is told by little memory vignettes that pop in and out of the conversation as Jill relates her woes to her friend Barb (who has problems of her own). There are expeditions to Mt. Everest, deceitful cheesemongers, support groups for commitment-phobics, awkward dates, leprechaun ex-husbands... and more freakin' typos than can reasonably be excused in a middle school essay. But still, the play itself is sort of fun, lends itself to some interesting staging conventions to keep the pace clipping along, and there are decent monologues for 20-somethings, which is always valuable. And, when you get down to brass tacks, the central idea that happiness can't be attained by trying to force people into our own idea of it, is pretty swell too.</div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-89373102700484328752015-06-19T16:37:00.001-04:002015-06-19T16:41:34.236-04:00The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Play #124 - <i>The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls</i> by Meg Miroshnik<br />
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Well, it's clear that my "play a day" endeavor has fallen by the wayside. But I still have an awful lot of plays to read, so I'm going to keep going and see how far I can catch up! And that starts with a very cool little play that made my Russian heart happy! I was supposed to be in Moscow this month for my fifth summer, but life intervened... and this little play made me feel just a little less homesick for dear Москва!<br />
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The story starts out with Annie (the Americanized version of her Russian name Anya) who had come to the US when she was just a child with her mother Olga. Now, Olga is sending her back for a few months to improve her Russian and to "reap her rewards." While there, she will be staying with her not-really-Aunt Yaroslava Yanovna. While she's there she meets Masha, Katya, and Nastya who all have their own <i>skazka</i> (fairy tale) to tell. But, as is often the case in fairy tales, things are not always what they seem. Auntie Yaroslava may well be the fairytale witch Baba Yaga. Masha may not be exaggerating when she calls her boyfriend a bear. And things never go well for the evil queen, now do they? Deliciously contemporary twists on old stories skip back and forth across the stage (along with some dastardly enchanted potatoes... for realsies), and we can't help but wonder what it really means to live "happily ever after"... or if anyone ever does.<br />
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The play is full of stories and fantasy. It bends reality, asks for some creativity in staging, and it's written for six women, which is always a plus in my book. The dark tone is so affectionately and authentically Russian, it would be such an exciting journey for the cast and the audience alike! </div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-64979384984424125682015-05-21T13:29:00.002-04:002015-05-21T13:29:57.529-04:00The Last Few<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Over the last couple of days, I've read the last few plays I was assigned as a reader for the Frostburg State University New Play Festival. And here are my super generic thoughts:<br />
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Play #120 - A sort of overwrought drama about a young couple and their terrible loss. Mostly, it sort of felt like a Lifetime movie.<br />
Play #121 - An attempt at religious symbolism with some interesting stage directions and not much else. No real payoff to the cool title. But this writer is clearly a visual thinker... in a longer piece s/he might have more time to flesh out the world created by the visuals.<br />
Play #122 - A clever play in the not-so-distant future with a few people caught in a catastrophe. Good characters, good arc - probably the best play in my pile.<br />
Play #123 - Not terribly written, but I don't have a lot of time for the "No, Christians are the persecuted ones!" argument. So... big ol' nope from me.<br />
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And with that...I'm 18 plays behind my goal of one play every day of 2015. And I open <i>Nunsense</i> tonight, which means I don't have to spend so much of my days memorizing and such, so I should have time to get back on the horse! </div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-43074926867456642862015-05-17T21:42:00.001-04:002015-05-17T22:50:30.726-04:00Not Game of Thrones<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Even though I may or may not have spent six hours watching <i>Game of Thrones</i> today, I also managed to come up with some time to read play #116: a sort or boring historical piece; and #117: a charming little family drama - easy on the schmaltz. Then there was #118: a family drama about which I had a little hope early on, but its too pat and, frankly, insensitive resolution made me pan it pretty hard. Reading as many new plays as I have in my life, I can usually feel when a play is probably autobiographical... and I can almost always tell when that autobiographical story is intended to argue an unpopular position as being reasonable. Perhaps it's unfair of me to pan a mediocre play for its clashing with my own ideology... but I guess that's what the "wild card" rating category is for. Then there's #119: a sort of interesting - if a little ham-handed at times - historical crime piece.</div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-84950127991032334332015-05-14T13:13:00.000-04:002015-05-14T13:13:40.189-04:00Continuing On<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Though I am unable to post the titles of my current Play a Day tasks, I do want to keep my tally going, so today I have a very boring #114, and a very enjoyable #115. So, here on the 134th day of the year, I'm only 19 plays behind. And this does not include the two plays I've attended, and a play by a friend of mine that I read, and definitely should have posted about... so maybe I'll post about his play later, just to keep my count complete.</div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-1675003023300019122015-05-13T11:25:00.000-04:002015-05-13T12:04:43.297-04:00New Play Festival<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As I've mentioned on my twitters, I've had to take a bit of a hiatus from my ambitious project of reading one play every day - mostly by women playwrights - because I've been cast in a production of <i>Nunsense</i> with an exceedingly short rehearsal period, so most of my time is spent working on choreography and songs and lines, oh my!<br />
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That said, I'm also participating as a reader for the annual Frostburg State University New Play Festival, so I'm reading more than a few plays in this role. Of course, I'm reading them blind, so I don't know who wrote them. And I'm supposed to remain anonymous as well, so I won't be able to post the titles. But... I'm back! So...<br />
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Yesterday was #112<br />
Today I read #113... and will probably read a couple more!<br />
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Here's to getting back on the horse!</div>
Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8718921472344034987.post-17191112670717275952015-04-29T00:29:00.000-04:002015-05-02T14:17:48.110-04:00The Open Door<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Play #111 - <i>The Open Door</i> by Hana Mironoff</div>
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16-year-old Vera is drawing when Mr. Frampton arrives, having been referred here by his sister for a nice rest to settle his nerves. She shows him her drawing of her aunt, which is apparently quite unsettling, and begins to explain to him why the doors to the garden are open so late in the year: it seems her uncle and cousin and their dog died a tragic death three years ago, lost in a big while out on a hunting trip. And her aunt, unable to deal with the loss, leaves the door open as late as she can each day, hoping that they will return. Some nights, she says, you can even still hear them singing an old song. When Vera's aunt comes to greet Mr. Frampton, she sends Vera to fetch him tea , and tells him what lovely hunting weather they are having. She suggests that her husband can take him hunting during his visit. Mr. Frampton is visibly disturbed by this conversation, outlines his many illnesses, and sweats profusely. When he hears an old song wafting in the doors, it is all too much for him and he dashes out...just as Vera's uncle enters, fresh from a lovely day of hunting. He wonders about the strange man who just rushed out, but Vera explains that he is terrified of dogs because of a night he spent hiding in a grave from some fierce dogs. Finally, when the aunt discovers Vera's drawing, she explains matter-of-factly that Mr. Frampton was taking up drawing as part of his therapy. And they all settle in to tea.</div>
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This play is based on a short story, and it's really pretty delightful. I love the image of the board rich girl creating her own entertainment out of the people who surround her.</div>
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Jenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00134375427385717686noreply@blogger.com0