in this place at this time for this reason

adding machine closing this weekend

Mrs. & Mr. Zero

Adding Machine, the musical adaptation of Elmer Rice's play, closes its New York run this weekend at the Minetta Lane Theatre.

We already know that the musical theatre form can be sublime even when it is dark, but Adding Machine is as grim an example as you will find.  I found it exciting and recommend taking a shot at any tickets that might be left.  You might even be able to get a $25 ticket through ticketmaster.  The code is AM2525.

ghost story

I saw the Wooster Group's Hamlet yesterday and haven't stopped thinking about it.

The production reminded me of one of those movies about an old haunted house and a team of paranormal investigators who set up camp for the night armed with special equipment, perhaps a psychic or two, and nerd-like ingenuity and zeal.

two hamlets

Hamlet was that haunted house, specifically a grainy film recording of a 1964 Broadway performance with Richard Burton in the title role.

For all of the liberties taken by the Wooster Group, by the end it seemed to me that the ensemble had been as much affected by Hamlet (both Burton's and Shakespeare's) as it had been transgressed by them.  Far from simply an exercise in deconstruction, the performance arrived at a rousing and surprisingly heartfelt place.  I am still trying to process how that happened.

qotd

If you could write like one fiction author, who would it be?
Submitted by Marilyn.

Angelacarter002

I feel temperamentally suited to hosting the spirit of Angela Carter, which seems as good a way as any to narrow down a difficult choice.  Ms. Carter passed away on February 16, 1992, three months shy of her 52nd birthday.   

Angelacarter001

far away

Far Away (2002 production)

Saw Flashpoint Theatre Company's full production of Caryl Churchill's "Far Away" last night, nearly a year after having seen a simply staged reading of the same play at the Wilma Theatre.  A beautiful and horrifying play under any circumstances, it moved me more the first time out, even script-on-music-stand.  When the language and dialogue is as finely and tightly orchestrated as they are in this play, it seems, only the simplest of choices in acting and staging are required to unleash the play's power full force.  Present the lines clearly, underlining only the bare minimum of operatives.  Choose one's focus clearly, acknowledging little more than another person on the stage with you.  Don't play scared, don't play old or

Far Away (2004 production)

young, simply allow the words the room they need.

There are few enough plays in this world so well written that they can be treated with such graceful understatement.  It is understandable that young directors might bring their full array of tools to bear on a play every time out, because most of the time their ingenuity is needed.  But not so much here, not for this great play. 

QotD: Life-Changing Books

What are five books that changed your life? 
Inspired by Ms. Genevieve.

Not necessarily my favorite books, but they each mattered in their time ....

Look at America: The Country You Know and Don't Know, by the Editors of Look Magazine
    --a photo collection, all b&w, that kept me fascinated for much of my childhood, its images lurking in me like recurring dreams even as my parents took my sister and me on a series of long distance automobile trips cross-country and throughout the west.
Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne
    --my transition from pulp scifi and Classics Illustrated to full-blown literature, and the first instance in which I carried around a heavy, hardcover book as my constant companion.
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
    --restless at 16 years of age.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    --the first tragedy that really meant anything to me personally.
Twelfth Night, or What You Will, by William Shakespeare
    --the play that I come back to over and over again.

hunting and gathering

If you are willing to spend the time drilling through layers of the New York Times online, you can find multimedia nuggets such as the link on this page -- http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/11/16/theater/reviews/16sudd.html -- wherein Carla Gugina narrates over a slideshow of the Roundabout Theatre's recent production of

carla gugino

Tennessee Williams' "Suddenly Last Summer" (in which she performed as Catherine Holly, a role in which Elizabeth Taylor once earned an Oscar nomination). Since theatre is one of the ephemeral arts, I am easily seduced by this kind of technological outreach.  The New York Times has just become a little more of a time sink for me.

Though I have no time for time sinks.  Ozona (a serial drama) simmers half-cooked.  My episode, #1, still requires a final scene.  Robin's episode #2 lives in a slightly different country than that of episode #1, while Robert's episode #3 belongs to another continent.  We need to be better in sync, even as we await the added complication of Joy's episode #4.  It's a difficult collaboration, this project, different from, say, a television series not only because it happens live on stage but because television writers heed the direction of whomever signs their paychecks.  We have no such boss, we only have me, the head writer, and the good faith of all involved.

need coffee

the gross clinic

Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic will be staying in Philadelphia.  More than 2,000 people have donated $25 million dollars, while the remaining $43 million will be paid by the Art Museum of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, who will share ownership.  The current owner, Thomas Jefferson University had planned on selling the painting to a museum in Arkansas, raising an outcry.

The 1875 scene depicts a surgery being performed at Jefferson Medical College and was considered too important to the artistic heritage of the city to be allowed to leave.

It is a dreary, drizzly day out there.  Eighteen dollars and change in my pocket.  I have many more pages of writing to do for the Ozona Project, and I need coffee.

glynn turman

Wilma Theatre, Philadelphia, December 20, 2006.  An actor at the top of his game. 

glynn turman

I will have to go back to see "Cooley High" again and catch up with "The Wire" sometime when I can rent the series and run the gauntlet from season one through season X, but for now I have Mr. M of Athol Fugard's "My Children, My Africa" etched in my mind thanks to Glynn Turman's living embodiment of a fierce, pedantic, passionate, and ultimately fragile South African schoolteacher. 

It is the look in Turman's eye that lingers: the flicker of inspiration long on the brink of despair.  A distillation of life under apartheid, though I shudder at knowing that I have seen that look elsewhere as well.

I remember

shrimp etouffee

The shrimp etouffee at Rita Mae's Kitchen in Morgan City, Louisiana.