“Stop all the troops: here’s Mother Courage!” (Mother Courage and Her Children)

Ahahahaha, yeah, I’m kind of late with this…

I liked this play more than I thought I would. It was a fairly easy read, and allowed me to see where many modern plays are coming from in their thinking and presentation. The songs were interesting.  I liked The Song of the Three Great Men the best, because it blatantly had a message, to the point of being humorous (even more blatant than the others, I thought), that being Virtuous will done get you killed.

I also enjoyed the character of Mother Courage, even though her morals were a bit skewed sometimes. I was brought up on the idea of survivalism.  Not stepping on as many people as possible to make more (unneeded) money, though… but doing whatever you can, eating whatever’s edible, wearing whatever’s not ripped to shreds, and, every once in awhile screwing people over who might not entirely deserve it, just so that you and the people you love don’t have to go entirely without.  That’s why, even though it was a bit shitty of Mother Courage to bargain for Swiss Cheese’s life, I could understand where she was coming from.  Her wagon was her sole source of income, and she had KaTtrin (and herself, for Kattrin’s sake) to think about.

Oh, so here’s a super short clip I found of a production of Mother Courage and Her Children:

It looks to be set in the Wild/Old West. I think this is an interesting take.  The wagon certainly lends itself to it.  And you could think of the Protestants as Cowboys and the Catholics as Indians.  I can imagine Elif signing up to be a cowpoke and then slaughtering whole families of Indians…

~Jessie

“Tiny little shoot. Tiny little white shoot. All hairy and fragile.” (Buried Child)

My initial reaction to this play was one of disgust. Which isn’t to say I didn’t like it as a play,  but after reading Buried Child, I felt naseous and ansty and itchy…  which, frankly is odd, because I eat up this crazy twisted shit all the time. I’m not really sure what set off my disgust… Incest baby? Mummified, unburied incest baby? Finger rape? I think it was a combination.

The rabbits my mom raises are almost all born of mother/son coupling.  As long as you don’t mate brother/sister, you won’t get any weird genetic crap.  With rabbits, sons humping away at their mothers is A-okay!

BUT THESE ARE HUMANS.  OH GOD. Don’t give me any of that “Maybe it’s metaphorical incest” crap. If you need convincing that it’s an incest baby, head over to Christine’s Journal, where she collected a disturbing amount of quotes.

There’s a sick part of me that is slightly curious to know who initiated. Was it Halie, who had not been touched by her husband for several years? Or was it Tilden, who I’m guessing didn’t have much interaction with the ladies? I’m more likely to guess Halie, because frankly she seems like the type to come on to forbidden people.  A man of the cloth, her own son, you know, stuff like that. Then again, she does say of Tilden:  “He never listens to me Dodge. He’s never listened to me in the past.”  Maybe Tilden didn’t listen when she told him “No.” And then you get Incest Baby.

All in all, I didn’t particularly like any of the characters in this play.  I hated them as people, but as characters I found them all pretty fascinating. Especially when you get into the symbolism and the parallels with Arthur Miller plays.  It gave me the distance I needed to appreciate the play.

~Jessie

P.S. Video for you! There was nothing good on Youtube for Buried Child, just a bunch of “previews” and no actual performances. So instead, I’ve found a video of the death scene of the terrifying creepy baby… thing… from the David Lynch movie Eraserhead.  Be warned, this movie is probably the most effed up of David Lynch’s movies, and not for the faint of heart.  The sounds that the “baby” makes alone is enough to give you nightmares.  (For less effed up Lynch-ian shit, I recommend Elephant Man.)

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

“A father is a father!” (All My Sons)

Sooooo… I actually don’t have much to say about All My Sons that I haven’t already talked about in class.

I enjoyed the play way more than I thought I would. I was expecting another mild disappointment a la Joe Turner. Hooray for pleasant surprises!

This was an explosive drama.  There was boatloads of anger and sadness, etc. and all of it was readily expressed by the characters, either with shouting, threats of phyisical violence, or actual physical violence. There was little that was subdued about All My Sons.

I liked the way that the tension built.  It was interesting that, whenever it felt like, okay, here’s the climax… one of the neighbors seemed to come in and “ruin it.”  It resulted in a bunch of mini climaxes in the 2nd half of the second act, and the third act.  Kind of like a roller coaster ride.

I couldn’t  condemn Joe completely.  His methods, yes.  But his intentions, no.  He was trying to do his best by Chris in terms of money and business.  Or, y’know, at least what he thought was best, since Chris honestly didn’t care about all that stuff.

So, I was curious… did anyone think that after Joe’s suicide, Chris and Ann still get married? That they take Kate’s advice, and “live”?  I’d like to think so…

~Jessie

P.S. I looked on Youtube for a good clip.  I found “All My Sons Final,” I thought it was going to be the part where they read Larry’s letter and Joe shoots himself.  As it turned out… well, you’ll see:

“Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty” (“Doubt,” duh)

I loved this play. I loved the movie (Meryl Streep was fantastic, and so was Viola Davis).  And I really hope I can bum a ride or catch a bus in order to see it onstage in Pittsfield.

I put this in the same class as Spinning into Butter (and Amadeus, to a slightly lesser extent), in the fact that I cannot shut up about it.

Sister Aloysius reminds me of my grandmother, who has been dead since I was 10.  My grandmother was a strong-willed Roman Catholic woman, who was capable of the most tender love and terrifying fury.  She opened soup kitchens and took in people who were down on their luck.  A mother of 11, she was one of those “good” Christians, who practiced what she preached, and believed not so much in the institution of the Church, but in the good of the Church community.  Okay, they may not be that similar (I can’t quite imagine Sister Aloysius reading fantasy novels with the same enthusiasm as my grandmother did).  But their similarity lies in their strength, and in their lack of caring about what other people think of them, and in their willingness in doing what they believe to be right. I honestly believe that, if my grandmother was in the same position as Sister Aloysius, she would have done exactly what she did. And as such, I feel an inability to condemn Sister Aloysius for her actions.

…So, enough of that. Let’s get the discussion a-rolling.

“I have doubts! I have such doubts!”

What do you think Sister Aloysius’ doubts are, exactly? Is she having doubts about her actions?  Doubts about her religion?  Doubts about being somewhat responsible for inflicting Father Flynn on more unsuspecting children?  Doubts about an institution that would promote a man she honestly believes to be a child molester?  Doubts about whether or not Father Flynn really is one?  An all-consuming doubt that encompasses EVERYTHING? (My opinion: I’m leaning more towards doubts towards religion and the church).

And for that matter, what happened to her certainty? Where along the line do you think it faltered? (My opinion: probably around the time she found out Father Flynn had been promoted)

Do you think John Patrick Shanley, if we asked him, would know the answer to these questions himself?

~Jessie

“You shining like new money!”

Overall, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is my least favorite of the plays we’ve read so far. That isn’t to say that I think it’s a bad play, by any means.  I can appreciate it’s literary merit and it’s author, much like how I thought The Tempest was incredibly boring and mostly lame, even though I fangirl the hell out of ol’ Billy Shakspur.

I didn’t really connect or relate to any of the characters, not like I did with Sarah in Spinning Into Butter or Salieri in Amadeus (oh god, I can connect to Salieri… what does that say about me as a person?).  Maybe it’s because I’m white? Then again, Salieri was an Italian straight from Italy, a man, and a musician… and I’m not. It could also have to do with the fact that the characters are more like stand-ins for symbols than actual full-fledged characters.  Out of all of them, I think I could relate to Mattie the most, as her abandonment issues and futile hopefulness are something I know too well.  Though I didn’t relate to him, I thought Bynum was pretty cool. I have a soft spot for conjuremen, and he seems like he would be fun to perform. If I was a black man. I’m pretty sure there’s no way in hell I’d be able to play him the way I am now.

Also, Molly’s hypocrisy kind of annoyed me. Yes, okay, I understand she’s found a way to survive without working. That’s great. But she says she doesn’t need men, when she TOTALLY DOES. She depends on them to take an interest in her looks, and to provide for her and pay for her expensive habits. And when a  man doesn’t work out, she moves on to another. Sure, she can say that she doesn’t depend on any ONE man, but to say that she doesn’t need men at all? Honey, you would be doing laundry right alongside Maddie if it wasn’t for them.

Granted, you could say her dependency on men isn’t so much a “need” as a “want of taking advantage of good fortune,” but whatever.

I also really dug the written speech in the play. It was very well done, and was my favorite part overall. As I was reading the play, I could actually hear the dialogue in my head. I don’t understand why a lot of people found it hard to read, I actually thought it made the reading easier, because, for me at least, it breathed a little life into a play I wasn’t really excited about.

~Jessie

P.S. Not many good video choices on YouTube for this one. But here you go, the Juba scene:

(Also, are you as annoyed with the giggling idiot theatregoers as I am? Way to ruin a powerful scene, girls!)

“Why he got to be bigger than me? How much big is there? How much big do you want?”

After “Spinning into Butter,” and all the things it made me think, and all the things I wanted to say (and did), and the teeny bit of emotional investment I have put into hoping that the movie does not suck… I can’t help but think that “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” was a bit of a letdown.

Most of it, I think, has to do with the fact that so much of the play deals in metaphors and symbolism and other such hidden things.  I take most things that I read at face value, and it’s very hard for me to find these things without a bit of help, whether it be from extracurricular readings (if I’m interested enough), or hints from a teacher/professor. Once I’ve been led to water, and if the water is interesting enough, I will most certainly drink. (SEE WHAT I DID, THERE.)

I think the one time where I was honestly able to pinpoint these things for myself was in an awesome 11th grade paper I wrote on Frankenstein (the final copy of which has sadly been lost to computer death) on the different pursuits of knowledge for each of the main characters (fame/glory vs. finding oneself, that sort of thing), and the tolls each of these pursuits have.  I was extremely proud of that paper, and the fact that not only did I create the paper topic myself, but that I unearthed every single one of those hidden things on my own, only having to look them up after the fact for a Works Cited page. The loss of that paper pains me to this day.

I’m sorry to have gotten soooooo wildly off-topic, but, as an English major, the fact that you need to beat me repeatedly over the head with a metaphor bat is embarrassing, and totally cripples any hope I have of being an English professor at some point. Not that I want to, but the option to be a competent one would be nice.

As this has gotten a bit to long for me to actually go into my thoughts on “Joe Turner” without this becoming a monster post, I’ll write a second post about the actual play… probably tomorrow morning.

~Jessie

BREAKING NEWS!!!

Sooooo… I found a trailer for Spinning Into Butter on Youtube:

DISCUSS!

My two cents: What they’re showing of the forum scenes isn’t awful… also, the black reporter has completely taken the place of Ross. Minus the romatic entanglements. Maybe.

<3 Jessie

Simon, Rebecca Gilman, and the Horror of Writing in a Voice That is Not Your Own

I really loved Spinning Into Butter.  Seriously, I wish we were spending another week on it, because there’s just so much left to say.

First off, I think the fact that Simon is never onstage is brilliant. Instead of showing the audience who he is, and how others react to him when  in the same room as him, our view of him is solely from how everyone else sees him, whether its Sarah, Strauss, or Meyers. Like how you can know of a person before you get to know them. You draw your own conclusions on them based on the opinions of others, and can even grow to dislike them even before seeing their face. Lord knows I’ve been guilty of it in the past. To some extent, so has everyone.

The fact that Gilman didn’t want to write Simon because she is white, though it’s the tinyest bit of a cop-out… as I writer, I can see where she’s coming from. People tell you to “write what you know.” There are times where I’ve baulked at writing certain characters, or even setting my stories in certain time periods… because I don’t feel like I have the authority.  Most of my stuff is set in present day (1980′s-2000′s), because that is what I know. Even when I try to research a specific time period, I always feel like I don’t know enough to be able to do it justice. Most of the characters I’ve written have been white (or, alternately, unspecified). Be it black, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, whatever, I always feel that there is so much to these cultures… their speech, their history, their dress, their attitudes, etc. that it is just so daunting that I shy away.

Then there are the white writers who try, and fail miserably. There’s this one crime novelist, Jeffery Deaver, whose books are quite enjoyable when you are sick of classic literature.  Engaging plots, and well-written characters. But one of them, The Twelfth Card, mostly takes place in Harlem. The plot was still top-notch… but let me tell you, the dialouge was downright AWFUL. Whenever Deaver had the black characters talking, I wanted to shoot myself. It was so forced, and unrealistic, and everytime he used a piece of slang like, “dawg” he felt the need to explain it’s meaning to the reader. “Oh hey look you guys, I did my research! Look I can write black characters!” You can tell it’s some pasty white guy writing this drivel, because the dialogue is written the way white people think black people talk. I really wish my copy wasn’t 2 hours away from here, because I would totally pick out some choice phrases for you all.

Jeffery Deaver’s failure in writing characters of a different ethinicity than himself has turned me off nearly completely from even wanting to attempt it. I’m too afraid of the shit writing that would inevitably come from it.

I know how blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans, etc. talk. I pay way too much attention to people’s speech patterns not to know. I know when dialogue is spot-on, and I know when its off. But would I be able to recreate spot-on “ethnic” speech myself? Probably not. Hell, even with dialects that I have written, like Southern and Irish, I’ve never been 100% comfortable with how I write them.

I’m well aware how hypocritical this all sounds. Hell, it might even sound racist.

So, in conclusion, I can see why Gilman didn’t want to write Simon. I wouldn’t want to, either.

~Jessie

“You put into me the perception of the incomparable … then ensured that I would know myself forever mediocre.” (‘Amadeus’)

There are just wayyy too many topics I want to cover about Amadeus.  It’s part of the reason I haven’t written my post until today.  I couldn’t decide what to talk about…

And then I said, TO HELL WITH IT.

Here’s a bulleted list.

• I liked Movie!Salieri more than Play!Salieri. Because the movie goes between Salieri’s point of view and omniscient p.o.v, we don’t get a play-by-play of every single thing Salieri did to screw Mozart over. There were times in the movie where I was almost fooled into thinking Salieri’s friendship with Mozart was genuine. I never got that feeling in the play, mostly because whenever there was a tender-ish moment between them, Salieri was only too eager to remind the theatregoers of his true intentions.
• I also liked the fact that, in the movie, Mozart never learned about his “friend’s” true intentions. Not only does it add to his character a childlike innocence that wasn’t as readily apparent in the play, it also plays up the illusion that Salieri is a decent human being. Mozart is just as fooled as we are, if not more so.
• I love the climax in the movie. When Mozart is telling Salieri what notes to write for what instrument/voice, I love that you hear each section as he says it. And then when they are done, the whole piece comes together, and it’s like you were secretly listening in on how music is created. Or something. Also, even though I love the onscreen dynamic of Mozart dictating the Requiem Mass and Salieri taking it down, it would never have worked onstage.  In fact, it would be quite boring, and look to the audience like some dude laying in bed with another dude writing. The play’s climax works just fine for a play, although I think that Mozart reciting a lullaby was a bit over the top. But so was everything else.

~Jessie

P.S. Videos for you.

An example of how much Amadeus has become a part of pop culture: A Family Guy spoof.

The climax of the movie, for anyone who didn’t get that far:

“I might have known you’d miss the point.” (‘Art’)

“Art” by Yasmina Reza.

Let’s be frank. I liked “Art”.  It was well-written, and I can imagine it performs quite well on stage.  But I did not love it.  Therefore, my thoughts about it will not be as excited or extensive as my thoughts on, say, “Amadeus,” which I love.

First off, even though “Art” is meant to be a comedy, and it is promoted as such, and even though there are amusing parts in it (especially the olives), and the whole thing is probably very funny onstage… reading it, I actually thought it was kind of sad.  Here are 3 guys, who have been friends since forever, whose bonds are nearly torn apart because of a stupid painting (and underlying issues projected onto said painting which they are unable to communicate until it’s too late).  And I felt particularly sorry for Yvan.  Marc and Serge treat him like shit.

The white painting with white lines (bought for 200,000 francs) is Serge’s way of showing people that he has taste and class.  Not unlike how people will pretend they like wine, just so that others will think they are dignified.  Except Serge isn’t pretending.  From what he says about it, and from how he reacts when Marc says the painting is shit, he genuinely enjoys his painting.  Or at least has deluded himself into believing that he does.  Whichever.  It would be the same to him either way.  The painting is also Serge’s version of a wife.  Yvan has Catherine.  Marc has Paula.  Serge… has his white painting with white lines.  And he reacts the same way they do when his painting isn’t liked as when their wives characters are insulted.

The painting also seems like Serge’s version of a midlife crisis. Instead of getting a convertible… he gets an expensive painting.

~Jessie

P.S. Here’s a really funny version of Yvan’s monolouge: