The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: side_show on January 21, 2006, 06:07:01 pm
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Hi all,
*sarcasm* So after having just the most wonderful time at the dinner theatre last night, *sarcasm"* I need to spend the entire rest of the weekend reading plays that have been submitted for a theatre festival, as I am on the jury, and since I like to share, I'd like to note that there is a lot of really bad shit out there. Just to keep myself sane, I'll be tucking in here every so often to update everyone on the garbage I've been reading. By the deadline on Monday, I'll have read thousands of pages of scripts upon scripts, and hopefully have a few decent titles picked out. I'm skipping my yoga class as you read this, so I'm already pretty cranky about this shit - I've been reading plays for over a month, and have yet to find anything all that good.
Of the 25 or so that I've read so far, here are the stand-out bad ones.
For starters:
One play was submitted by a girl who mentions in her cover letter that she has been institutionalized several times and hates her mother. She also states that she will perform the play herself, and notes that the idea for the script came to her when she met a stranger at the river and spent hours talking with him about a parallel reality/world. The play itself seems to be an angry rant at her mother, and is an unfocused rambling with no apparent theme or story, unless the theme is that the playwright is mentally ill and wants to have people sit and watch her be mentally ill for 2 hours. I almost want to suggest this train wreck for production, just because it would be fascinating to watch for all the wrong reasons.
Another play is about an alternate universe, in a home for unwed fathers, where men's ears grow large and blue if they impregnate a woman (the women show no signs of pregnancy) and if young men aren't "bonded" to their sex partners they are put into the above mentioned home.
I'm going to get back to it now.
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That is exactly why bitches have to take their cunt pills, man.
Seriously, though, artistic people by nature are slightly unhinged. It must be interesting to cross that line and experience the barely hinged too.
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Let me guess, the second one was also written by a woman. A woman with a child, and she gets no support from the father.
~Paul
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One play was submitted by a girl who mentions in her cover letter that she has been institutionalized several times and hates her mother. She also states that she will perform the play herself, and notes that the idea for the script came to her when she met a stranger at the river and spent hours talking with him about a parallel reality/world. The play itself seems to be an angry rant at her mother, and is an unfocused rambling with no apparent theme or story, unless the theme is that the playwright is mentally ill and wants to have people sit and watch her be mentally ill for 2 hours. I almost want to suggest this train wreck for production, just because it would be fascinating to watch for all the wrong reasons.
Maybe this is just my theater bitterness talking, but I would accept that thing, write a glowing cover letter about "the gripping portrayal of mental illness" within the play, and immediately cast a talented actress to read it. Ideally, don't even offer the playwright a place in the production.
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Paul - they are all written by women, the festival is a festival of one act plays by feminist women playwrights. Fem + Fest.
V- Yeah, casting an actual actor instead of the playwright would be a great "fuck you" moment, but the play is so bad that even the best performer in the world, doing the best performance of her life couldn't save this thing.
I have since read the 1st act of another play. All calls for submission clearly stated this was a one act play festival, so it's a pisser, especially because this one is actually good.
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You know... I'd actually consider that first one... the mind boggles as to what hideous insights or laughter I would gain from such a thought.
Or would I be pulled down into an abyss the likes of which I would never wake up from? Could this play truly be the Necronomicon in speakform?! BOGGLES I tell you!
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Don't these people realize that they're giving nice, normal, sane feminists a bad name?
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It may be a bad play, but come on, you gotta love the idea of men swelling up when they've gotten a woman pregnant. It is only fair.
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Oh yeah, and their ears fall off once the baby's born.
I actually thought the concept of the unwed father's thing was alright, but the execution is just terrible, to the caliber of the last half hour of SNL. Bleh.
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Oh yeah, and their ears fall off once the baby's born.
Uh... what?
So do men go deaf after they have a child? Does this apply to married/"bonded"/whatever fathers, too? Do the ears grow back? What happens if a man fathers a second kid?
I think the premise of "what if men changed physically upon fathering a child, and this led to new social repercussions for unwed fatherhood?" actually could be very interested if written thoughtfully, but this sounds like the opposite of thoughtful. Eegah.
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Uh... what?
So do men go deaf after they have a child? Does this apply to married/"bonded"/whatever fathers, too? Do the ears grow back? What happens if a man fathers a second kid?
It's fairly commonly known that men go selectively deaf shortly after marriage. It coincides with the woman's unexplainable and sudden revulsion to performing oral sex.
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AD - you get a tiny can for making me laugh. That is great.
V - only the giant blue ears fall off, the regular ears stay intact underneath, and are what's left when the other's fall off. And yes, the play is not written thoughtfully. It's is genearally a cut-and-paste version of a teen pregnancy after school special, only the genders are switched and it's ears instead of wombs. All with the councilor chastising the boys for being impure. All the good kid insisting that (s)he still loves me! All with the bad kid having been to the home many times and schooling the good kid in the way it is. It's bad. It's bad.
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Ears falling off wouldn't make you deaf. You don't hear with the outer ears!
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Ears falling off wouldn't make you deaf. You don't hear with the outer ears!
Well, wouldn't it at least make hearing harder? Since, y'know, no external structure to focus sound.
Really, I think I forgot all the ear biology I ever knew. I'm sort of ashamed.
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I never knew any ear biology in a theoretical sense, but we sure have pretty lame ears compared to a lot of other critters. We can't move them or anything. I can't imagine they're good for much except being funny looking and a good place to put earrings. And some animals have no outer ears at all so they can't be entirely necessary.
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They're erogenous.
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Paul - they are all written by women, the festival is a festival of one act plays by feminist women playwrights. Fem + Fest.
Ouch.
I started college classes this week for the first time in six years. Finally decided to wrap it up. My first reading assignment was a play about a professor accused of sexual harrassment. I groaned when I realized I was going to have to read it, but after the violent parts, I kinda liked it. It's kinda fun whipping up on all the 19 and 20 year-olds in the class. This is an introduction class and I've already gone up and through my Senior Seminar class - I'm just backfilling degree requirements after the long absence. It's kinda fun reading like this again. I couldn't be bothered before.
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Sounds like "Oleanna" by David Mamet. Was that the one? It's basically about a power struggle, like most Mamet plays, and the whole sexual harassment theme is really on the periphery of the central issue of the play - manipulation and the abuse of power. Who was it who said "abuse of power comes as no surprise?" I was trying to track the origin of that quote, but can't find the origin, I think maybe Shakespeare?
(FYI - if that is the play, there's a film version of Oleanna with William H Macy as the professor, which is boring as a film, but useful if you need to review the play.)
(Found it - It was artist Jenny Holzer (http://www.snacc.mb.ca/news_releases/nr990508-abuseofpower.html), but I saw her art show at the same time as I saw Richard III, hence why I thought it was Shakespeare.)
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Sounds like "Oleanna" by David Mamet. Was that the one?
A tiny can for the correct guess. It's a kinda weird pick for a first text to read in a class - maybe it's the prof's way of saying "Don't mess with me or I'll bring the heat!" - but I've found it awakened the nerd in me that likes to make shit up about books. Which, ultimately, is all literary criticism is really about, anyway. I compared John and Carol to the Sith today... that was fun.