Before you read what is probably close to what I would have liked to print on www.Bwog.net if the privilege were mine to have limitless time in editing, I must apologize to Jonah Block-Johnson. Your play wasn't sexual. I've mended my review to more closely represent my thoughts on the word-play and its context. Also I fail to mention in all my review the wonderful band that introduced each play. They bellowed out a balls-out rendition of Strauss' Also Spracht Zarathustra and brought down the house. Jonah was the conductor of the band. They stole the show in between every play, though they of course peaked early with the Strauss.
-Thomas Anawalt
------------------
A night of student plays by any other name might not smell as sweet. Shall I compare thee to a Latenite anthology? Thou art more zany and more whimsical. A tad longer, too. The playwrights of KCST’s Egg and Peacock Festival were given starting lines for their works, and had to hand off a line for the next writer to take it and run with it. The imposition of the start/end lines offered playwrights the opportunity to dictate the silliness of what followed.
The night opened with "Demographics," (written by Chas Carey, directed by Will Scheussler) a more or less uninteresting power play between women. Enter highlight number one, Gabe Miner in frump-drag. "The Rise and Fall of Big Bank Films" (written by Andrew Martin, directed by Kate Stahl) came next and a funny little play it was. It involved prophesies of the upcoming election and drinking and clever dialogue. And I can't say for the life of me who or what the play was about. The third play, "The Abolition of Compassion" (written by Matt Herzfield, directed by Ameneh Bordi) contained the funniest scenario of the evening. An Islamic terrorist, played by David Iscoe, waltzes into a ladies room with thundering heavy metal, ready to kill, but refuses to gaze upon a breast. The fourth play, "Happiness in General," (written by Gabe Miner, directed by David Gerson) proved that opening the door from the hallway to light the darkened stage doesn't work dramatically and that dialog should always be audible. Mike Molina's play, "The Merit Badge" ended the first act. The direction by Dan Blank came together very well with the actors like a nightmare sitcom. Lakshmi Sundaram and Catherine Atwill played convincing boyscouts in the unlikely situation of cutting off murderers' dicks and deciding to ingest the evidence. With and without words, the two boyscouts received the biggest laughs of the 2 and a half hour marathon.
The second act was not for quitters. "Two Sausages" (written by Jonah Block-Johnson, directed by Mark Holden) was a mystery about sausages, dictated from the line at the end of Molina’s play, “Last time you said that, I was holding two sausages!” A change of subject at the start of Act II, while arguably impossible, could have been refreshing. "Old Lady Gets the Sack" (written by Josh Syzmanowski, directed by Beck Pryor) tickled me, I will admit. Sadly this was at the portion of the performance where the length of the individual plays started to become apparent. Jeff Julian wrote a play in which he played a writer who wrote poeticism into porn-scripts to the effect that nobody ever screws. This piece, "Esmerelda Does Edinburgh," (directed by Morgan Hardy) had its moments and was fairly convincing as a low-budget porn shoot set. Trying to find a tasteful way of calling it a period piece is not possible. The elaborate if not rather linear "Ruses are Red" (written by Abby Rosebrock, directed by Jake Green) contained several sex twists that repeated and repeated. Last but not least is "President Ricky Writes a Story" (written by Tyson Brody, directed by Jesse Horowitz). The play imagined a book series dedicated to a first Gay President, President Ricky. The series of novels was wrapped in a play about the peculiarities of artistic freedom, its imposed and natural boundaries as concerns profitability.
Fresh out of the 24 hour writing process, I can't badmouth one play for slapping the art of theater in the face. If anything they all slapped the face collectively together, and made merriment of it. Even the worst of the plays had its merit. If it wasn't the acting making up for the lack of apparent story (or vice versa), count on the sometimes beautiful and shocking moments that happen after a time-warped creative process like Egg and Peacock (one of the plays projected Obama as the Dem Nom and future prez). Though it looked like the writers had a good time, the rules seemed to limit rather than inspire dialog. A lot of the plays could have been sliced in half or maybe knocked off a third and still gotten the point across, if the play happened to have a point.
3.19.2008
Scandinavian Filmcourse 4
The line drawn between Alexander and Hamlet could be easily dismissed were Igmar Bergman's genius not comparable to that of William Shakespeare. Alexander, the young boy in Bergman's somewhat autobiographical film, "Fanny och Alexander," is haunted by the ghost of his father, a man of the theater who valued the little world inside of the theater's four walls. The value of the theatrical realm comes across from his father almost as an attack on the outside world. The film, from that moment forth, is an attempt by Bergman and by Alexander to ameliorate the father's grievances about the world outside the walls of the theater. In real life, Bergman's father was a clergyman, not an actor or director, but Bergman sees fit to haunt his cinematic alter-ego with the paternal ghost of the theater, as Hamlet's father famously haunts Shakespeare's Danish Prince.
If the Ghost in Shakepeare's "Hamlet" saught bloody vengeance and restoration of the crown, the vengeance which young Alexander takes up has a more subtly contrived artistic bent than an overt political one. Bergman always confronts the question of religion and punishment, but in "Fanny och Alexander" he breaks from the methods of his father and takes up a punishing force all his own. The step-father in the film enacts a ritual lifted from a practice of Bergman's real father, a clergyman. In his autobiography, "The Magic Lantern," Igmar Bergman describes the beating he'd receive from his father as well as his delight at his older brother receiving the brunt of the punishment. He continues, "After the strokes had been administered, you had to kiss Father's hand, at which forgiveness was declared and the burden of sin fell away, deliverance and grace ensued." Without any supper and without a bedtime story he would be sent to bed, relieved that the punishment had done its job. Pain was not the difficulty for Bergman so much as the humiliation. No doubt, he grew to resent his father's administration of this punishment, evidenced by the replacement of his biological father with the man of the theater in "Fanny och Alexander."
Whatever his artistic drives and wherever they were born, in no way could their origin be said to derive from any kind of certainty. Haunted by the ghost, like Hamlet, Alexander does not share with the Dane the clarity of a task. He can only look upon the ghost and remind himself, no, I am not Hamlet. As he is not the heir to a throne, let alone someone with a clear incentive to achieve that throne, Alexander's purpose becomes lost in mystery. Bergman enacts the mystery through Alexander's participation in witchcraft, the ultimate subversion of the Protestant church.
Bergman shares with Carl Theodor Dreyer a sympathy for the categorical sinner and persecuted enemy of popular religion. Where Dreyer seems to embrace witchcraft along with any of the evil power associated with it, Bergman can't help but explore the problems therein. No clear answer exists against the church, for even the union between Alexander and dark forces are born out of an emotional rebellion rather than ideological alignment against the tenets of faith. The sorcery which results in the fiery death of Alexander's gluttonous bed-ridden aunt is an expression of the boy's power over those who look down upon him, but it cannot be appreciated unless the artistic voice has expression here as well. Just as Bergman is able to usurp the his biological father with a ghost of the theater, he set fire to a figure of pomp, laziness, and superiority. He can use Charles Dickens, as well as witchcraft, to envelope the oppression and hypocrisy of his childhood in a conflagration. The importance of the action is artistic.
The massive aunt never deals directly with Alexander and as such the fire which consumes her must be symbolic. She is the representative of inertia and indifference facing the treatment of children within Sweden's religious household. Worse than the Step-father, this woman (played by a man) has no feelings of a higher calling to justify her slothful acceptance of the world around her, but has to be cared for as a sinless, joyless, inhuman blob. Witchcraft provides a haven for Alexander to destroy the aunt without being judged. Essentially it doesn't matter where his feelings can find expression so long as they can be expressed without the necessary retaliation of corporal punishment. He turns to another world, a system without a pretense of righteousness.
At the conclusion, Bergman does not retreat into the beautiful little world of the theater revered by Alexander's father, though one could certainly argue for the inclusion of the theatrical world at the film's conclusion based simply upon the nature of film. This story of Alexander's escape from the old religious household exists as a part of a fictional cinematic world. As Alexander is able to do once his rebellion finds expression, the darkness associated with the witchcraft elements has to be set aside as a means to artistic expression for Bergman and an emotional expression for Alexander. What occurs at the end of the film is a retreat into a newly conceived household, and a repetition of the ghost-father's reverence for the little world of the theater. The new world is that of the family, in which a man's sins are not the burden of the world so much as they are the burden of his wife, who will bear them, if she is wise, with a certain amount of forgiveness. It is by such forgiveness that Bergman imagines a happy household, regardless of moral imperfections.
If the Ghost in Shakepeare's "Hamlet" saught bloody vengeance and restoration of the crown, the vengeance which young Alexander takes up has a more subtly contrived artistic bent than an overt political one. Bergman always confronts the question of religion and punishment, but in "Fanny och Alexander" he breaks from the methods of his father and takes up a punishing force all his own. The step-father in the film enacts a ritual lifted from a practice of Bergman's real father, a clergyman. In his autobiography, "The Magic Lantern," Igmar Bergman describes the beating he'd receive from his father as well as his delight at his older brother receiving the brunt of the punishment. He continues, "After the strokes had been administered, you had to kiss Father's hand, at which forgiveness was declared and the burden of sin fell away, deliverance and grace ensued." Without any supper and without a bedtime story he would be sent to bed, relieved that the punishment had done its job. Pain was not the difficulty for Bergman so much as the humiliation. No doubt, he grew to resent his father's administration of this punishment, evidenced by the replacement of his biological father with the man of the theater in "Fanny och Alexander."
Whatever his artistic drives and wherever they were born, in no way could their origin be said to derive from any kind of certainty. Haunted by the ghost, like Hamlet, Alexander does not share with the Dane the clarity of a task. He can only look upon the ghost and remind himself, no, I am not Hamlet. As he is not the heir to a throne, let alone someone with a clear incentive to achieve that throne, Alexander's purpose becomes lost in mystery. Bergman enacts the mystery through Alexander's participation in witchcraft, the ultimate subversion of the Protestant church.
Bergman shares with Carl Theodor Dreyer a sympathy for the categorical sinner and persecuted enemy of popular religion. Where Dreyer seems to embrace witchcraft along with any of the evil power associated with it, Bergman can't help but explore the problems therein. No clear answer exists against the church, for even the union between Alexander and dark forces are born out of an emotional rebellion rather than ideological alignment against the tenets of faith. The sorcery which results in the fiery death of Alexander's gluttonous bed-ridden aunt is an expression of the boy's power over those who look down upon him, but it cannot be appreciated unless the artistic voice has expression here as well. Just as Bergman is able to usurp the his biological father with a ghost of the theater, he set fire to a figure of pomp, laziness, and superiority. He can use Charles Dickens, as well as witchcraft, to envelope the oppression and hypocrisy of his childhood in a conflagration. The importance of the action is artistic.
The massive aunt never deals directly with Alexander and as such the fire which consumes her must be symbolic. She is the representative of inertia and indifference facing the treatment of children within Sweden's religious household. Worse than the Step-father, this woman (played by a man) has no feelings of a higher calling to justify her slothful acceptance of the world around her, but has to be cared for as a sinless, joyless, inhuman blob. Witchcraft provides a haven for Alexander to destroy the aunt without being judged. Essentially it doesn't matter where his feelings can find expression so long as they can be expressed without the necessary retaliation of corporal punishment. He turns to another world, a system without a pretense of righteousness.
At the conclusion, Bergman does not retreat into the beautiful little world of the theater revered by Alexander's father, though one could certainly argue for the inclusion of the theatrical world at the film's conclusion based simply upon the nature of film. This story of Alexander's escape from the old religious household exists as a part of a fictional cinematic world. As Alexander is able to do once his rebellion finds expression, the darkness associated with the witchcraft elements has to be set aside as a means to artistic expression for Bergman and an emotional expression for Alexander. What occurs at the end of the film is a retreat into a newly conceived household, and a repetition of the ghost-father's reverence for the little world of the theater. The new world is that of the family, in which a man's sins are not the burden of the world so much as they are the burden of his wife, who will bear them, if she is wise, with a certain amount of forgiveness. It is by such forgiveness that Bergman imagines a happy household, regardless of moral imperfections.
3.04.2008
Sweltering Freeze
Hear, my nothing
The laughing ghost
As cries for blood
Spilled like more rain
On a warm winter's day
The laughing ghost
As cries for blood
Spilled like more rain
On a warm winter's day
3.02.2008
Suspected of Suspense
Were you Alfred Hitchcock raised from the dead
Were you. Drizzling will... won't shut up and leave me.
It will only cramp my style. How depressing.
Quit telling me that less is more because I am
Smart enough to know; less is less and
More is to be gotten from "less" than from something
Which is "more," - too much or too little -
Never and anywhere
Between the middle
Were you. Drizzling will... won't shut up and leave me.
It will only cramp my style. How depressing.
Quit telling me that less is more because I am
Smart enough to know; less is less and
More is to be gotten from "less" than from something
Which is "more," - too much or too little -
Never and anywhere
Between the middle
Jingle of Gingle
Can the Heavens never cease
To admit a something
In making themselves
Somewhat better than Earth
And yet can the Earth
In its infinite worth
Make some claims to the birth
Of the concept of heaven
To admit a something
In making themselves
Somewhat better than Earth
And yet can the Earth
In its infinite worth
Make some claims to the birth
Of the concept of heaven
1020
Corpunctual longing and hard woven tweed
Thirsty small girls knowing and not how to get a drink
Fifty-four pieces of silt and filth
Gums of madmen and current Presidents
Jasper and Halloway joking around
The 27th time
Jew ducks from El Nazarino
Jolted jingles and 1 jester
In jacketless humiliation
Dancing a waltz by himself
And cope is a word you just learned
Thirsty small girls knowing and not how to get a drink
Fifty-four pieces of silt and filth
Gums of madmen and current Presidents
Jasper and Halloway joking around
The 27th time
Jew ducks from El Nazarino
Jolted jingles and 1 jester
In jacketless humiliation
Dancing a waltz by himself
And cope is a word you just learned
3.01.2008
The Gutter Body
You can think there's a girl
Just over the highway you cross
Before the fields of wild berries
Underneath the orange peel
Found caught between
The smallest of the middle toes
Hey. That's where she is.
Just over the highway you cross
Before the fields of wild berries
Underneath the orange peel
Found caught between
The smallest of the middle toes
Hey. That's where she is.
Us, fools
Did it or didn't it find some way of realizing what it was? The simple question that you can't answer. Forget about that anyway. You want to know what brought me here. Sorry. You want to know why I brought you here. I brought you here because of Love and Theft. That's right, the whole fucking album. Because it cuts. It has many songs, separated and riddled with cuts. Spaces made. Spaces that already exist are half the site of a cut. Who did the cutting at the Grand Canyon but the river? Certainly not mules. That's a river running long before we got there. And when I say we, I don't mean settlers. I mean the settled. The Television City Kids, numbed by the false horrors that they enjoy them. The ones who thought they knew less than old warrior folks until September 11, 2001. After that point it became increasingly apparent to them that they knew more. By the time 2008 came around we had dethroned a dictator in another country. That's worked out for us in the past so we gave it another shot, but it wasn't just some shot. It was a shot of his hanging and inspection and of a war. The war we fight thrives upon our fear of the people who come in and out of our building. What have they done to us? Fools. Fools... fools... fools.
Please please America, whoa yeah, like America pleases you.
Please please America, whoa yeah, like America pleases you.
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