The headline in The Onion ran; 4 Hours Scrolling Through Facebook Before Bed Referred To As ‘Winding Down’ (July 22, 2015) As is often the case, even now, twenty years on, their style of satire - which often consists of just saying true things pushed to logical extreme in flat, journalistic prose - exposing an Emperor who is already entirely exposed.
Last week I asked my wife to lock me out of Facebook, changing my password occasionally so I am denied access, like locking up the liquor cabinet.
I would prefer to have the wherewithal not to procrastinate, and to do the things I am meant to do. This summer I have been much more successful at reading, putting away three novels in the past month. Some has been research, but also fiction. Currently I am on my fourth summer novel, fiction which is also research; Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh.
Totally, odd ... I had asked my father for his copy and he forgot to bring it last weekend, but then as I was searching for a book for the girl to read I found his copy on one of our shelves at our house. I have no idea how that happened.
After a brief bit of confusion I have become entirely immersed in this tale of the "bright young people" in 1920s England. The picture of the Roaring Twenties from the other side of the Atlantic has similarities to that found in America, but like looking the wrong way through a telescope.
Young adults in Great Britain, for example, were the survivors of a generation slaughtered in the fields of France and Belgium during the Great War. Privation had taken a great toll on the established class system. They all just went a little nuts, drinking, taking drugs, throwing outrageous parties, pushing the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior.
I mean, America's "Lost" Generation was also behaving this way, only we seem so depressed and decadent, the British to be entirely disaffected and possibly demented.
As I continue my exploration of Agatha Christie's second novel The Secret Adversary, there are a few important elements which are drawing into focus. In the extremely helpful tome The Detective Novels of Agatha Christie by James Zemboy (MacFarland & Co., Inc., 2008), the author notes:
... unlike (her first novel) "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", ("The Secret Adversary's") characters are interesting and fun to read about ... the reader is treated right from the beginning to two loveable young people full of life and spirit ...(p.22)
Not monied as many of those real-life contemporaries written about by folks like Waugh and Nancy Mitford, Tommy was a soldier wounded in the war and now desperate for some kind of work, Also broke and with few prospects, Tuppence could return home to her family but as a modern young woman she would rather do absolutely anything else.
The manner in which they enter their business arrangement, which at first blush is practically an extortion scheme, retains the kind of disaffected pose that is so prominent in literature about young adults at that time. Christie herself was barely into her 30s when she wrote it and her dialogue is much more breezy and hip in this book than in her first.
There's also an awful lot of attention given to their eating, whenever possible, as thought they are constantly hungry, tearing into bread and tea when they have nothing, taking the opportunity for a meal whenever possible, and Tommy in particular obsessing about the time between feeding.
The summer has been eventful, so eventful, so full of
activity that I have not had the time nor energy to report upon BOY CAMP. (For
details see 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.)
The boy and I have had many opportunities, even this summer,
for time on our own. The women in the family have already had one away camp
(Blue Lake outside Muskegon, MI) but this weekend has for six years carried
special significance for the boy and I since the wife and daughter first headed out to Girl Camp in 2010. As the boy is now ten, it is only fitting that our
relationship to the weekend changed significantly this summer.
After making an afternoon maternity ward visit to friends
with brand new twins, we decided to heard directly to the bowling alley.
Bowling was the original, signature event way back in 2010 and so it was
imperative. However, it was not satisfying as he struggled to make do without
bumpers, perhaps for the first time. I was as positive as possible, and tried
to guide him to improve his play, without much success. We made a plan for the
rest of the weekend to look up from there.
We had the bowl early – if at all – because he his baseball
team was in the playoffs. The season had stretched on much longer than scheduled,
as many games had been cancelled due to all the rain. We lost the game, but it
was hard fought. (His team had been undefeated until the playoffs, only to lose
twice in double elimination in the final to this same team later in the week.)
For dinner in manly style we had hotdogs and cole slaw while
watching The Terminator. Yes, we watched The Terminator. I was concerned it
might be too violent – and it is – but not much more so than what he already
takes in on network TV. The boy said it was excited but very smart, and I have to
agree with him. Everything is so fast these days, fast and loud and active, the
boy was very intrigued by the mystery of the story. That’s the problem with
sequels, there’s no mystery to them, you know the world, you know the
situation. There may be surprises, but surprise and mystery are not the same
thing.
Saturday was given over to rock and roll. The entire day. He
had his private lesson at noon at School of Rock and then a ninety-minute
rehearsal with the band. They are working on a complete set of Joan Jett
numbers for September, but would be debuting a small number of them at the Cain Park Arts
Festival. The boy was extremely nervous about playing the Evans which is a very
large space, but the crowd was small compared to the size of the venue, folks
coming and going giving it a laid back vibe. He played very well after a false start, he keeps a
rock steady beat (he's the drummer) and I am proud of him.
That night we stayed up and watched This Is Spinal Tap. He’s
seen a number of rock music documentaries and films so I thought he’d “get it”
and he did so far as it goes. What I underestimated was his appreciation of the
many levels in which it is satirical (the Lick
My Love Pump gag went clear over his head) and exactly how its
improvisational elements are so amazing.
So, uh. So there. Wheep whomp.
Sunday morning was not one for lying in, however. I am
training for a marathon and wanted to get in a ten mile but I did not want to
leave him at home to watch videos of ADHD Millennials comment on Minecraft. So
he biked and I ran, through Lakeview Cemetery and the Uptown neighborhood (i.e.
CWRU environs) down to the Cultural Gardens. Two and a half hours of leisurely
running, biking, walking and talking.
Finally, and this is a fine tradition, we visited the
Lantern Theatre in the Big Red Barn, taking in another original theatrical
event focusing on local history. This year it was Eric Schmiedl’s Johnny Appleseed
featuring himself, his son Arthur, the surprisingly versatile Bill Hoffman and
the always delightful Valerie C. Kilmer.
The boy and I do get to spend a good deal of time together,
alone in each others' company. And he’s constantly challenging me, constantly
debating me. We have great conversations and even some intense arguments. But
we have a really good thing going.
The phone rings twice as a pre-dawn wake-up call which is enough to pull him off the couch, the couch made as a bed, his bed, to rouse him into another day of possibility, or chance.
He doesn't think, really, not even to process his dreams, just strips the sheets, folds them up to tuck them away until this evening. He swiftly dresses and shaves, within minutes striding across the cul-de-sac to his companion's idling car, heading off for the daily ritual, to hike to the peak of the Santa Monica Mountains and dash down the other side.
That accomplished, they retire to The Rose for strong, strong coffee.
The Rose - on Rose, of course - is another comfort, a place to reassure him that things are happening. It's a coffee shop, to be sure, a place to relax, but no one is relaxed his companion points out. Everyone is writing the screenplay (longhand - this is 1991) or pitching the screenplay, talking the good game.
Everyone has a project, she says. She's made a game out of it, walk up to a stranger, pretend like you know them, ask them how "the project" is going and they'll tell you, they'll tell you all about it.
In walks that b-level actor, he's been in some dumb movies, and more recently a supporting player on last year's hot TV show which may or may not have ceased production. He's someone or no one but his mere presence - a guy like that - validates the joint as a place for those who work, who make it happen.
Our man has a banana nut muffin. She, his companion, told him bananas contain potassium, which naturally alleviates anxiety, and though he would be much better served eating an actual banana, this moist, delicious treat has become his defacto power breakfast. It goes much better with coffee. He can justify the caloric intake by skipping lunch, daily.
No one is fat in L.A.
He never smoked in L.A. Never took drugs in L.A. He only drank when out, never in the apartment. Never cut his hair, either, which was a mistake. Wrote a postcard daily to his ex-girlfriend back home which was also a mistake.
The act of happening is happening. Doing the work. Sending the work. It helps if the work is good, but does it matter? Why not create the work and set it aside? Why publish? Why publish! Publication is reality. Publication is fact. Publication says I am here.
This evening they will skulk film shoots, walk the beach, hit Tower Records, it's all part of the work. She's having a reading for a script for Roseanne she's working on. He's never seen it, there's one line that doesn't make sense to him why it's funny. She says it's because he needs to hear John Goodman say it.
He is working on a newsletter, Notes From L.A., a collection of essays and cartoons about how lost and disillusioned he is with the the city. Matt Groening got started this way. He will print it and send it home and that will mean that it is all happening for a reason, that he is happening.
Pungent, black coffee. An empty muffin cup. Bright sunlight. Job interview at Friday's at 1:30 PM. That's in four hours. Writing can wait, time to hit the beach.
It is well-understood that watching emergency room dramas
can be very frustrating for actual medical professionals. Lawyers are the first
people who can tell you how unrealistic courtroom dramas are, and nobody has
ever talked the way they do on The West Wing.
Writers have not only to write compelling stories, but they
have the burden of accuracy. Even when writing a piece of historical fiction
like The Great Globe Itself, I needed
to know the facts before I could satirize them. Even when we are making things
up there can be a desire to fact-check, but fact-checking only goes so far.
When writing The Vampyres I invited an actual goth rock band to a table reading, and they
were entirely dismissive of the characters I had created. On the night in
question, a certain local professional cartoonist and non-professional social
critic also happened to be in attendance, and he thought their reaction was
hilarious. He said, “No, actually, guys like you are exactly like that.”
So, uh. So there.
Fortunately for theater artists, no one really writes about
our craft for popular media very much so there is little to be nitpick. One of the reasons the
Canadian TV program Slings and Arrows
is so popular among theater people is not for its accurate portrayal of “The
Life” but more because we’re all squeally like – “OMG, they’re talking about us!!!!!!’
Shortly after college my father recommended that I might be
interested in Light Thickens by Ngaio
Marsh, a mystery where the murder takes place during a production of Macbeth. At that point my professional
experience was not very deep, but I was immediately put-off by the director,
whose opening comments about each character, delivered to each actor sitting
around for the first read-through, were, I felt, horribly prescriptive. Add to that
several actors expressed their strong difference of opinion, right off the bat, and
engaged in a heated debate with the director, who insisted on the correctness of his
opinion.
Of course, there are directors who come forcefully at their company
like this, right at the start, though I am hard pressed to imagine the kind of
counter-argument emerging from the acting company in response, at least not at the
first blinking read-through. It just struck me as terribly false.
Let's read this corpse.
When in the first season of Slings and Arrows the avante-garde Darren Nichols begins his first
rehearsal of Hamlet by pronouncing, “This play is dead,” it is hilarious because
this is a comedy, and his is an extreme character. An extreme character much
like directors we have known or worked with, perhaps, but still. Suspension of
belief works differently for comedy than drama.
Recently, my wife checked out Emily St. John Mandel’s recent
novel Station Eleven from the library, for us each to read. I had actually taken the book to North Carolina and
back but was absorbed in other reading and actually didn’t get to it until our
final night on the road, the night of the women’s final against Japan.
Looking into a vast, bright and shimmering television screen,
transmitting images of a game of football being played entirely by women nearly three thousand miles
away – the actual game itself attended by over fifty thousand people, an
unimaginable number to be all in one place – myself lying between clean sheets in a
hotel buzzing with people resting in safety and comfort, without weapons, twinkling
ice in my plastic cup, drinking impossibly sweet and cool soda pop, the room alive with electricity and light after
nightfall, the internet magically passing around us and through us, well-fed with warm pizza
and fresh, green salads brought right to our room first by way of a gasoline powered
vehicle and then the elevator. After a long day driving in a car, one cooled by
air that just poured out a vent in spite of the eighty plus degrees outside,
with clean water in a bottle, still cool, recently filled from a tap, available
to all, and watching an exciting game, I read one page of this new work and
promptly fell into a comfortable sleep, without care.
Read the book? You get it. Anyway.
This tale follows a caravan of actors and musicians, The
Traveling Symphony, who roam a post-apocalyptic wasteland, making their living
by playing and performing the works of Shakespeare.
They’re talking about
us!!!!!!
I was most tickled by the different philosophies expressed
by company members of the troupe, and how even after the end of everything
actors and artists will be having the exact same debates about Shakespeare.
One
player is confident in the idea that Shakespeare transcends time, and that more
recent scripts are ground deep in a past that make them no longer comprehensible - let alone relevant - and that their decision to perform only his works, to the exclusion of all
other texts, is the best artistic decision to make.
Another artist privately believes quite the opposite, that
the works of Shakespeare are far too limited in their scope of human experience
and besides she hates Shakespeare but will keep her opinion to herself because
(ta-da) she works for a Shakespearean theater company.
There is also that age-old debate regarding costumes. Shouldn't
the actors dress as their audiences do, in the decades-old, well-worn everyday wear
of the past century? The thinking goes that if you perform Shakespeare’s text
in contemporary dress, you bring the work closer to your audience. I have heard this argument. I have made this argument.
Other characters believe theater is a unique occasion, an opportunity to be transported to a different time and place, to see something special. As such,
when the opportunity presents itself to ransack a long-abandoned home or school, to forage
for any useful supplies, a useless dress or a disregarded men’s suit –
unnecessary for survival –is to them a
valuable treasure.
John Wood, Alex Kingston RSC 1990
One note, however, near the very beginning of the book
struck me as entirely wrong. Departing a rather eventful performance of King Lear, just prior to that thing
which makes the rest of the book happen, our narrator makes note of the poster,
high above the Toronto streets. An image not unfamiliar to those who have ever
seen this play; the bereft, ageing king, cradling his dead, grown daughter
Cordelia.
I was shocked just to read it. I mean, uh, spoiler alert, Cordelia
dies at the end of King Lear. Most
know this and if you didn’t, well, so does Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Hamlet
(and practically everyone he touches) as well as Julius Caesar, they all die. Caesar doesn't even wait to the end, he dies in the third
act.
But which fictional marketing director gave the green light to putting
that image on the poster? Your main promotional image is the great tragedy at
the very end of the play?
As our marketing department at Great Lakes has been
conceiving of the season image for our Fall 2015 production, I have had the
opportunity to take in dozens of other images from professional productions
dating back a few decades.
Most are a dark, static depiction of an old man. I
saw John Wood play Lear in 1990, the graphic was of the king prancing in
madness, with a laurel of flowers on his head. A few include the Fool. Others
are abstract; when we saw Ian Holm play the role in 1997 the image was of an
eclipse of the sun.
The GLT season image for King Lear will not be released for
a month or so, but they did principal photography last week. Here is an intriguing preview:
Via Facebook. What will happen?
UPDATE: "Station Eleven" is now a series on HBO Max.
"It was 2 p.m. on the afternoon of May 7, 1915. The Lusitania had been struck by two torpedoes in succession and was sinking rapidly ..."
- Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary (1922)
Fred Spear
Years pass, history accumulates, and as momentous events (those which appear to affect the widest number of people) occur writers will write about them, later writers will write about them, and still later writers will write about them, each either striving to create a more accurate account of just what happened, or to press a specific point of view about just what happened, or maybe just to make a buck.
Erik Larson has written several books that I should have read already, including Lethal Passage which traces the history of a single handgun (this, written twenty years ago) and In The Garden of Beasts, about the American Ambassador to Germany during the rise of the Third Reich. Each of these interest me a great deal.
What I have just completed is Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, his most recent work, an account of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. Released to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the tragedy, Larson sheds new light on the sinking from the point of view of passengers who survived - and also from those who did not - as well as from the captain of the U-boat which destroyed it, and those in British intelligence who were monitoring the seas as best they could with early 20th century technology.
With this book he seeks to add to the historical account corrections, most significantly the fact that the German sub "U-20" had by its own account fired only one torpedo, not two. Survivors reported two explosions, in obvious succession, and their assumption was understood. However, British intelligence had intercepted U-20's communique about their attack and chose never to set the record straight. Even Winston Church, at that time First Lord of the Admiralty, intentionally repeated what he knew to be false in one of his books.
Larson does not solve the mystery of what actually called the subsequent blast, though he does have a well-educated theory which has much to do with the physics of calamity. Regardless, why did the British government perpetuate this significant falsehood? No doubt because if firing one torpedo at passenger liner with 2,000 innocent souls aboard was at that time unthinkable, firing two is worse.
This is hardly the only piece of misinformation perpetuated by British intelligence, and a good deal of Larson's work implies (though he never proves this) that they allowed the Lusitania - which had more than 100 Americans on board - be destroyed in the hopes of bringing the United States into the war.
While this plan, if true, may ultimately have been successful, it did not happen straight away. Woodrow Wilson had run a successful reelection campaign in 1916 based in part on his promise to keep the U.S. out of the war.
Cartoonist Winsor McCay, who had lofty and admirable ideas about the power of the new field of animation, was deeply affected by the event. He was at that time working for William Randolph Hearst, who also sought to avoid war with Germany, and compelled McCay to create anti-war editorial illustrations for Hearst papers.
McCay spent his own money to create what was at that time the longest animated cartoon - Sinking of the Lusitania - a photo-realistic recreation of the tragedy, which was of course not captured on any film or through photography. This was also the first time cartoon animation had been employed to depict serious, historical subject matter. He and his team took twenty-two months to create the work, which was released in July 1918. By that time, the United States had already been at war with Germany for more than a year.
Agatha Christie's second novel, The Secret Adversary, begins with a prologue set on the deck of the Lusitania as it was sinking. No mean feat, creating a fictional moment with which to begin a thriller set in a familiar historical context, one already well-reported at that time a mere seven years later. The ship sank in eighteen minutes, I would have imagined complete panic. Larson's book informs me that until the final moments a great many were relatively calm, and so Christie's brief exchange no longer feels unrealistic.
This is the final weekend for the Cleveland Shakespeare Festival production of The Life of Timon of Athens, which I directed. No critics chose to attend, no reviews have been published. So, for the sake of documentation, what follows is collection of unsolicited comments from satisfied audience members:
It was as though Shakespeare, himself, were present inspiring the actors
to enthrall us with his genius. Luke Brett played Timon with
overpowering wit and emotion. The cast and bonus songs by Gary Lee
completed what was a wonderfully satisfying performance. What a great
start to the summer's cultural season!
- Shiela F. (letter to the editor, Plain Dealer)
Congratulations to the cast of The Cleveland Shakespeare Festival's Timon of Athens for a job well done. Under David Hansen's
direction the production came across as a delightful morality play
leavened with humor reminiscent of the Commedia dell' Arte.
- Donald W. (via Facebook)
Saw Timon in Lakewood Park with my family. Outstanding show! Funny for sure but packs a wallop by the end. Highly recommended. - Fil F. (via Facebook)
Went to the Sunday evening performance of "Timon of Athens" at
Halloran Park and had a marvelous time. The actors soldiered through
some probably expected distractions, like the fire station right next
door ... But the show
was too good to be upstaged! Loved it! Well done, one and all!
- Robert W. (via Facebook)
And this is my favorite, not a review but a story following the Shaker Hts. performance:
A fun story from tonight's show - we met a lovely couple who, since
seeing a Shakespeare play on their honeymoon, have endeavored to see
the entire canon together. This was #34
for them, and because "Timon" is such a hard play to find produced,
they drove all the way from Cincinnati to see us! They were delighted
with the production.
- Cleveland Shakespeare Festival (via Facebook)
UPDATE: Also, this:
Timon of Athens was just the jolt of gleeful misanthropy I needed to get through the weekend." - Arthur C. (via Facebook)
Recently I had the privilege of meeting Jay Indik, one of the original architects of the school residency program in the 1980s. As GLT Education Director, he collaborated with other educators and theater artists not only to craft that program but also the outreach tour and Christmas Carol writing program. Basically, he put into motion the educational outreach programming which has been the major focus of my life.
He had the opportunity to visit the program in action at Hudson Middle School and was very happy to see how the lesson plan still functions successfully, and in his estimation, has improved. During our brief meeting we compared notes about the structure of the program, and also the rehearsal process. The Romeo & Juliet lesson plan, for example, remains largely unchanged in the past twenty-five years, though Lisa remarked how students in the past ten years have had shifting attitudes about the text.
No matter how sweetly our performers play the Balcony Scene, everyone – boys and girls – think Romeo is a total stalker. Not that that is a bad thing to think.
The residency Jay thought was always such a challenge to connect with students was Julius Caesar. He said it was sometimes very difficult for the students to appreciate or get the politics involved. Now, I am not sure what form that lesson took a quarter-century ago, but I do know that parts of it have changed significantly in the past ten years.
I mentioned the fact that recently we have entered into an arrangement with Hawken Lower School to teach Caesar to their fourth graders, which surprised him. However, as far back as my years as an actor-teacher myself I had the opportunity to conduct this residency for a middle school and was surprised to learn Julius Caesar isn’t about politics at all.
It’s about friendship. Think about it.
One of my favorite exercises is the Belief Circle. It’s on the second day, we have barely gotten to know the students, but we establish a safe space and everyone is asked to express something they believe in. It is never a debate, as to the validity of their beliefs, but rather and exploration of where they originate, how deeply they are held, and by design the conversation moves to how far one would go to defend their belief.
This is a delicate balance, as the comparison is drawn to Brutus, his core belief (in Rome) and his faithfulness to his friend Caesar, and we all know how that turns out. But virtually every student we meet has never had to stand up for what they believe is right. Sometimes what they believe stands in stark contrast to what I believe but we do not debate our beliefs, the discussion is the same. What would you do if your beliefs were challenged, by family, by friends, by the authorities.
In the version of the lesson plan which I received in the summer of 2001, one of the end-of-day discussions involve how a community (as in a school) reacts in time of crisis. The example set out in my notes had dust on it – it asked if I remembered the Challenger Disaster, which of course I did because I was the one in high school at that time. I wasn’t sure how that was going to resonate with students who had been infants.
You can see where this is going. By the time I even entered a classroom in my new job, we all had a fresh point of reference, and one with terrifying relevance. The Challenger was an accident. 9/11 was not.
Other issues have changed astonishingly in the decade plus I have been engaged in this work. Ten years ago, it was the better part of discretion for actor-teachers not to express controversial opinions as part of the Belief Circle.
As recently as last year, when substituting for an actor at an area high school, the entire discussion was about marriage equality, because the students themselves chose to discuss it. I was in the position of playing devil’s advocate, playing my part in the discussion to suggest obstacles to achieving or expressing the expressed belief.
For example, let’s say you were to create a Friends of LBTG group, and it were banned by the school authorities – such things happen. What would you do? Their answers might be tepid, and we press them, what would you do? What would you do? What would Marcus Brutus do?
Memorial Day weekend, as the Brelo decision was announced, I was disappointed but by no means surprised by the chorus of voices on social media not content merely to urge peace, but to qualify what is or is not an appropriate form of protest.
Merely shutting down traffic for fifteen minutes – an act coordinated between protestors and police – brought calls to “hang them all” from persons on Facebook, and not anonymously, either. Several tutted more gently, condescendingly reminding protestors to emulate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was as though they were intentionally ignorant of the fact that mildly inconveniencing Saturday afternoon traffic on the Shoreway was nothing to the kind of non-violent protests staged by the good Doctor.
What do you believe? Have you ever had your beliefs challenged? What would you do to defend your beliefs?
