Life, theater, and science fiction
Oct. 25th, 2008 06:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragojustineLife exploded. Had cockroach problem, had to bug-bomb the place (the one downside of this living arrangement. It is the LEAST bug-resistant living place I have EVER seen. I might get fewer bugs if I lived in a tent. Gah) Have INSANE WORK to do before the 31st, going crazy. Keep setting meetings with people, often waking up insanely early and driving long distances to see them, only to be stood up, because people are flakes and they SUCK. Grrr.
My book club picked Merchant of Venice for this month, as it was apparently the only production of the Dallas Shakespeare company this year that everybody hadn't already seen. My first time seeing it performed, as well, and man, is it more disturbing to see and hear than it is to just read. I mean... wow. Skeevy, skeevy, horrible play. That said, I love seeing stagings of Shakespeare (this one, for instance, made some kind of bizarre costume and prop choices that will be fun to talk about in the group) and I love talking about the ways theatre grapples with and plays against text.
As far as wrangling with/playing against text, there was some lovely subtle acting on the part of both Shylock and Jessica- she embraces him impulsively the last time she sees him, and his reaction is a moment of such pure joy and confusion, followed almost instantly by a retreat to his gruff and borderline cruel dialog, obviously borne of a discomfort with that level of overt emotion. Then during the famous bit where he mourns the money and jewels she stole, you get it again- a man utterly at sea, completely unable to cope with or channel the depth of grief he's feeling, retreating to money to save face in front of his business associates and also because he utterly lacks the emotional vocabulary to do otherwise. They spotlighted Shylock's heart attack during the final revelry and showed his business associates finding him, and ended the play on Jessica lamenting- a fragment of the Kaddish? I think? I can't say for certain, because I'm an uneducated idiot, but I suspect and some use of the Kaddish at the end is fairly traditional now in this play, isn't it? All in all, I'd say the production was not extraordinary on the technical merits, but the Shylock half succeeded in what it was trying to do emotionally. (As for the Portia half, local reviews say it was good. I don't know, I think it's inane, but that's objection to text and not staging and it's my own issue)
The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century, ed. Harry Turtledove.
First, I need to get over my amusement that Harry Turtledove edited this. Did I miss when he stopped being anything other than a punchline? Anyway, good collection. Enough stories I'd already read that it looks like I need to stop grabbing "best of..." collections and start using "year's best..." instead. I've read more classic SF than I think I have.
The range is from the utterly classic (Bradbury, "A Sound of Thunder," L. Sprague de Camp, "A Gun for Dinosaur"), through the utterly standard and predictable (Clarke, "Time's Arrow"), into the experimental but disappointing (Haldeman's "Anniversary Project" squanders a rare, creative, and truly alien setup with a non-sequitur joke ending), into a small list of the truly gorgeous.
-The Man Who Came Early (it's in there somewhere- that's a bad link), Poul Anderson, is a lovely time-travel antidote for aggrandising fantasy like "Connecticut Yankee." Our misplaced traveler is woefully unable to skip hundreds of years of technological evolution in a single bound, but he is drawn with subtle and sympathetic characterization and I adore the POV.
-Fire Watch, Connie Willis, is wonderful because all Connie Willis' time-travel is wonderful. Trademark bleak humor intact.
-The Price of Oranges, Nancy Kress- yes, that's a torrent link. It's REALLY worth downloading. I have absolutely no words for how much I love this story. The perspective is of an old grandfather pining for the Good Old Days and mourning the dissolution of culture and American society, only to end up- subtly and perfectly and with difficulty and without too much aviliciousness- seeing the other side.
-A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula K LeGuin. She's LeGuin. Enough said. (I admire that woman more than any other writer currently alive. And more than most dead ones). I regret not finding the full text of that, so here- have the full text of one of the greatest SF shorts ever written: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. If you do SF Utopia/Dystopia/Moral Dilemma/Historical Allegory AT ALL, that story is NOT OPTIONAL.
Side note: I used to prefer male SF writers by a vastly disproportionate margin, and now that tendency is completely reversed. I have been known to joke that I used to be a fanboy (Start Trek nitpikcing! Gaming and hard SF and boy-style geekery!), then I found fanfic and gradually became a fangirl. I say it as a joke- but it's really true. The preponderance of male names in this anthology bothered me, whereas I would never have noticed it in 2001, and now the slightly different social and emotional concerns of the three female authors in here really resonated. They wouldn't have, before fanfic. My balance of friendships has shifted pretty dramatically, too.
My book club picked Merchant of Venice for this month, as it was apparently the only production of the Dallas Shakespeare company this year that everybody hadn't already seen. My first time seeing it performed, as well, and man, is it more disturbing to see and hear than it is to just read. I mean... wow. Skeevy, skeevy, horrible play. That said, I love seeing stagings of Shakespeare (this one, for instance, made some kind of bizarre costume and prop choices that will be fun to talk about in the group) and I love talking about the ways theatre grapples with and plays against text.
As far as wrangling with/playing against text, there was some lovely subtle acting on the part of both Shylock and Jessica- she embraces him impulsively the last time she sees him, and his reaction is a moment of such pure joy and confusion, followed almost instantly by a retreat to his gruff and borderline cruel dialog, obviously borne of a discomfort with that level of overt emotion. Then during the famous bit where he mourns the money and jewels she stole, you get it again- a man utterly at sea, completely unable to cope with or channel the depth of grief he's feeling, retreating to money to save face in front of his business associates and also because he utterly lacks the emotional vocabulary to do otherwise. They spotlighted Shylock's heart attack during the final revelry and showed his business associates finding him, and ended the play on Jessica lamenting- a fragment of the Kaddish? I think? I can't say for certain, because I'm an uneducated idiot, but I suspect and some use of the Kaddish at the end is fairly traditional now in this play, isn't it? All in all, I'd say the production was not extraordinary on the technical merits, but the Shylock half succeeded in what it was trying to do emotionally. (As for the Portia half, local reviews say it was good. I don't know, I think it's inane, but that's objection to text and not staging and it's my own issue)
The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century, ed. Harry Turtledove.
First, I need to get over my amusement that Harry Turtledove edited this. Did I miss when he stopped being anything other than a punchline? Anyway, good collection. Enough stories I'd already read that it looks like I need to stop grabbing "best of..." collections and start using "year's best..." instead. I've read more classic SF than I think I have.
The range is from the utterly classic (Bradbury, "A Sound of Thunder," L. Sprague de Camp, "A Gun for Dinosaur"), through the utterly standard and predictable (Clarke, "Time's Arrow"), into the experimental but disappointing (Haldeman's "Anniversary Project" squanders a rare, creative, and truly alien setup with a non-sequitur joke ending), into a small list of the truly gorgeous.
-The Man Who Came Early (it's in there somewhere- that's a bad link), Poul Anderson, is a lovely time-travel antidote for aggrandising fantasy like "Connecticut Yankee." Our misplaced traveler is woefully unable to skip hundreds of years of technological evolution in a single bound, but he is drawn with subtle and sympathetic characterization and I adore the POV.
-Fire Watch, Connie Willis, is wonderful because all Connie Willis' time-travel is wonderful. Trademark bleak humor intact.
-The Price of Oranges, Nancy Kress- yes, that's a torrent link. It's REALLY worth downloading. I have absolutely no words for how much I love this story. The perspective is of an old grandfather pining for the Good Old Days and mourning the dissolution of culture and American society, only to end up- subtly and perfectly and with difficulty and without too much aviliciousness- seeing the other side.
-A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula K LeGuin. She's LeGuin. Enough said. (I admire that woman more than any other writer currently alive. And more than most dead ones). I regret not finding the full text of that, so here- have the full text of one of the greatest SF shorts ever written: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. If you do SF Utopia/Dystopia/Moral Dilemma/Historical Allegory AT ALL, that story is NOT OPTIONAL.
Side note: I used to prefer male SF writers by a vastly disproportionate margin, and now that tendency is completely reversed. I have been known to joke that I used to be a fanboy (Start Trek nitpikcing! Gaming and hard SF and boy-style geekery!), then I found fanfic and gradually became a fangirl. I say it as a joke- but it's really true. The preponderance of male names in this anthology bothered me, whereas I would never have noticed it in 2001, and now the slightly different social and emotional concerns of the three female authors in here really resonated. They wouldn't have, before fanfic. My balance of friendships has shifted pretty dramatically, too.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-26 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-26 01:27 am (UTC)