Today's song of the day is "Street Fighting Man" by The Rolling Stones on Beggars Banquet. Release 1968 on Decca.
8.29.2010
8.28.2010
8.27.2010
song of the day - Marie Marie
The Song of the Day is a live version of "Marie Marie" by The Blasters.
8.26.2010
8.25.2010
song of the day - Somewhere over the Rainbow
The song of the day is "Somewhere over the Rainbow" by Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole
8.24.2010
8.23.2010
song of the day - I'm Looking Through You
Today's song of the day is "I'm Looking Through You" by The Beatles from Rubber Soul
8.21.2010
8.20.2010
song of the day - The Only Living Boy in New York
Today's song of the day is Simon & Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" from the album "A Bridge of Troubled Water", 1971.
8.19.2010
8.18.2010
8.17.2010
8.14.2010
The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
Because I am forever on the freeway, I love audiobooks. I just finished "The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York" by Deborah Blum, Narrated by Colleen Marlo. Loved this audiobook. It discusses the beginning of forensic science, poisoning, famous poisoners, politicians, prohibition, and scientists. The narrator was spot on. It was a little grizzly at times, but never too much. I highly recommend it. See the link for better reviews than mine.
8.13.2010
Review Guidelines
As part of a theatre class I took from Professor Theresa Larkin at Cal State L.A., I had to attend and review ten live performances in ten weeks. I liked her very much. This is what I learned. It was neither taxing, nor expensive and it was a wonderful experience. Unfortunately, once I was no longer compelled by threat of failing a class, I slowed my pace of attending live performances to a crawl.
I have to say that the requirement to review the performances made me think of them in a much different way. I learned and gained a great deal more from my experiences that way. Here are the guidelines for my reviews.
PARAGRAPH 2: The general information regarding the content of the play. Cite one of the major elements of:
1. plot - sequence of actions that promote the development of the story and the relationships of the people
involved.
2. character - personalities of the individuals in the story
3. theme - the message, the meaning and the purpose of the work
4. music - instrumental, cultural and personal rhythms of the play or people who populate the world of the
play.
5. diction - both verbal and non-verbal mode of communication
6. spectacle - the visual content of the play. Specifically, all environmental staging which includes props,
stage setting lighting and costumes, scenic design elements and physical elements in relationship to one
another (mise-en-scene).
7. convention - the acceptable morality, customs or implied style and mode of behavior given time
frame, milieu and locations of play.
PARAGRAPH 3: Cite particular elements that stood out to you and why. Same list as paragraph 2!!!! You may select one to write on!!!! (her exclamation points, not mine).
PARAGRAPH 4: Express your studied opinion and emotion response to the play or film. Identify whether this work was worthy of your time. Praise or criticize.
PARAGRAPH 5: Summarize what you saw, what you thought about it and complete your critique with a final artistic or philosophical statement.
FOCUS: Have fun, apply yourself and you will do extremely well.
I have to say that the requirement to review the performances made me think of them in a much different way. I learned and gained a great deal more from my experiences that way. Here are the guidelines for my reviews.
STYLE
Use your own words and your own thoughts. Do not copy another writer's ideas or wording. Be creative and trust your instincts. You'll get the hang of these one-pages in about 2 to 3 papers - so be patient with yourself and begin to critique.CONTENT
PARAGRAPH 1: All introductory information: The name of the play, playwright and or author, leading actors, (if you desire), Producer, Theatre and the date which you view the work.PARAGRAPH 2: The general information regarding the content of the play. Cite one of the major elements of:
1. plot - sequence of actions that promote the development of the story and the relationships of the people
involved.
2. character - personalities of the individuals in the story
3. theme - the message, the meaning and the purpose of the work
4. music - instrumental, cultural and personal rhythms of the play or people who populate the world of the
play.
5. diction - both verbal and non-verbal mode of communication
6. spectacle - the visual content of the play. Specifically, all environmental staging which includes props,
stage setting lighting and costumes, scenic design elements and physical elements in relationship to one
another (mise-en-scene).
7. convention - the acceptable morality, customs or implied style and mode of behavior given time
frame, milieu and locations of play.
PARAGRAPH 3: Cite particular elements that stood out to you and why. Same list as paragraph 2!!!! You may select one to write on!!!! (her exclamation points, not mine).
PARAGRAPH 4: Express your studied opinion and emotion response to the play or film. Identify whether this work was worthy of your time. Praise or criticize.
PARAGRAPH 5: Summarize what you saw, what you thought about it and complete your critique with a final artistic or philosophical statement.
FOCUS: Have fun, apply yourself and you will do extremely well.
Review - Moliere's The Misanthrope at Harriet and Charles Luckman Fine Arts Center, June 21, 2000
Wednesday last I attended a performance of Moliere's The Misanthrope. The production was staged by "A Noise Within" at the Harriet and Charles Luckman Fine Arts Complex located on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles. The June 21st performance was directed by Sabin Epstein and featured Mark Bramhall, Joel Swetow and Abby Craden in the primary roles of the iconoclastic Alceste, the diplomatic Philinte and feline Celimene.
I found the most remarkable element of this performance to be the spectacle, or visual components within the work. The featured costume work helped create two distinct ideals. Although this play was written in 1666 France, the clothing created an overall sense that the action was taking place in the twentieth century. Secondly, the costume changes, and lack thereof, set the foremost figure of Alceste apart from the other primary roles.
Firstly, the costumes melded different twentieth-century-era clothing styles to create an attractive and familiar look. The modern sex-kitten prototype was created via the replication of a 1950's era Celimene clad a la Marilyn Monroe replete with red haltered frock, red feathered hat, red pumps, shiny red lips and dripping rhinestones. Complimenting this stylized ideal, the 1940's strong man was recreated in the double-breasted dark suits of Philinte and Alceste. Philinte was a bit complicated (as was his character) with a combination of pinstripes, fedora, handkerchief and a boutonniere, whereas Alceste presented a simpler facade in a dark, solid-colored suite paired with a simple turtleneck and suspenders. The 1920's were present in the Gatsby-like outfit worn by suitor, Acaste, while his vaguely regal companion Clitandre was clad in vaguely twentieth-century dark suit and blue sash, worn jauntily to the side as one would imagine Prince Reiner wore to woo the yet-to-be-Princess Grace. Secondly, in the final scene, all the key players changed into seventeenth-century court costumes, complete with powdered faces and flowing wigs, whilst Alceste remained stalwartly in the same outfit. His lack of a costume change visually demonstrated his unwillingness to participate in the masquerade (ball) of the group dynamics.
On a positive note, I would like to say that the acting was impeccable - I was held enthralled and absorbed by the performance. But on a negative note, while on one level I enjoyed the uncomplicated visual cues the character's costumes offered - there was a sense that any subtlety one might have gained at simply observing the characters was lost - because their personalities were dished out on a (fashion) plate. Similarly, Richard Wilbur translated the play from the original French version into English. I would imagine that the original French version had a rhyming quality because his translation for this performance's speech patterns where heavily rhymed. Needless to say, something may have been lost in the translation, or I could have simply been caught up in the witty banter the rhyming helped create, but I found myself so caught up in how the characters were speaking, and what they looked like, that I could hardly remember what they said. So in short, the combination of the costumes and the speech patterns detracted from what I felt could have been a truly outstanding play.
The performance of Moliere's The Misanthrope was marked most profoundly by a bold use of the twentieth-century costumes to modernize a seventeenth-century work. The idealized costumes, as well as the lack of a costume change for the main character, too clearly defined the character's personalities. The actor's performances were first-rate, but the costumes, along with the rhyming banter, detracted from a sense of curiosity that compels an audience member to become enraptured in a play. While I enjoyed The Misanthrope very much, I felt disappointed in the lack of subtlety or depth.
I found the most remarkable element of this performance to be the spectacle, or visual components within the work. The featured costume work helped create two distinct ideals. Although this play was written in 1666 France, the clothing created an overall sense that the action was taking place in the twentieth century. Secondly, the costume changes, and lack thereof, set the foremost figure of Alceste apart from the other primary roles.
Firstly, the costumes melded different twentieth-century-era clothing styles to create an attractive and familiar look. The modern sex-kitten prototype was created via the replication of a 1950's era Celimene clad a la Marilyn Monroe replete with red haltered frock, red feathered hat, red pumps, shiny red lips and dripping rhinestones. Complimenting this stylized ideal, the 1940's strong man was recreated in the double-breasted dark suits of Philinte and Alceste. Philinte was a bit complicated (as was his character) with a combination of pinstripes, fedora, handkerchief and a boutonniere, whereas Alceste presented a simpler facade in a dark, solid-colored suite paired with a simple turtleneck and suspenders. The 1920's were present in the Gatsby-like outfit worn by suitor, Acaste, while his vaguely regal companion Clitandre was clad in vaguely twentieth-century dark suit and blue sash, worn jauntily to the side as one would imagine Prince Reiner wore to woo the yet-to-be-Princess Grace. Secondly, in the final scene, all the key players changed into seventeenth-century court costumes, complete with powdered faces and flowing wigs, whilst Alceste remained stalwartly in the same outfit. His lack of a costume change visually demonstrated his unwillingness to participate in the masquerade (ball) of the group dynamics.
On a positive note, I would like to say that the acting was impeccable - I was held enthralled and absorbed by the performance. But on a negative note, while on one level I enjoyed the uncomplicated visual cues the character's costumes offered - there was a sense that any subtlety one might have gained at simply observing the characters was lost - because their personalities were dished out on a (fashion) plate. Similarly, Richard Wilbur translated the play from the original French version into English. I would imagine that the original French version had a rhyming quality because his translation for this performance's speech patterns where heavily rhymed. Needless to say, something may have been lost in the translation, or I could have simply been caught up in the witty banter the rhyming helped create, but I found myself so caught up in how the characters were speaking, and what they looked like, that I could hardly remember what they said. So in short, the combination of the costumes and the speech patterns detracted from what I felt could have been a truly outstanding play.
The performance of Moliere's The Misanthrope was marked most profoundly by a bold use of the twentieth-century costumes to modernize a seventeenth-century work. The idealized costumes, as well as the lack of a costume change for the main character, too clearly defined the character's personalities. The actor's performances were first-rate, but the costumes, along with the rhyming banter, detracted from a sense of curiosity that compels an audience member to become enraptured in a play. While I enjoyed The Misanthrope very much, I felt disappointed in the lack of subtlety or depth.
8.10.2010
An old review - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof staged by "A Noise Within" on June 24, 2000 in Los Angeles
I have been going through old work and I can't force myself to discard this stuff. This is part of a ten performance review project. I'll post more later.
Yesterday I attended a performance of Tennessee William's A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The performance was staged by "A Noise Within", the resident production company at The Harriet and Charles Luckman Fine Arts Complex, located at Cal State Los Angeles. The June 24 performance was directed by Julie Rodriquez Elliott and Geoff Elliot and starred Jennifer Erin Roberts as at the frantically clawing Margaret; Geoff Elliot as the alcoholic floundering Brick; and Mitchell Edmonds as the crude and powerful Big Daddy.
The most remarkable element of this performance is the convention of sexuality that the play addresses and the devastation wrought upon a family because sexual conventions were breached. This play swirls around the moral attitudes held toward held toward homosexuality and its unacceptability in mid-twentieth century America. The male lead, Brick has become an alcoholic wreck since the death of his best friend Skipper. Through sexual manipulation, Brick's wife Margaret brought about the realization that Skipper loved Brick in a romantic way; while Brick felt his relationship with Skipper was "a real true thing" - a pure male friendship, without any sexual overtones or improprieties. In the opening scene Brick and his beautiful but desperate wife, Margaret, are clad in their underwear, trapped in their bedroom, being quickly smothered by the poison that is brewing between them. Margaret is powdering, preening and nervously chattering from her dressing table on one side of their bed. She is trying to draw and hold her drunken husband's attention and love although he can only be drawn to the bar that lies on the other side of their bed. Brick is literally drowning in his own brew and unable to accept or tolerate his wife's own difficult brand of (sexually driven) love because of the emotional devastation she has wrought.
In a sense, his dying father Big Daddy, mirrors Brick. Big Daddy is dying from a cancer gone too far to cure. It is Big Daddy that draws out Brick's reason for drinking. Big Daddy painfully extracts the truth of the matter - that Skipper loved Brick homosexually - and Brick's outright rejection of his "true" friend drove Skipper to his death. Like the cancer that is eating Big Daddy, the violation of the sexual mores is eating, and killing, Brick. Brick is obviously emotionally unable to deal with his friend's particular kind of love and when Big Daddy tries to tell him this is not shocking Brick yells, "You called me a queer...You shock me Big Daddy, talking so casually about things like that". But these performances show that the "things like that" are enough to kill one man and nearly kill another because they are so far outside acceptable sexual behavior for their time.
I felt completely enthralled in the characters and their story. The plays central meaning slowly and delicately unfolded between the interplay of desperation and pain in the form of Margaret, Brick and Big Daddy and the emotional vacuousness of Sister Woman, Gooper and Big Momma. The performances were excellent and without flaw. I found myself sympathizing with a desperately clinging woman, an emotionally unavailable alcoholic and a crude overbearing dominator. These characters rang true and at the end of the play I felt entirely satisfied with them as messengers of a very insightful truth.
The most significant aspect of this performance of William's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was the moral convention it bore to light and the dangers this convention held for those that play around its frays. The interplay of the characters Margaret, Brick and Big Daddy delicately portrayed the levels to which this danger can penetrate people, literally eating at them like a cancer. When the crude and brutally truthful Big Daddy tells Brick, "You can't buy back your life" it is an attempt to bring his son back to the living and to show us how precious life really is. This performance portrayed the human animal as a deep creature with no greater enemy than itself and its social conventions.
Yesterday I attended a performance of Tennessee William's A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The performance was staged by "A Noise Within", the resident production company at The Harriet and Charles Luckman Fine Arts Complex, located at Cal State Los Angeles. The June 24 performance was directed by Julie Rodriquez Elliott and Geoff Elliot and starred Jennifer Erin Roberts as at the frantically clawing Margaret; Geoff Elliot as the alcoholic floundering Brick; and Mitchell Edmonds as the crude and powerful Big Daddy.
The most remarkable element of this performance is the convention of sexuality that the play addresses and the devastation wrought upon a family because sexual conventions were breached. This play swirls around the moral attitudes held toward held toward homosexuality and its unacceptability in mid-twentieth century America. The male lead, Brick has become an alcoholic wreck since the death of his best friend Skipper. Through sexual manipulation, Brick's wife Margaret brought about the realization that Skipper loved Brick in a romantic way; while Brick felt his relationship with Skipper was "a real true thing" - a pure male friendship, without any sexual overtones or improprieties. In the opening scene Brick and his beautiful but desperate wife, Margaret, are clad in their underwear, trapped in their bedroom, being quickly smothered by the poison that is brewing between them. Margaret is powdering, preening and nervously chattering from her dressing table on one side of their bed. She is trying to draw and hold her drunken husband's attention and love although he can only be drawn to the bar that lies on the other side of their bed. Brick is literally drowning in his own brew and unable to accept or tolerate his wife's own difficult brand of (sexually driven) love because of the emotional devastation she has wrought.
In a sense, his dying father Big Daddy, mirrors Brick. Big Daddy is dying from a cancer gone too far to cure. It is Big Daddy that draws out Brick's reason for drinking. Big Daddy painfully extracts the truth of the matter - that Skipper loved Brick homosexually - and Brick's outright rejection of his "true" friend drove Skipper to his death. Like the cancer that is eating Big Daddy, the violation of the sexual mores is eating, and killing, Brick. Brick is obviously emotionally unable to deal with his friend's particular kind of love and when Big Daddy tries to tell him this is not shocking Brick yells, "You called me a queer...You shock me Big Daddy, talking so casually about things like that". But these performances show that the "things like that" are enough to kill one man and nearly kill another because they are so far outside acceptable sexual behavior for their time.
I felt completely enthralled in the characters and their story. The plays central meaning slowly and delicately unfolded between the interplay of desperation and pain in the form of Margaret, Brick and Big Daddy and the emotional vacuousness of Sister Woman, Gooper and Big Momma. The performances were excellent and without flaw. I found myself sympathizing with a desperately clinging woman, an emotionally unavailable alcoholic and a crude overbearing dominator. These characters rang true and at the end of the play I felt entirely satisfied with them as messengers of a very insightful truth.
The most significant aspect of this performance of William's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was the moral convention it bore to light and the dangers this convention held for those that play around its frays. The interplay of the characters Margaret, Brick and Big Daddy delicately portrayed the levels to which this danger can penetrate people, literally eating at them like a cancer. When the crude and brutally truthful Big Daddy tells Brick, "You can't buy back your life" it is an attempt to bring his son back to the living and to show us how precious life really is. This performance portrayed the human animal as a deep creature with no greater enemy than itself and its social conventions.
8.01.2010
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