Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Martha -  that's actually one of my first decisions... will nekkid guy
be shown in all his glory? 9 times out of 10, nudity on stage just
serves to pull people out of the story. Instead of paying attention to
the plot, they're thinking "hey! Naked person!"
I'm tackling the adaptation tonight... so hopefully I'll find a bit of
inspiration to keep that scene intact without making it all about the
size of the actor's ... part.
  

    
Martha - actually... I think I want to share what happened at the
first callback. Since we hadn't chosen the story "for real" until that
day, I didn't have sides for it. So I had the actors improv it. I had
the men take places on the stage and mentally mark out their territory.
Then the women had to, one at a time, cross from one side of the stage
to the other. When the men decided she walked into their area, they
started the scene, which she could either immerse herself in or remove
herself from (reacting and commenting on the "memory" without reliving
it). Some very cool stuff came out of that... the most fun being this
guy talking about how he needed to have some space to work on his band
cause it was his art (while stroking his air guitar), and the actress
laughing hysterically and saying "you were such an ass!"
Not part of the show, but a really fun choice for the audition.
  

    
That would have been something to see!
  

    

Would you recommend reading the stories before seeing the pieces?
  

    
Stagewalker--Amen!  And again I say amen!  There is nothing mor
distracting than nudity in a live performance.  Alas, I live in
Chicago, where if it isn't nekkid, it isn't theatre.
  

    
Okay, y'all which are you using here?

Nude - innocently unclothed
Naked - vunerably without clothing
Nekkid - bare assed and fixin' to get into trouble

Just to clarify things...
  

    
Mary--Well, I live in Cincinnati, where if it is nekkid, it has Simon
Leis closing down its bare ass.

(I think we are probably meaning naked, or even nude, but saying
nekkid because its just more fun that way...)

Martha--I finished your book yesterday.  It is very lovely.  I don't
like much that I have read when it is labeled "Science Fiction", and
you helped to give me a new understanding of the genre.  (And I got to
be entertained as well!)  I wish I had read it a while back, when
everyone here seemed to have gotten their nekkid paws on it.

Thank you everyone for tolerating my somewhat gratuitous use of the
word "nekkid".
  

    
Nekkid!

Sorry, it looked like fun.

Jen.
  

    
Hey, now, y'all quit abusing my dialect!
  

    
Anyway, this weekend was great fun.

My husband and I went out alone together (no kids!) for the first time
in several months, had mexican, and stopped by McKay's Used Books.
I got a CD,  _Comic Book Whore_ (Jane Jensen, who stars in Troma Films
_Tromeo & Juliet_) for a mere 96¢, definitely within budget, and
Octavia Butler's  _Kindred_, which I read immediately after the Rita
Mae Brown I got, and enjoyed both.

In the free box - I love the free box - we found Frederik Pohl's _The
Cool War_, a Hitchcock Anthology, and CS Lewis's _Letters To An
American Lady_, among others... and went to the coffee shop.

There was a free concert at 11th St. - a local singer, Donna Lee Van
Cott (http://www.geocities.com/donnaleevancott/), sort of folk jazz.
And eventually we went home.
  

    
Martha - It was something to see. Final callbacks tonight. I've gotten
halfway through the adaptation of Walls and have realized that I've
gotten myself into a wonderfully complex staging problem involving the
size of the stage and the different rooms in the house.

Linda - Sure! I don't think that anything is lost by knowing the
stories in advance. Of course, there's always the danger of you reading
the stories, seeing the show, and walking out going "well, *I* 
wouldn't have done it that way". but that's true with any adaptation.

Mary - *chuckle* I did a lot of interviews with theatres for an
undergraduate project when I was in Chicago. There was a *lot* of
nudity in shows at that time, and I'm sure it's just grown. I think my
favorite quote was from the Annoyance Theatre: "Just because we have
nudity, simulated sex, and bodily fluids on stage doesn't mean that
it's all that we're about.!"

JaNell - for the context, all of the above. Nipples, and genitalia on
stage are just plain distracting regardless of the context.
  

    
Only because we automatically associate the human body with sex.
Especially women's.
Think of all those idiots who object to women nursing in public, even
with a blanket over them, even in a restroom!
Or people who get arrested for nude baby photos of their kids... all
of our parents would be in jail.
  

    
JaNell: See, I had alwasy heard/used

Naked: you ain't got no clothes on.
Nekkid: you ain't got no clothes on, and are up t'sumptin.

Will: Book is sent! Couldn't find my _How Much..._ but hey, if it's
back in print, you can probably find one at Amazon.com and Mike will
get his precentage and all will be right with the world!  

Also, this last week-end I was in Milwaukee for GenCon (was only there
Saturday, and alas and alack, missed James Marsters entirely, as we
went to Bristol Sunday) and after mass Sunday morning, my friend Katie
took me over to Marquette University to see Jeanne d'Arc's chapel,
which was moved to the campus stone by stone aparently. Way nifty.
Didn't get to go inside tho, as it doesn't open until noon... But hey,
next time!
  

    
JaNell -- I rather like that CD.

...I have nothing else to report.
  

    
Dan W:  Please, please let us all know the show dates.  I sense a
Thingie Road Trip !  (Walker—you listening in?  Adriana?)

-Pam
Who just got Martha’s _tAPoW_ last week and took three tries just to
get past the Introduction and Foreword, ‘cause I was so enchanted. 
It’s impossible not to helplessly admire someone who makes the rhyme
“fluke. Up” and the woman who inspired it.
  

    
[..]to see Jeanne d'Arc's chapel, which was moved to the campus stone
by stone [...]

   Thank you for your purchase of this fine medieval building.
   For your reconstructive convenience, each stone has been given a
number.  For purposes of authenticity, Roman numeration has been used
throughout, though as a nod to our modern customers, the assembly guide
has been updated to the Vulgate.
   Please note that any Nuns removed from the structure walls will be
sent under separate cover.  Customs and Excise arrangements,
beatifications, repatriation of relics, etc. are entirely the
responsibility of the purchaser. 
  

    
Dan Guy - me, too.
  

    
Better than the translated manual of this medieval Japanese building I
bought.

stagewalker, I faint at the complexities of translating a piece so bound to
an apartment-sized space to a stage.  How large is your stage?  (When I was
in Moebius we were accustomed to performing on postage stamps.)
  

    
Man, I wish I lived... well, somewhere else, so I could get to see all
these great-sounding productions being put on.  Alas, there isn't as
much cool theater in NYC <grin>.

I'm uncomfortably burned after spending Sunday and Monday at the beach
in Wildwood, NJ, with my best friend, his sister, and their cousin and
family.  Frisbee and surf and rides that take you two-hundred feet in
the air and twist you so that you're looking at upside-down Wildwood...
what a terrific time.  Except, you know, I'm pink-red.  I don't have a
good simile, or I'd use one, but I'm Very Red at the moment.

Tara- anxiously awaiting, and much thanks.

And Mike- lol on the building.

And I picked up LITTLE, BIG again, to give it another shot, and I
don't remember why I didn't quite like it the first time.  It's
captured me this time, that's for sure.
  

    
DanW, Martha, Neil- That's so exciting! I wish I could come see the
plays. But I'm not in the area. Too expensive. Blast. 
I've perfomed on small and fairly large stages. Once we did
Midsummer's Night Dream in the park, which worked wonderfully for the
most part with all the trees and nature and what not. Although one
night a kid rode his bike across the "stage" during our fairy dance and
nearly ran over Puck. The audience laughed and we tried very hard to
stay in character.

Jinx- re rejection letters- I've gotten some really cool ones too,
especially lately. Very encouraging and educational stuff But my all
time fave has to be one from a long time ago...my very first attempt to
sell a story, which, because I had no idea what I was doing,it should
never have left my hands, my computer, or my brain for that matter. I
sent it to to Jack Fisher over at Flesh and Blood magazine. He said
simply: "This is a horrible story. You are not a writer." Ha.
I think I've gotten better since then and I plan on sending him
another one one of these days. That letter still hangs over my
computer. 
  

    
Will-- I was on the Jersey shore this weekend too... I thought I
covered most of my body with sunscreen, but my right shoulder is
lobster red.  Aiii.

Martha-- you're lucky-- the Ikea warehouse I purchased came with a
series of incomprehensible line drawings and a couple of tiny
annotations in Swedish.

[And on my yearly pilgrimage to Dreamhaven last week I finally got a
copy of your book-- signed-- and I agree with everyone else-- it's
wonderful.]
  

    
Martha, it's fairly shallow, but wonderfully wide for a theatre that
only sits about a hundred people. I don't think it would be possible to
do the piece in a narrow space, like Venue 9 or the Noh Space.

Will - *chuckle* Ahhh, NYC... I came fairly close to moving out there
to pursue theatre full time, but now is not the time. Besides, as you
said... all the really cool stuff is going on out here. (now if only
the rest of the world would acknowledge that so that the best actors
would quit leaving for NYC and LA!)

I feel your pain... although only in a sympathetic sort of way. I burn
at the first touch of sun, although my face and arms are finally
building a resistance to sun after a mere 31 years. The worst is
getting one's feet burned. Mine tend to swell, making me not only in
pain but immobile.

Erynn, during a recent performance of Great Sebastians, an elderly man
in a Shriner's hat made loud, unintelligible announcements throughout
the first half of the first act, and then tottered down the aisle and
leaned over the edge of the stage to get a better look at what was
going on.
.. Live theatre... gotta love it.
  

    
>>.. Live theatre... gotta love it.

    One -does- have more vivid memories of those moments when someone
acccidentally wanders through the Fourth Wall.
    I can still remember an NT production of SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER,
years ago, in which Mrs. Hardcastle (it was Dora Bryan) came onstage
wearing a script.  That is, she had on a tattered, post-carriage-crash
green outfit, and a script in a green plastic cover had somehow become
attached, quite visibly to the audience though not to her.  A few
minutes into the scene, as the audience was beginning to notice, Tony
Lumpkin (Andrew Wadsworth) simply grabbed it, flung it bodily into the
wings, and Smiled Big for just one beat.  Then matters proceeded.
    Dunno what he'd have done if it had been, say, Whiting's THE
DEVILS.  "Away with this heretical document!  We have evidence enough!"

    Martha -- where are you think all easy manual howdone writers from
Epson Fine Matrices Printing Dots Co & Inc are to go?  First locating
geisha before teahouse begin to assembled, as all piece revolving
thereabouts, vinegar rice bed optional.
  

    
I am how not to think.  Warn children before swallowing batteries.
  

    
I saw a production of Medea last year in a very-open-to-the-public
sculpture garden.  Halfway through, a feral-looking dog wandered onto
the stage area, making the audience nervous.  The actor playing Medea
would have none of it-- she imperiously clapped her hands twice at the
dog and shouted "Hah!"  The dog bolted and the show continued.

Hah!