Verbalists Audio: November Reading
Audio recording of the Verbalists storytelling group, recorded live 10 November, 2012.
The Ghastly Impermanence: Sight Unseen
Giving Prof. Guralnick the benefit of fair doubt, I believe her goal in writing the book is to expand the audience for radio drama by proving its link to stage drama, to discuss playwrights who are best known for their stage work, rather than playwrights who write specifically for radio. I cannot argue against her choice of material. What I will argue is that the approach probably confirms more biases than it dispels.
The Ghastly Impermanence: The Museum, The Department Store and The Landfill
Artists like Norman Corwin strove toward an idea of radio as an artist’s studio with radio drama as a natural product of the process. Yet as so often typical in American culture, singular artistic visions hardly merit a mention in histories of radio. The idea of an artist’s studio went largely ignored, because the goal of OTR was not to produce art but rather to produce consumers.
Landscape of the Body: The Limits of Pastiche
John Guare’s plays were po-mo before po-mo was the American theater’s default setting. They revel in pop culture references. They erase the line between reality and the phony “hyperreality” promoted every day in the media. His approach to the material is that so beloved of deconstructionists everywhere: pastiche. The difficulty in staging this pastiche is that the play often threatens to turn into pure chaos.
Amarillo y El Dorado: Teatro Línea de Sombra Bring It at On the Boards
The desire to be somewhere better is indigenous to the human race. There are probably at least a myriad of clichés about how “the grass is greener” and it is certainly common to wish one were somewhere else. When life is relatively stable, this desire to find greener pastures is a luxury. When life is chaos, this desire is no longer a luxury but a thirst for life.
The Ghastly Impermanence: Canon Envy
While many people are certainly satisfied with the absence of a canon for radio drama, the lack of one has dismal consequences.
Odin’s Horse and the Lehrstück ohne Lehre
In our post-Bush era, political theater is increasingly rare. In our remote, cozy and often smug city of Seattle it is rarer still. Anything encouraging Americans to get together in a group to solve problems is a general anathema. Stereotypes have hardened. Dialogue is emotional and without sense. Issues are treated not as matters to solve by consensus but rather to be solved by fiat. It is no wonder discussion feels polarized.
The Skriker: The Bitch is Back
Caryl Churchill is renown for not talking about the meaning of her plays in public. A positive result of this reticence is that her plays retain their complexity as works of art. A negative result is that there is a lot of pure rubbish written about them.
Fefu and Her Friends: A Non-Review
It refreshes the soul to go out once in awhile and watch students who still love, still care, still dream about making good work. But it is not only a pleasure to watch the students grow and take chances but also a pleasure to watch their teachers do work they would not otherwise get to do.
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