Pestle in South Korea

So, the South Korean english class got around to watching our "Knight of the Burning Pestle" DVD.
Here's some ensuing email (quoted with permission):

Our class greatly enjoyed your production today, espcially the portrayal of
the citizen couple was the main topic of today's discussion.
Concerning the "cuteness" of your George and Nell, there was a dispute
whether the couple's intimacy is one of the targets of satire(because they
break the convention of play and the social decorum)
or a proof of the play's genuine warmth towards the citizens.
One of the students pointed out that since we live in a society that is
very much "bourgeois"( I mean modern Korean society) that value private
life over all things else, we are more easily led to take their intimacy
positively.
Overall, we felt that the production was quite sympathetic to the citizen
couple while keeping the original text.
(someone detected the change in the script; some comments on Rafe
originally given to Wife are given to George in the production, and whether
that change is significant as an adaptation was another point of the
discussion)
And I felt that the class now have more clear sense of what the play would
look like on stage thanks to the DVD.
:)

and my reply:

Excellent! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and that it was useful.

At this late date, I don't remember any particular intentional
interpretation I was imposing on George and Nell's relationship, though I
may well have had one at the time. Or, it might have been that the
cuteness originated from the actors, and I just went with it :-) I did
knowingly cast the part of George with an actor who was very much a
larger-than-life member of the local community, known to be both bombastic
and charismatic. The actress playing Nell was married to him at the time,
so perhaps some of their chemistry comes from their real-life
relationship.

Similarly, I don't now recall the specific line changes you refer to. I
have a vague memory that some of that may have been due to an attempt to
slightly reduce the burden of memorization on Nell's actress -- her part
is *extremely* large, the most lines in the play by a good margin, if I
recall correctly. It was definitely the case that some outright cuts were
at least partially motivated by memorization difficulties, though other
concerns factored in. I do recall that Rafe's long death poem was trimmed
with an eye towards picking up the pacing, and for removing some of the
bits that I thought would be more obscure to a modern audience.

Of course, whatever my reasoning may have been, all changes are part of
the process of adaptation, and are legitimate grounds for discussion.
Even changes done for one simple, boring, practical reason, will have
repercussions on other levels. I can (or at least could if I had a better
memory) tell you what *I meant*; I can't tell you with authority what *it
means*.

So, any interest in a viewing party? Say, some weekend in November? Early responses may influence my exact choice of date :-)

Glory!

On my flight back from my trip to Chicago (of which more, soon), shortly after takeoff, the plane went above cloud level, and I saw, around our shadow on the clouds, a circular double-rainbow. A bit of googling shows that that this is called a glory. I didn't take a picture, but the one on that wikipedia page is much like what I saw. Neat!

Killer Angels

Saturday, rickthefightguy and tamarinne took me out to see Lifeline Theatre's production of The Killer Angels. It's an adaptation of the Michael Shaara novel about the Battle of Gettysburg. A powerful story, powerfully told.

The fairly small cast included a lot of doubling, but the actors were all skilled enough that this never resulted in confusion. This was helped by the use of differing regional accents which, while not perfect, were good at implicitly creating sub-groups of related (and distinct) characters.

I love Lifeline Theatre. I've never seen a show there that was less than excellent. I hope they continue successfully for many, many years to come. That said, I hope they are never *too* successful. They're a perfect demonstration of the creativity that comes from the constraints of limited space and a limited budget.

For example, the way that they depict Picket's Charge. This was the last major action of the battle. Quoting wikipedia: "Approximately 12,500 men in nine infantry brigades advanced over open fields for three-quarters of a mile under heavy Union artillery and rifle fire. Although some Confederates were able to breach the low stone wall that shielded many of the Union defenders, they could not maintain their hold and were repulsed with over 50% casualties, a decisive defeat that ended the three-day battle" So how on earth do you evoke that on stage? Here's what they did. ( spoilers )

The show has been extended to November 24th, so if you're in the rare category of someone reading this, who can get to Lifeline in Chicago, and you *haven't* already seen this, I Highly Recommend it.

The Crownless King

The other major show of the weekend was The Crownless King, the middle play of an epic fantasy trilogy. It's an odd mix of influences, including lots of previous epic fantasy, but also riffing on early United States history. Near as I can tell, it was inspired by the authors having a problem with the inherent monarchial bias inherent in the typical "orphan boy turns out to be the lost One True Heir to the throne" story. So they set out to tell something that seems to be exactly that, but ends up subverting the tropes in multiple ways.

While the Orphan/King is the protagonist, the true struggle of the story is between the multiple Storytellers (i.e. Wizards) who are attempting to define his life. Instead of the traditional Good/Evil dichotomy, the two main forces here could perhaps be characterized as Authoritarian / Democratic. Audience sympathies shift over the course of the first two plays, and I don't know where it'll end up in the third part. But I was sufficiently entertained and intrigued that I want to see it next year!

Good acting and costuming. Brilliant lighting, sound design, and puppetry (ranging from tiny, delicate birds, up to an enormous f-ing dragon!). Best use of Chess metaphors I've seen in years.

Sadly, the performance we were at was closing night, so I can't usefully recommend you go see it. But if you're intrigued, the link above has lots more info, including a downloadable pdf of the script for Part 1.

Hangin' with Rick

I love hanging out with rickthefightguy. Even when he has go off to do some work, it often results in things like getting to listen in to his side of a phone conversation about different possible ways to create impressive-looking fake stakes for a vampire play he's working on.

Or, you might head out with him to see an educational performance about the futures market in Chicago in the late 19th century, only to discover that, since he knows some of the people running it, you get to be *in* the show instead! It's true that that meant that we missed out on most of the actual educational content. On the other hand, we got to spend an hour in a sort of micro-LARP, shouting out BUY! and SELL! at the top of our lungs :-)

Rick wrote more about it here.