July in August

Just a guess, but I get that many of the visitors to this blog have already treated themselves to the scintillating prose of glam Portlandian Miranda July.

{Notice how I intimated a lovely compliment to moi-meme in there? Never miss in an opportunity to indulge in megalomania.}

Well, Miranda is not merely a brilliant novelist, she’s also a ceaseless space monkey who enjoys playing with all forms of media. This woman put the hyper in hyperlink. To slip into one of her many blogs is to give yourself up to hours of fun, with one digression leading to another until you can’t remember where you started.

Any place at random will do, but I’ll share one of my favorites. This has to be the best book promotion ever. Plus, if the sequence starts with an opening line that would make you continue reading if it were its own novel, wouldn't it? Crafty Miranda. So go ahead. Surf this now.

You asked for it.

And now you’re gonna get it.

I mean all right already. In recent weeks I’ve lodged several complaints – well, good-natur’d enough complaints, but still – about the devolving content of this blog. In the main, the demurrers mention one or all of the following:

1. Too much stuff about theater in general.

2. Too much stuff about PCS specifically.

3. Not enough about you (you meaning ME).

As my friend Kim put it so crowcrastinaciously, “I signed up for pu pu, and I’m only get the won tons.”

Okay. Seems to me I may be forgiven for going on about JAW; it occupied nearly every minute of my waking consciousness for at least a month before it opened, and then, well. And also….why not admit it, the Festival was convenient for me, content-wise. It’s embarrassing to go on about oneself! It feels self-aggrandizing. No matter what I say or how I couch it, what I hear myself saying is best expressed by a song from Richard O’Brien and Jim Sharma’s underrated film Shock Treatment:

Deep in the heart of me
I love every part of me
All I can see in me
Is danger and destiny
I pray every day to me
And here’s what I say to me
This is the me of me
Me me me.

Now: I wouldn’t mind so much if I could manage to be as bracingly forthright as Josh Friedman’s blog, i find your lack of faith disturbing. Or if I could achieve the camera’s eye of Art Scatter, or the camera obscura effect of Splattworks. How can I live up to the perspicacity of Parabasis, the carnivalesque abandon of Bamboo Nation, the clinical eroticism of Roissy in DC or Jeffrey Jones’ erudition. I aspire to all the above, in different ways, but NooooOOOOOoooooo. I got nothing here, people. Just me. Me-meaning-me.

So here goes nothing.

Mistletoe Madness

When my previous posting mentioned having a transcendent time at Susannah Mars' holiday cabaret, Mars on Life, little did I know that Susannah had been through a harrowing performing experience only days before.

One of the warmest and most transporting moments of the show is a song entitled "Thalj" -- "Snow." Song entirely in Arabic, Susannah uses this music and its language and her voice to give us the special gift of shared wonder with another culture, one that is little understood by most of the world, I'm sure.

Evidently not everybody has appreciated the interlude. Well, one person, anyway. The show was disrupted last week by an outraged spectator. You can read an account of this on a Portland theater blog called OnStage; currently this posting is the top one. Playwright and actor Patrick Wohlmut (a frequent contributor to this blog) eloquently describes the event as well as its implications for us -- please check it out if you can.

The History of American Playwriting, Part One

From Wait It Gets Better, the blog of playwright and bon vivant Wayne Peter Liebman. This is a conversation Wayne had with a chance acquaintance he met while visiting Lake Arrowhead.

What is it you do?

Me: I’m a playwright.

Oh. It’s a good living?

Me: Nobody makes a living writing plays. Maybe five people.
Like, can you name five living playwrights?

Arthur Miller!

Me: Rightio.

Tennessee Williams!

Me: Right again.

What’s his name. The funny guy.

Me: Adam Rapp?

Yeah. The Odd Couple, right?

By the way, this photo of Ugo Tognazzi, taken during his he-man heyday long before his desexed role in La Cage aux Folles, has nothing to do with Wayne or with the content of this post. I just can’t get over Ugo.